to see as “a whole” the entities that they embody, that I characterize the imagi-
nations that gave birth to them as “modern.” As pictures, they place the lan-
guage and the terrritory that they represent at the “disposal” of their speakers
and inhabitants repectively, sealing the new proprietary attitudes towards
“Tamil” and “India” that have been ushered in by modernity. The subterfuges of
antiquity to which their votaries resort notwithstanding, it is the cunning of
modernity that enables the very imagination of Tamil
̄
tta ̄y and Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄ as
icons of new collective identites.
Notes
1 For brief discussions of Tamil
̄
tta ̄y’s presence in Sri Lankan Tamil culture, see Daniel
1989: 35–6 and Suseendirarajah 1980.
2 For example, in all the poetry in Tamil on Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄ that I have read from the
twentieth century, she is never imagined as a widow, whereas Indira Chowdhury
notes that she does so appear in the imagination of Bengali patriots of the 1860s
and 1870s. It is possible that this in itself reflects the preoccupation with the plight
of widowhood among Bengali social reformers in the later half of the nineteenth
century (Chowdhury 1998: 96–7). Similarly, see Joseph Alter’s thoughtful com-
ments on how the understanding of Bha ̄rat Mata in the wrestling communities of
northern India is significantly different from the “xenophobic chauvinism” that
marks the Hindu nationalists (Alter 1996: 126–9).
3 There are numerous works on the hymn and its subsequent history, much of it fairly
hagiographic and patriotic in content. For some useful observations, see Bose 1974
and Das 1984.
4 A crore is a unit of measure which is equivalent to ten million. This figure betrays
the fact that Bankim’s “Mother” was really Banga Ma ̄ta ̄ (Mother Bengal) rather than
Bha ̄ rat Ma ̄ta ̄ (Bose 1997: 53).
5 It has to be noted that quite frequently, Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄ appears wearing a saree and
blouse in a style that became popular only from the later half of the nineteenth
century – yet another telltale sign of her modernity. For a perceptive essay that con-
siders the politics of “clothing’ the goddess figure more generally in the pictorial prac-
tices of colonial and postcolonial India, see Guha-Thakurtha 1999.
6 Even when she occasionally appears holding a printed book – invariably the
Tirukkur
̄
alor the Tolka ̄ppiyam– rather than cadjan leaves, this is carefully selected
from Tamil’s corpus of ancient rather than modern works.References
Agulhon, Maurice. 1980. Marianne into Battle: Republican Imagery and Symbolism in
France, 1789–1880. Trans. Janet Lloyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Alter, Joseph S. 1996. “The Celibate Wrestler: Sexual Chaos, Embodied Balance, and
Competitive Politics in North India,” in Social Reform, Sexuality and the State, ed. P.
Uberoi. New Delhi: Sage.
Andrews, C. F. 1914. “Bha ̄rat-Ma ̄ta ̄,” Modern Review 15: 81.
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