Speaker: 
Ronojoy Sen, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory in the Indian general elections for the third time in 2024 at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters in New Delhi, he began his speech by solemnly intoning Bharat Mata Ki (in the name of Mother India) three times, letting the audience respond by chanting jai (victory) each time. He ended his speech the same way. The chants of Bharat Mata ki jai were common to most campaign rallies by Modi as well as other senior BJP leaders during the six-week election. The idea of Bharat Mata can be traced to Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s well-known novel, Anandamath (1892). Bankim is also central to the powerful formulation of the nation as mother goddess.

This presentation looks at the many strands of the intellectual journey of the idea of Bharat Mata and the nation as mother goddess. There were several personalities who carried forward the ideas of Bankim in different ways and turned the mother goddess into a potent nationalist weapon. Some of the central figures in this story are Aurobindo Ghose, who was inspired by Bankim and the connection between the nation and the mother goddess, as well as his contemporary Bipin Chandra Pal. Abanindranath Tagore who painted the figure of Bharat Mata in 1905 in the midst of the swadeshi movement, and Sister Nivedita who played an important role in popularizing both the image and the idea of nation as goddess are critical figures too. Finally, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath’s uncle, was a powerful, countervailing intellectual force. He was uncomfortable with the idea of identifying the nation with the mother goddess and expressed his misgivings in his novels and other writings.

Discussant : Gilles Verniers (CERI-Sciences PO/CNRS) 

Meeting chair : Christophe Jaffrelot  (CERI-Sciences PO/CNRS)