"Api Swarnamani Lanka Na Mey Lakshmana Rochate,
Janani Janmabhumishcha Swargadapi Gariyasi."
- Rama told to Lakshmana after conquering Lanka
From the lap of a mother, a child begins his/her journey of social life and gradually develops a worldview following a way of life of the land, called the ‘culture’ of land. Then, every human being must be ‘culture-specific’ living both in objective material world as well as subjective cultural world.
Bhumi and Mata
Now the questions: how do we Indians view our mothers and our land of birth or our ancestry? How do we feel about the Land of Bharat that is Bharatbhumi? What do we say about our mothers and motherland- Matribhumi?
Each and every ‘culture’ provides its own way of understanding and interpretations of reality which connotes a unique ‘contextual meaning’ of the social world to its members. Indic Dharmic culture is no exception in this Land of Bharat that is Bharatbhumi.
Then, we come to the very words of “Mata/Matri” as the Sanskrit terms for English Mother. Mata is also “Janani” and "Amba" in Sanskrit terms. “Mataji” is used as a respectful term to address an older woman in Indian culture, particularly if she is unknown to the speaker. Because, according to Dharmic culture, all women who are not one's wife are to be treated as one's mother, where “-ji” is an honorific suffix used to indicate respect. Mata is "Amma" in South India.
In Indian subcontinent ‘Dharma' constitutes the basic building block of Indian society. Dharmic religions have been Sanatana dharma- Hinduism, Jain dharma- Jainism and Bauddha dharma- Buddhism and other tribalistic dharmic faiths from ancient times, and Sikh dharma- Sikhism from medieval times in Indian subcontinent. The subcontinental Indic culture has been heavily influenced by all these dharmic religious systems cumulatively. Thus, Indic culture has been an amalgamation of several dharmic cultures spanning across the Indian subcontinent. So, the Indic society has been influenced by a history that is several millennia old. And, this history and culture have a definite matriarchal character.
In Indian subcontinent all indigenous ‘Dharmic’ religions have sanctified mata/mother and matritva/motherhood with deep rooted tenets and rituals which have made this continuous Indic culture very distinctive and vibrant since prehistoric times. Indic culture has a whole body of oral tradition and literature that glorify mata and motherland.
Although almost all societies and communities in the world have been patriarchal in nature, matritva has bestowed a special status to Indian women in that mothers have been worshipped as a divinity, particularly in Sanatana Hindu dharmic culture. It is no denying the fact that there has certainly been a cultural and ideological understanding of mother as a preeminent status and positional role in Indic society. And so is the Matribhumi- motherland.
In Sanatana Dharmic Hindu scriptures and traditions, the 'Kshiti/Bhumi' or 'Earth' has been one of the five prime entities of the universe- 'Pancha Bhuta/ Pancha Maha-Bhuta'. Kshiti has been a feminine character and Bhumi-Devi has been the Mother Earth in the Indic way of life. Bhumi-Devi has been a Hindu goddess with so many nomenclatures like Prithvi, Vasundhara, Dharti, Bhudevi, Bhuvaneshwari etc. And, all human beings have been sons and daughters of Bhumi-Devi. But interestingly Bhumi-Devi has also been named as 'Bharati'!
There is no denying the fact that the ‘mother-child unit’ has been a ‘natural’ and constituent part of all cultures. This ‘unit’ has assumed a particular significance in Indian socio-religious context. As dharmic Indians consider Mother Earth as Bhumi-Devi, they worship their motherland as a kind of divinity. So, for a dharmic Indian the 'Bharat Bhumi' has been conceived as a Divinity of 'Bharat Mata' or 'Bharati'.
Bharati as Mother
The Indian society is very much unique in bestowing religio-cultural respect for mothers. In the Land of Bharat, cults of goddess worship are so ancient and this tradition is Shaktism where Shakti is the power that underlies the male principle. Shakti has been the concept or personification of divine feminine creative power, and sometimes Shakti has been referred to as ‘The Great Divine Mother’ in Hindu tradition. In Indic tradition, Shakti is responsible both for creation and the agent of all change, and Shakti is cosmic existence as well as liberation with its most significant form being the Kundalini Shakti in Tantric tradition.
In South India the Shakti goddess is also known as Amma, meaning mother and has been considered as the protector of the village and community. The worship of mother as deity dated back to the pre-Vedic age with the coincidence of Harappan civilization in Indian subcontinent. The tradition of worshiping mother has been going through the Vedic age down the line of classical, Puranic age and Dharmic age up to the present modern age. Here comes the importance of Mother Goddess in Dharmic religious tradition of the Indian subcontinent.
Bharat Mata
Now the pertinent questions: Is the personification of a land new in India? Is the anthropocentric identification of land of birth as a mother new in a civilisation continuing through the millennia in 'Bharatavarsha'? Is it new to worship the land of birth in the Dharmic way of life in Bharat?
Let us examine the issues. Personification is as old as human civilisation and culture. As we perceive, so we personify. Every culture personifies things and ideas both at individual as well as community level. Indic culture is no exception.
As 'Dharma' is more than 'Religion', so are 'Puranas' more than 'History'. Historians with Eurocentric mindset are so much perplexed to explain the continuity of Indic Dharmic culture in Bharatavarsha through the ages as the term 'Bharatavarsha' has been mentioned so many times prominently in so many Puranas. From a historical perspective, 'Bharatavarsha' has been found in the inscription of Kharavela, the Odisha king, in the first century BCE. But the term as a holy land has been in the religio-cultural life of Indians in an evolutionary manner from 'Jambudvipa' as the centre of nine 'dvipas' of the 'Bhumi' or the Earth.
From that perspective, Bharat Mata is not an invention by 19th century Indic people as made out by some historians. Some intellectuals try to downplay the idea of Bharat as Mother as a 'national construct' in response to counter the British colonial rule in the late 19th century, started with an anonymous work "Unabimsapurana" in 1866, actually written by Bhudev Mukhopadhyay and "Bharat Mata" play by Kiran Chandra Bandyopadhyaya in 1873 and "Anandamath" novel of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1880. They try to ignore the subtlety of Dharmic scriptures and way of life in the Land of Bharat where "Bharatavarsha" has been conceived as the whole of "Bhumi" or Mother Earth in so many Puranas. The same type of narrative has been seen in different Puranas when "Kamadhenu/Surabhi"- Mother Earth as Gou Mata- the divine bovine-goddess cried for help for her sons from the atrocities of demon kings.
So the primordiality of Bharat as Bhumi and Mother is not an invention in the late 19th century but a continuation of traditional values and rituals of a dharmic way of life. Following the traditions came the painting of "Bharatmata" by Abanindranath Tagore in 1905 in the backdrop of Swadeshi ideals as "an attempt of humanisation of 'Bharat Mata' when the mother is seeking liberation through her sons". The same Bharat Mata has been depicted in the Tamil magazine 'Vijaya' in 1909 issue with her diverse progeny and people with rallying cry 'Vande Mataram'.
So the 'national' personification of Indian subcontinent as a mother goddess- Bharat Mata has been a continuation of the traditional rituals of worshipping "Bhumi-Devi" in Bharatavarsha. Of course, the cartographic shape of India in modern times by the British Raj has caught the imagination and sensibility of dharmic revolutionary nationalists like Bipin Chandra Pal, the Father of Revolutionary Thoughts and one of the famous Lal Bal Pal triumvirates for ideals of 'Purna Swaraj', who espoused Indian nationhood in terms of Dharmic Hindu philosophical and ritualistic devotional practices in India and gave a clarion call to Indian to unshackle Bharat Mata as their 'divine duty'.
Duty to Divine Land
As this Land of Bharat is personified as Bharat Mata following the traditions of Dharmic tenets and value system, it is an Indian imperative for every Bharatiya/Indian to be duty-bound to uphold the sanctity of Bharat Mata in every respect. Following this tradition the Indian Army has been using the motto of "Bharat Mata ki Jai" ("Victory for Mother India") to defend every inch of this land like those of fiery armed freedom fighters against the colonial British power to free Mother India.
Many nations in the world use God in their motto to stand up against the adversaries. But Indians stand up by worshipping their motherland- Matribhumi as Goddess by equating Her with our biological mothers who conceive, deliver and nourish us like Mother Nature. Whatever be our 'faiths', we Indians must be dharmic to love our motherland as Divine Land and do our duty following Lord Rama who told his brother Lakshmana after winning the prosperous Lanka that even this golden Lanka didn't appeal to him, and his mother and motherland were superior even to heaven. Because, for him, mother and motherland became synonymous to Mother Goddess Devi who has been Bharat Mata for Bharatiyas in Nation India.
@ Sujit Roy
15.08.2020
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