Picture Link: The Many Avatars of Bharat Mata

[Guest guest]

I see that the link to the photo gallery at Kamat's Potpourri

doesn't allow links from outside the site.

 

Try this one:

http://www.atributetohinduism.com/images/Bharat_Mata2.jpg

 

Sorry for the inconvenience ...

 

DB

 

 

, "Devi Bhakta"

<devi_bhakta> wrote:

> Sunday, August 14, 2005: In many ways one knows the image well,

> having grown up with it from childhood. Mother India: wearing the

> Himalayas as her crown, her feet blessing the waters of the ocean

by

> their touch, graceful arms stretching out as if to embrace the

East

> and the West. Patriotic songs sang of her; leaders invoked her in

> their orations; young men took solemn oaths in her name. But, in

> times gone by, when she was still not free, one also knew that she

> was suffering. I remember our mother telling us children of

Gandhiji

> having heard the clinking of the chains on her feet; in a mushaira

> to which I went in my young years I heard a poet speak of her

silent

> sighs in the night.

>

> You could almost see her as a person: Mother India. That is why,

> even though it was written much later, I remember being deeply

moved

> by passages in Phanishwarnath Renu's classic: Maila Anchal. For

they

> spoke of those times with an honesty, and a passion, that struck

an

> instant chord. Ramkishan Babu's words were real. Tewariji's

> plaintive song – Ganga re Jamunwa ki dhaar neer bahaaye rahi,

Bharat

> maiya akulaaye rahi re — resonated in one's heart. One knew that

> the `anchal' that was soiled was the mother's. One wanted to reach

> out and wipe a tear from her eyes, apply some healing salve on the

> lacerated skin of her feet.

>

> Visuals not having been a prominent part of our young lives, I do

> not recall seeing till much later what is almost certainly the

most

> famous among images of Mother India: Abanindranath

Tagore's "Bharat

> Mata," c. 1905. (See image at:

> http://www.kamat.com/picturehouse/bharat/100j.jpg )

>

> He rendered her quite differently: a quietly beautiful young

woman,

> dressed like a sadhavi in an ochre-coloured sari, standing at the

> edge of a lotus pond. But clearly a divine being: celestial nimbus

> behind her head; four-armed, each hand carrying an object charged

> with symbolism: a sacred manuscript; an akshamala-rosary of beads;

a

> vastra or length of fabric; a sheaf of green foliage. There is no

> suffering that one sees: if anything, calm radiates from her

being.

> She is there as an idealised goddess, shedding grace, conferring

> boons: Saraswati and Lakshmi at the same time.

>

> Abani Babu painted this image close to 1905, and it is not

difficult

> to imagine the influences that shaped it, or the thoughts that

must

> have been coursing through his head as he went about visualising

the

> figure. The palpable British presence, the impending Partition of

> Bengal, talk of Swadeshi, were all around him. But, above all,

must

> have been not only the awareness but the reverberations of

> Bankimchandra's stirring composition: Vande Mataram.

>

> The image of our land as Mother – she who is shasya and shyamala,

> she whose touch cools like the wind blowing from the Malayachala

> mountains, and she who fills the earth with countless bounties –

is

> what Bankim Babu had evoked in the song that he had set in the

heart

> of his celebrated work, Anandmath. It was an ideal that he was

> creating, something for everyone to recall and to revere. To be

> sure, there was conflict, or impending conflict, in the air, but

for

> it to endure, the image had to be quiet, almost inwardly turned.

> Abanindranath clearly sensed this: polemics in any case was not

his

> chosen ground.

>

> Different things were happening, or were to happen soon

afterwards,

> however, at the popular level as far as the image of the land as

> Mother in pre-Independence India is concerned. And here one gets

> into a complex, and somewhat strident, area. One enters the world

of

> oleographs and posters and calendars; wit, anger, playfulness,

> innovation, all with an eye to popular appeal, come into play.

>

> Mother India is juxtaposed with popular national figures: sitting

> and conversing with Gandhiji as he plies his spinning wheel inside

a

> jail cell, for instance; lifting everyone – Gandhi, Nehru, Azad,

> Lajpat Rai – in her arms as if to take them out of harm's way;

> Subhas Chandra Bose cutting his head off and offering it to the

> Mother on a platter. In these, art was not the chief concern: the

> message was. The visuals are engaging in their own manner, and

found

> their way into homes on a scale that was undreamt of before.

Bharat

> Mata or Mother India – to be carefully distinguished from

Mehboob's

> hugely popular film of the same name – had become a household

> expression.

>

> This is not the place perhaps to go into what has happened to

images

> of Mother India after she became free. For politics, in particular

> sectarian politics, soon took over, and the words and the image

were

> quickly hijacked. Aggressive and self-assured now, instead of the

> suffering figure that she once was, Mother India continues to peer

> at you from posters and calendars everywhere.

>

> But, with her form routinely fitted into a cartographic framework,

> and with the head of a massive lion peering from behind her, she

has

> become a different person. For she seems to shed no grace, touches

> no real chords. Perhaps she is back in chains again, this time

> placed upon her feet by self-serving interests for whom narrow

> politics, not nationalism, is the real concern.

>

> SOURCE: The Tribute, Chandigarh, India. Spectrum (Sunday). ART AND

> SOUL. B.N. Goswamy on the different ways the image of `Mother

India'

> has been presented by artists.

> URL: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050814/spectrum/art.htm