Bharat Mata
Bharat Mata (Bhārat Mātā, Mother India in English) is a national personification of India (Bharat) as a mother goddess. Bharat Mata is commonly depicted dressed in a red or saffron-coloured sari and holding a national flag; she sometimes stands on a lotus and is accompanied by a lion.
| Bharat Mata | |
|---|---|
National personification of India | |
Bharat Mata by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951). | |
| Other names | Mother India |
| Affiliation | Bhudevi, Hindu goddesses Durga and Kali |
| Animals | Lion |
| Symbols | Red or saffron-colored sari, national flag, lotus, lion |
| Temples | Few temples in India, first inaugurated in Varanasi in 1936 by Mahatma Gandhi |
The word Bharat Mata dates to late 19th century Bengal in modern literature. She reached a wide audience in the popular Bengali language-novel Anandamath (1882) in a form inseparable from the Hindu goddesses Durga and Kali. After the controversial division of Bengal province in 1905, she was given wider notice during the boycott of British-made goods organized by Sir Surendranath Bannerjee. In numerous protest meetings, she appeared in the rallying cry Vande Mataram (I bow to the mother).
Bharat Mata was painted as a four-armed goddess by Abanindranath Tagore in 1904 in the style associated with the Bengal School of Art but can be largely attributed to Hinduism pauranik vedic descriptions of carioys Goddess power which are manifestations of one supreme goddess and this painting is displayed in the Victoria Memorial Museum in Kolkata. By the late-19th century, maps of India produced by the British Raj, and based on the Great Trigonometrical Survey, had become widely available. With the background of a map, Bharat Mata appeared on the cover of the poet Subramania Bharati's Tamil language-magazine Vijaya in 1909. In the decades following, she appeared throughout India in popular art—in magazines, posters, and calendars—becoming a symbol of Indian nationalism.
There are a handful of Bharat Mata temples in India. The first such was inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi in Varanasi in 1936. The temple has a large relief map of India sculpted in marble on its floor but originally lacked a murti or cult image statue. A wall displays a poem written for the inauguration by the nationalist Hindi language-poet Maithili Sharan Gupt and proclaiming the temple to be open to all castes and religions. Most visitors to the temple are foreign tourists. Indian Muslims have opposed chanting her name because human forms cannot be deified in Islam.