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Concept
Bharat Mata
Summary
Bhārat Mātā (Mother India in English) is a national personification of India (Bharat) as a mother goddess. In the visual arts she 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.
Although the mother and motherland were sometimes ranked higher than heaven in ancient Sanskrit literature, the idea of the mother goddess, Bharat Mata, dates to the late 19th century. She appeared first 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 and is displayed in the Victoria Memorial Museum in Kolkata. Secular representations of India also came to accompany her. 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 Benares (now Varanasi) in 1936. The temple has a large relief map of India sculpted in marble on its floor but lacks 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.
Official source
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