In The Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru recounts an exchange from his travels:
Sometimes as I reached a gathering, a great roar of welcome would greet me: Bharat Mata ki Jai—Victory to Mother India. I would ask them unexpectedly what they meant by that cry, who was this Bharat Mata, Mother India, whose victory they wanted? My question would amuse them and surprise them, and then, not knowing exactly what to answer, they would look at each other and at me. I persisted in my questioning. At last a vigorous Jat, wedded to the soil from immemorial generations, would say that it was the dharti, the good earth of India, that they meant. What earth? Their particular village patch, or all the patches in the district or province, or in the whole of India? And so question and answer went on, till they would ask me impatiently to tell them all about it. I would endeavour to do so and explain that India was all this that they had thought, but it was much more. The mountains and the rivers of India, and the forests and the broad fields, which gave us food, were all dear to us, but what counted ultimately were the people of India, people like them and me, who were spread out all over this vast land. Bharat Mata, Mother India, was essentially these millions of people, and victory to her meant victory to these people. You are parts of this Bharat Mata, I told them, you are in a manner yourselves Bharat Mata, and as this idea slowly soaked into their brains, their eyes would light up as if they had made a great discovery.
It is a passage worth holding close in our times.
For over three and a half decades now, since the late 1980s and the fevered years of the Ram Mandir movement, the idea of Bharat Mata has been recast, hollowed out of Nehru’s human core and replaced with a grand, hazy silhouette against which all else must bow. We are told she is greater than every grievance, every discomfort, every question. Bharat Mata is greater than “minority appeasement”. Greater than petrol prices. Greater than unemployment. Greater than corruption. Greater than the cost of food or the decay of schools or the collapse of hospitals. Greater than falling bridges and potholed roads. Greater than the very arms that make up our government. Greater than Lady Justice. Greater than freedom of the press. Greater than fair play and even-handedness in the application of law. Greater than, and above all of it.
Indeed, Bharat Mata is greater than equality, affirmative action, even dignity and justice. In fact, within the Preamble to the Constitution that we adopted in the following years, the only word that matters to her is ‘Unity’, and everything else is subservient to it. Bharat Mata expects and demands sacrifice, discomfort, pain, and suffering. And it is our duty to make this offering at her altar. At any cost. For she is divine. And therefore, more important than either of us. She is worthy of dying for, and by corollary, killing for. She is supreme and worthy of worship and reverence.
Indeed, Bharat Mata is greater than equality, affirmative action, even dignity and justice. In fact, within the Preamble to the Constitution that we adopted in the following years, the only word that matters to her is ‘Unity’, and everything else is subservient to it. Bharat Mata expects and demands sacrifice, discomfort, pain, and suffering. And it is our duty to make this offering at her altar. At any cost. For she is divine.
In this telling, Bharat Mata becomes an idol set apart from and high above her own people. An abstracted emblem to which the citizen must sacrifice without hesitation. The soldier fights for her. The voter suffers for her. The dissenter is shamed in her name. The policies that hurt the living, breathing people of India are justified because they are proclaimed to be in her service.
But Nehru’s Bharat Mata was not this. She was not a flag fluttering alone on a hilltop, not a deity presiding above a subdued populace. She was us. She was the farmer bent over a field, the teacher in a one-room school, the factory worker, the street vendor, the mother in a crowded clinic, the child dreaming of tomorrow. Victory to Bharat Mata meant victory to them. Well-fed, well-educated, free from fear, able to speak, able to live with dignity.
Mahatma Gandhi’s talisman makes this even clearer:
Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him… Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? … Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.
Every policy we frame, every decision we take, every action we defend must pass this test. If it leaves the poorest, the weakest, the most oppressed of us worse off, it cannot be in service of Bharat Mata, for they are Bharat Mata.
To harm them is to wound her. To lift them is to raise her high.
It is time we reclaimed the phrase. Time we remembered that the mountains and rivers may be eternal, but it is the human beings who give them meaning. Bharat Mata is not apart from us. She is not above us. She is us. And she will only stand tall when the least among us can stand tall too.
Happy Independence Day. Bharat Mata Ki Jai.
