Bharat, Mata and a crisis of identity

Bharat Mata was born during the independence movement, evoking a goddess held captive by the British

There are two stories that lay claim to the origin of Bharat. One, referred to by Swami Vivekananda during his lecture tour to the United States, is from the Vishnu Purana. Vivekanand's Bharat was the son of King Rishabh, descendent of Swayambhuva Manu, and was known for his ability to detach himself from worldly pleasures. When he grew old, he set his son on the throne and left to spend his last days in the jungle.

In the forest, one day, a pregnant deer was drinking from a stream when the roar of a lion so startled her that she leapt up in fright, jumped right across to the other shore and died. Mid-flight, she delivered and the king-turned-sage rushed forward to pluck the fawn out of the air. He took it home and nursed it like a child, developing a deep attachment to the animal, thus breaking his own code of monkish detachment. The king was reborn as a deer, but gifted with complete memory of his previous life. That life over, he was born as the youngest child of a rich Brahmin.

Once again, he kept attachments at bay. He refused to speak even, his brothers thought him a fool and treated him poorly; their wives treated him even worse. One day, after a particularly cruel session at home, he sat in the shade of a banyan tree when a king came by on his palanquin. His men, tiring of their burden, quickly appropriated his shoulders. Unhappy with the pace and balance of his carriers, the king insulted Bharat. At that point, the king-deer-palanquin-bearer finally broke his silence to deliver a deeply philosophical lecture on the nature of kingly souls. A chastised king sought his blessings, which Bharat gave and disappeared forever.

There is another Bharat; one with whom many of us are familiar. He is the son of Shakuntala and Dushyant - a young boy who played with lions and grew up to be an invincible conqueror. In the Mahabharata, in Kalidasa's versions and in modern-day Amar Chitra Kathas, it is this king who gave the nation its name.

Bharat Mata was born during the independence movement, a recent addition to the pantheon. Now, the nation had become a bejewelled mother goddess with a lion by her side. In a typically Indian way, an old myth was fused with a modern metaphor. The mother/devi iconography came from Prithvi (earth), the goddess of bounty who served King Prithu, the first sovereign. Prithvi, the story goes, fled the kingdom. When the king gave chase, she gave in, agreeing to follow his command. Bharat Mata, for the nationalist movement, was a goddess held captive by the British. Her people had to reclaim her, like Prithu had done, but more Ram-like, by defeating the demon that abducted her.

But this is the stuff of catchy sloganeering and opportunism. There is another Bharat imagined in its ancient stories. Travel anywhere in India and it is easy to find a cave where the Pandavas rested, a rock that Ram touched, a stream beside which Sita sat and a hut in which a pir baba stayed. In the country's collective imagination, physical geography seamlessly melds into an imaginary one, sewn together with strands from multiple myths, folklore and songs. Kashi, for example, is not the only city that bestows spiritual liberation. With Ayodhya, Mathura, Haridwar, Kanchi, Ujjain and Dwarka, it forms a seven-stringed necklace of holy cities that are also known as mokshadayakas. Also, there are many Kashis. There is a gupt Kashi in the hills and one in the south too. Diana Eck (India: A Sacred Geography, 2012) says this landscape "not only connects places to the lore of gods, heroes and saints, but it connects places to one another through local, regional and trans-regional practices of pilgrimage." This is the glue that courses through the veins of the country, giving it its famed unity in diversity.