A history of the evolving idea of India in the 20th century, as seen through visual representations of the goddess Mother India.

Making the case for a new kind of visual history, The Goddess and the Nation charts the pictorial life and career of Bharat Mata, “Mother India,” the Indian nation imagined as mother/goddess, embodiment of national territory, and unifying symbol for the country’s diverse communities. Soon after Mother India’s emergence in the late nineteenth century, artists, both famous and amateur, began to picture her in various media, incorporating the map of India into her visual persona. The images they produced enabled patriotic men and women in a heterogeneous population to collectively visualize India, affectively identify with it, and even become willing to surrender their lives for it. Filled with illustrations, including 100 in color, The Goddess and the Nation draws on visual studies, gender studies, and the history of cartography to offer a rigorous analysis of Mother India’s appearance in painting, print, poster art, and pictures from the late nineteenth century to the present.

By exploring the mutual entanglement of the scientifically mapped image of India and a (Hindu) mother/goddess, Sumathi Ramaswamy reveals Mother India as a figure who relies on the British colonial mapped image of her dominion to distinguish her from the other goddesses of India, and to guarantee her novel status as embodiment, sign, and symbol of national territory. Providing an exemplary critique of ideologies of gender and the science of cartography, Ramaswamy demonstrates that images do not merely reflect history; they actively make it. In The Goddess and the Nation, she teaches us about pictorial ways of learning the form of the nation, of how to live with it—and ultimately to die for it.

"“The Goddess and the Nation is a masterpiece – panoramic and yet deep in content. . . . Going far beyond delivering only a formalistic catalogue
of this icon, Ramaswamy . . . presents challenging and thought-provoking discussions for scholars and students within and outside the realm of South Asia Studies.”" - Social Anthropology

"“The Goddess And The Nation is a well-documented pictorial historiography of the paradoxical emergence of the Mother Goddess, Bharat Mata, concurrently with the modern Indian nation state – it is a treasure-trove of images and arguments that will inspire artists and political commentators alike.”" - Art India

"“Sumptuously illustrated. . . . This fascinating case study successfully synthesizes two important themes in the critical history of Indian nationalism: the relationship between religious and secular conceptions of power, and the appropriation of elite cartographical projects by popular groups. Ramaswamy shows that images are not mere re?ections of history but its active agents.”" - American Historical Review

"“Ramaswamy provides a lively pictorial history of Bharat Mata (Mother India), that ubiquitous figure of Indian nationalist culture. Ramaswamy has compiled a rich archive of over 150 imagistic representations of Bharat Mata that spans the late 19th century to the present.”" - American Anthropologist

"“Sumathi Ramaswamy skillfully draws on visual studies, gender studies and the history of cartography to demonstrate that images do not merely reflect history; they actively make it.”" - India West

"“This is an engrossing, meticulously researched, beautifully presented book, whose scholarly reach transcends South Asian historiography to embrace cartography, feminist studies, nationalist and colonial studies, and politico-religious iconography. The Goddess and the Nation contributes a fresh perspective to discussions of imagined political and religious communities, to feminist discourse on gendered identities, to the study of Indian ‘bazaar’ images, to religious studies, and to visual studies.”" - Journal of Asian Studies