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Icon-ising national identity: France andIndia in comparative perspectiveSubrata K. Mitraa & Lion Königb

a Department of Political Science, South Asia Institute, ImNeuenheimer Feld 330 69120, Heidelberg, Germanyb Cluster of Excellence: ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’,Heidelberg University, Vossstraße 2, Building 4400, 69115,Heidelberg, GermanyPublished online: 02 Sep 2013.

To cite this article: Subrata K. Mitra & Lion König (2013) Icon-ising national identity:France and India in comparative perspective, National Identities, 15:4, 357-377, DOI:10.1080/14608944.2013.829430

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2013.829430

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Icon-ising national identity: France and India in comparative perspective

Subrata K. Mitraa* and Lion Konigb*

aDepartment of Political Science, South Asia Institute, Im Neuenheimer Feld 330 69120,Heidelberg, Germany; bCluster of Excellence: ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’, Heidelberg

University, Vossstraße 2, Building 4400, 69115, Heidelberg, Germany

The article embeds the arguments of cultural theory and art history in a politicalscience framework, in order to explain the construction of national identities. Incomparing the French national allegory Marianne and her Indian counterpartBharat Mata, the authors set out to trace the conceptual development of theicons, the psycho-history underlying their ongoing formative processes and theirstrategic function as signifiers that reinforce national identity. The conceptualprism of icon-ising, as one learns from this comparative analysis is what makesthe study of processes of cultural negotiation, and an exploration of their impacton identity-formation possible.

Keywords: political iconography; nation-state; interdisciplinarity; comparison;France; India

It is curious how one cannot resist the tendency to give an anthropomorphic form to acountry.

(Nehru, 1936 [2001], p. 431; cited in Neumayer & Schelberger, 2008, p. 47)

The puzzle

Icons, like Marianne in France and Bharat Mata in India, are simplifying

mechanisms that capture what ardent nationalists would like their nations to

embody ideally. These images, in consequence, visualise salient functions of the

nation and the state � namely, to nurture and to discipline. As such, ‘icon-ising’ � the

act of transforming an idea to an image that the nation as an imagined community

can identify with � is an integral part of nation-building. We show in this article how

Marianne and Bharat Mata, in their various manifestations cater to both needs. For

the originators, producers and ‘consumers’ of these icons, they give a strategic unity

and coherence to the idea which underpins them. Their functionality arises from the

fact that the underlying idea is far more complex than its iconic representation,

meant essentially for efficient communication to a mass audience, as imagined by

icon-makers who vary between artists and statesmen to rabble-rousers with fire in the

belly, and placardists, with a fine eye for smart money.We explore this general theme with two analytic narratives on the making and the

differential evolution of the French national icon Marianne and its Indian counter-

part Bharat Mata. We ask if, as national icons, both Marianne and Bharat Mata

respond to the same essential functions, then why are the evolutionary paths their

*Email: mitra@uni-heidelberg.de; koenig@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de

National Identities, 2013

Vol. 15, No. 4, 357�377, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2013.829430

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structures have taken so different? Why has Marianne remained a firm fixture in the

public sphere as stamps, coins and memorialised in the city halls, whereas Bharat

Mata is mostly present in the contested space of partisan politics? If both France and

India � La France and Bharat Mata � like most other nations, are given to the

mother cult, then why do these national icons have such contrasting chronologies?

The creators of national icons, in their solicitude to generate legitimacy and

power, tap into both the sacred and representational dimensions of the political

community. National patterns, reflecting different historical trajectories, vary. Post-

revolutionary France adopted Marianne � an image with pre-revolutionary origins �as a ‘secular saint’ to be revered by the masses with the aim of instilling the new

Republican-secular spirit in the citoyens. The Republican leaders were thus able to

draw on the Catholic fervour and the familiarity with the visualisation of the

abstract. India, on the other hand, had a mother figure with wide cross-sectional

appeal at the forefront of the national struggle for independence. Originating in the

cult of the mother goddess, Bharat Mata has become widely acceptable in a diverse

religious environment, but after independence, the icon dropped out of the

mainstream and continues to linger in the margins of politics, adopted as the token

of Hindu nationalism, only to be resuscitated and brought back temporarily to the

national mainstream at the time of crisis. The two narratives we analyse pay special

attention to the grey area that surrounds the ideal type versions of the icons �Marianne as supra-political and Bharat Mata as partisan � for both are part of

the repertoire of cultural politics.

Why nations and states need icons

Political iconography, the study of the creation and deployment of images as political

tools, is a relatively new field at the interface of social sciences, art and cultural

theory. It was Martin Heidegger who claimed that ‘the fundamental event of the

modern age is the conquest of the world as picture’1 and in 2001, Sumathi

Ramaswamy (2008, p. vii) announced a ‘visual turn’ in modern Indian studies. Now,

at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, it is widely believed

that patriotic art � as an integral part of nation-building � has an important

argument to make, an argument which may not necessarily repeat the one of the

‘official verbal archive’ (Ramaswamy, 2008, p. vii). Icons now play a crucial role in

understanding how the abstract nation-state comes to have the presence and power

to command citizens’ lives and their heroic deaths. A national icon, as a focus of

popular aspiration and identification, serves to enhance the legitimacy of the state.

For the makers of modern states, national icons are an effective instrument of mass

mobilisation. Not surprisingly, in the era of heightened globalisation, icon-isation, as

one can see from the presence of national symbols in supra-national set-ups (e.g. the

French Marianne and the German Eagle on Euro coins), continues to play a

significant role. State and icon enter into a symbiosis, mutually influencing one

another. With citizens increasingly feeling uneasy in a world that is in flux, with the

nation-state perceived as disintegrating, the national icon, thought to represent a

cultural essence, can act as a stabiliser. The state, on the other hand, finds in the

national icon a surface on which to project a vision of victorious glory which, more

often than not, does not bear any resemblance to reality.2

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Of course, icons only ‘work’ if they are well-chosen; the icon-maker is sometimes

well-served in re-using past icons, or material susceptible to icon-isation. Not

surprisingly then, not all icons survive and mutate over the years. Regime change and

the ensuing political turmoil often provide the right context for icon-isation. In a

revolutionary context, as we shall see below in the case of France, icons are often

chosen by the people and then strategically adopted by politicians. This does not

preclude elite chicanery where the images produced above are passed on to the layers

below as if they were the genuine vernacular item; the fate of the swastika and the

sickle and hammer along with other heroic elements of socialist realism in post-

communist Russia testify to the all-too-frequent fact of fakery when it comes to icon-

isation as a technique for the creation of a national identity.3

Different as they may be, what the icons of every socio-political culture have in

common is that they serve as crucial parts of a ‘connective structure’ which bridges

and unites in two dimensions � of time and social space � which are folded into one

in the case of successful icon-isation. This connective structure ties a person to their

fellow citizens by functioning as a ‘symbolic world of meaning’4 which creates a

common space of experience, expectation and action. Furthermore, it also ties the

past to the present by shaping decisive experiences and memories and keeping them

alive. It encloses � in a continuously developing present � images and stories of

bygone times and thereby brings about memory of the long past and hope for the

future (Assmann, 2007, p. 16). National icons, we argue, create in a sense an idealised

past as well as a strong present and can also, if employed correctly, act as motors for

the future assertion and evolution of national identity.

Marianne*a continuing evolution

France provides a very well-researched case when it comes to the national icon.

Acquiring the status of the national icon in the wake of the revolution of 1789,

Marianne replaced the image of the monarch on the new seal of the Republic on 25

September 17925 (see Figure 1). Since then, the French nation has been visualised in

numerous ways, with leading artists like Eugene Delacroix and Honore Daumier

taking on the subject and contributing to the popularity and fame of the image.

Delacroix’s painting La Liberte Guidant Le Peuple (Figure 2) is, even though it really

is an allegorical depiction of liberty, often referred to as the most famous image of

Marianne, as it was the first work of art that freed the allegory from her original

social indifference, placed it within a revolutionary tradition and thereby gave it a

socio-political dimension (Bruchhausen, 1999, p. 118). Daumier’s La Republique, on

the other hand, with muscular arms and androgynous build, suckling two children

on her breasts and having a third child kneeling in front of her, is the depiction of a

republic that nourishes and instructs its citizens (Figure 3). This painting has, indeed,

been used as an example of the maternal Marianne, as opposed to the forceful,

martial type by Delacroix (Jurt, 2005, p. 122).6 Daumier’s painting thus adds a third

variant, a liberal-civic Marianne to the two then already existing ones, the popular-

revolutionary and the official deesse, the goddess, a conceptualisation that resulted

from a 1793 suggestion of the city council of Paris to use Marianne as a tool in the

battle against Catholicism and as a worldly counterweight to Godmother Mary

(Bruchhausen, 1999, p. 128).7

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Figure 1. The Seal of the French First Republic (1792�1804).

Source: Webster (1920).

Figure 2. Eugene Delacroix: La Liberte Guidant Le Peuple (1831).

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But Marianne is not only found in the form of paintings, she is virtually

omnipresent: the image is there on stamps, coins and as busts in official buildings8

and her silhouette forms the central part of the official government logo. This ‘new

identifier’ created by the French Government was designed to appear on all materials

emanating from the government, which includes brochures, publications, publicity

campaigns, letter headings and business cards. The logo is also used throughout the

different administrative levels, starting with the various ministries, the Prefectures

and Departements. While this was done to unify government public relations, the

logo was also designed ‘to give a more accessible image to a State currently seen as

abstract, remote and archaic [. . .]. The logo chosen, ‘‘federating and mobilising,

offers security and optimism, not forgetting patriotic pride’’’.9

The accessibility of the state through the national icon is further facilitated by the

ability of French policy-makers to take into account changed societal structures: with

each new presidency comes a new image for the French Marianne stamp, with her

portrait having been modelled after French celebrities like Brigitte Bardot, Catherine

Deneuve and even Laetita Casta, the actress with Corsican roots. However, in 2002,

in an unprecedented cultural play on ethnicity, status and possibly faith, a new

Marianne came to life; one that did not have the features of a famous (white) French

Figure 3. Honore Daumier: La Republique (1848).

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woman, but those of an anonymous ‘beurette’, a female of North-African descent, to

symbolise a modern, plural and diverse France with a place in it for the more than

five million French citizens of Muslim faith.

However, the Marianne imagery has been used not only to unite but also to

divide: when France became increasingly diverse in terms of race and religion,

Marianne became the defender of the occidental faith. On 26 October 1985, the

magazine Le Figaro ran its cover page with a bust of a veiled Marianne, asking the

question: ‘Will we still be French in thirty years?’, (see Figure 4) and featured a

dossier on immigration which predicted that, by 2015, France would be ‘submerged

by an alien Arab Muslim population and culture’ (Shields, 2007, p. 218). Those

targeted by the campaign have, for their part, made attempts at re-republicanising

the image and adjusting it to the realities of twenty-first century urban France: the

NGO Ni Putes Ni Soumises (NPNS)10 organised a campaign to ethnicise the national

symbol of France. Part of it was an exhibition with the title ‘Mariannes

d’aujourd’hui: Hommage des femmes des cites a la Republique’, which was a

collection of thirteen oversized colour photographs of young women suspended

across the facade of the Assemblee Nationale. Ten of these women were of Arab or

Sub-Saharan ethnic origin, and all of them wore variations of the Phrygian cap, an

icon of the French Republic also worn by Marianne on the 1792 seal (see Figure 1).

The photographs were accompanied by short texts in which each woman explains

what Marianne � as figurehead of the Republic and icon of French womanhood �means to her. Two key features emerge from these texts: First, Marianne is the

embodiment of republican values, and second, she is seen to possess the distinctly

Figure 4. Marianne on the cover of the French magazine Le Figaro (1985).

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‘feminine’ virtues of peace, tenderness and maternity, while displaying revulsion for

power (Kemp, 2009, p. 25).

Both the Le Figaro cover story and the exhibition show that the Marianne icon

has since its inception undergone various instrumentalisations by different political

camps. Broadly inclusive today, it, nevertheless, comes in shades of grey, with secularimages pre-dominating the field, but, nevertheless, with a smattering of radically

nationalist images with a white, ethnic undertone. Drawing on this, the French

Extreme Right, notably the Front National, has politicised Marianne and employed

the icon for partisan political purposes (see Figure 5).11

The colonial and the post-colonial Bharat Mata

The Indian case differs from its French counterpart in various ways. The French

Revolution of 1789, which gave Marianne its distinct shape, was led by the dissident

Parisian bourgeoisie, elements of the aristocracy and the mob against the church and

the king. It spread from Paris to the provinces and eventually, led the French emblem

beyond the frontiers of France, proclaiming the 1789 ‘Declaration of the Rights ofMan and of the Citizen’ as the symbol of a new age. The Indian struggle for

independence from colonial rule drew on the religiosity of the masses, first in the

worship of Ganesh and Kali as figures of power and collective identity, and eventually,

under Gandhi’s leadership, in the identification of the anti-colonial movement with

Figure 5. Marianne in the Election Campaign of the Front National (2009).

Source: http://www.storage.canalblog.com/57/37/129634/36145885.jpg (last accessed: 2 July

2013).

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satyagraha � a personal quest for truth and purity of purpose. The revolutionary mobs

in France held religion and politics apart; in India, their close links were never denied.

The French drew on revolutionary terror as the ultimate argument of politics; Indians

were told to abjure violence, even at the risk of delaying the coming of independence.12

In the literature by Indian thinkers and politicians, India is referred to as a

nurturing mother as one can see in the writings of Jawaharlal Nehru (1946, pp. 58�61) and V.D. Savarkar (1949, p. 109). However, it is disputed when the concept of

presenting India as a goddess appeared for the first time (Neumayer & Schelberger,

2008, p. 37).13 For some, the origin of the icon lies in a related figure, Banga Mata,

Mother Bengal. In 1905, the Province of Bengal was painted by Abanindranath

Tagore as the Goddess Banga Mata to symbolise the unity of the country against the

dissection.14 Although the development cannot be traced in exact detail, it can be

said that when Bengal was divided, the painted deity ‘took on the mantle of Bharat

Mata’, which stood for the self-sufficiency of the Indian nation in the making

(Neumayer & Schelberger, 2008, p. 38).

However, ‘the cult of the mother goddess in India existed before the introduction

of the Western model of the modern nation-state and the elaboration of an

infrastructure for visual mass media around 1900’ (Brosius, 2005, p. 242). Then, with

the rise of nationalism and the spread of the popular media around 1900, mother

goddesses and warrior-saints were reinterpreted and married to each other in a

dynamic narrative of national sovereignty (Brosius, 2005, p. 242). Because of this

‘career’, it is claimed that the images would later acquire ‘a new relevance for post-

colonial Hindu nationalism’ (Brosius, 2005, p. 242). Today, we are witnessing a re-use

of Bharat Mata by the Hindutva15 movement as a powerfully evocative image,

especially in her association with Hindu goddesses like Kali or Durga (Brosius, 2005,

p. 243).

Taking up the term ‘scapes’ introduced into the field of media studies by Arjun

Appadurai,16 it was Sumathi Ramaswamy who spoke of ‘bodyscapes’, of persona-

lised maps and a replacement of maps by icons and human bodies in the shape of the

allegory. In almost all bodyscapes, Bharat Mata’s apparel, and especially her sari,

plays a crucial role in producing and claiming national space. The sari invariably

extends to cover pre-partition India � Akhand Bharat, the undivided and indivisible

India � even in those ‘bodyscapes’ produced after 1947, and certainly in Hindu

nationalist iconography (see Figure 6).17 Bharat Mata covers the entire territory, her

feet stand firmly on the southern tip of the subcontinent and her body reaches up to

Kashmir and beyond, thus blurring the geopolitical boundaries. Such is the power of

this ‘bodyscape’ that an anonymous interviewee stated that ‘India giving away

Kashmir would be equal to beheading Bharat Mata’.

In post-independence times, however, it was not only the Hindu political right

that hijacked the image and gave it a distinctive martial tone. In the wake of the

drastic events the new republic had to face, Bharat Mata was visualised, for example

by Shobha Singh (1901�1986), known, not least for his paintings of national heroes.

In a painting by Singh dating from around 1947, Mother India is clad in the Indian

tricolour, with a trident in her hand and a halo around her head, thus invoking the

idea of holiness in the spectator and establishing a clear connection with Hinduism,

while the roaring and wounded lion by her side is kicking the fairly large British

crown into an abyss (see Figure 7). The darkness of imperial rule has to give way to

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the new republican dawn, which is underlined by two central sources of light, Bharat

Mata’s halo and the fire burning on top of the Ashoka Pillar.

An equally political message is conveyed through a painting by K.K. Rajaram,

dating from around 1962, the year of the Indo-China War. The centre of the picture

is occupied by the Ashoka Pillar and Bharat Mata, who, with the Indian flag in her

left hand and a sword in her right, is leading four roaring lions and Indian foot

soldiers against the Chinese dragon crawling in over the Himalayan border (see

Figure 8). Bharat Mata, in addition to defending the nation as a whole, here more

particularly defends India’s wealth, as symbolised by the bank notes, gold and silver

coins and the jewellery in the bottom left corner, which might allude to the fact that

China occupied large tracts of land in Ladakh after the war. The revival of Bharat

Mata in this martial context indicates the official and remote nature of the Ashoka

Pillar, as compared to the intimate character of the mother figure, which is accessible

to the citizens at large. In a take on Rabindranath Tagore (1919) who has his hero

Sandip say that ‘no one can give up his life for a map’,18 it seems that no one is

Figure 6. Bharat Mata on a contemporary poster (unknown artist) (Khanna Posters No.

6204).

Source: Private collection.

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willing to give up their lives for a pillar either.19 Anthropomorphising the nation,

while at the same time de-humanising the enemy, is the apparent strategy of the artist

to render the killing of the enemy and the dying for one’s own nation possible. In

Figure 8, the jawan, the Indian infantry soldier, has no Chinese human counterpart

but is ready to fight the monstrous dragon. One of the reasons why the Ashoka Pillar

is insufficient to invoke patriotic sentiment and mobilise a passionate crowd lies in its

static nature. In the image under consideration, this is overcome by four animated

lions that ‘descend from the Ashokan capital’ (Neumayer and Schelberger, 2008,

p. 49) as it were (even though the pillar as such remains intact) and grimly confront

the dragon. Do note that since both Figures 7 and 8 are republican images, the

Ashoka Pillar occupies the centre of the visual but is moved to the background � the

Figure 7. Shobha Singh: Bharat Mata (c. 1947).

Source: Neumayer and Schelberger (2008, p. 45).

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more prominent place in the front is in both cases left to Bharat Mata and the

ferocious lion(s). In both images, the angry predators are set in stark contrast to the

calm and self-controlled Bharat Mata, which again is a visual statement for the

elevated nature of the mother, who even at times of crises is a haven of tranquillity for

a troubled nation.20

Despite these examples of Bharat Mata occupying the all-national stage at times

when the nation is at risk, after 1947, Bharat Mata was predominantly appropriated

by the Hindu right which used the undoubtedly Hindu character of the image for

political ends. Hindu nationalists successfully managed to make the icon part of their

agenda, thus rendering it a ‘symbol of militant Hindu nationalism’ (Johnson, 2009,

p. 55).

A look at the case of Anna Hazare, the best-known contemporary Indian anti-

corruption activist, whose protests gained international recognition, underlines that

a shift has taken place as far as meaning and content of the image are concerned.

Hazare had chanted Bharat Mata Ki Jai (‘Victory to Mother India’) and Vande

Mataram (‘I bow down to thee, O mother’) during public rallies and had actively

used the image of Bharat Mata in his campaign ‘India Against Corruption’ (IAC), to

substantiate its all-India and non-partisan character (see Figure 9).21 However, this

changed when some supporters of Hazare, among them the women activists Kavita

Krishnan and Nandini Ojha, expressed discomfort with displaying the Bharat Mata

image which they identified as a ‘Hindu religious symbol’ and an incarnation of

Figure 8. K.K. Rajaram: Untitled (c. 1962).

Source: Neumayer and Schelberger (2008, p. 148).

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Goddess Durga. On 14 April 2011, the Indian newspaper Deccan Herald reported

that Hazare had decided to change the symbol of his public rallies:

the tricolour will replace the Bharat Mata image that was in the background set-up ofthe stage erected at Jantar Mantar22 on which Hazare was lying on a fast-unto-death forthe Jan Lokpal Bill. The background set-up had an image of Bharat Mata encircled bythe map of India. Now the map will encircle Tiranga [the Indian national flag].

However, Anna Hazare’s initial intention to use the Bharat Mata image was ‘to

give a patriotic colour to the anti-corruption movement’, claiming that the image was

‘in no way associated with any communal agenda’.23 An IAC activist also

emphasised that ‘the image of Bharat Mata does not belong to RSS,24 anyone can

use it. [. . .] And the man who made the Bharat Mata backdrop was a Muslim’.25

In defence of Hazare, it has to be noted here that the flag that Hazare’s Bharat

Mata holds is the Indian national flag, which is not at all common. In most cases,

Bharat Mata holds either the orange flag of the Hindu nationalists, or an otherwise

religiously-coded flag like the one showing the syllable ‘Om’ (see Figure 6).

This case reveals a significant difference between Marianne and Bharat Mata: the

institutionalisation of Marianne has given the icon its resilience and has enabled it to

resist hijacking from the political right. Even when Marianne is employed in a right-

wing discourse, the icon can, without losing its legitimacy and popular support,

continue to represent a republican, democratic France. Bharat Mata on the other

hand, once it has been smutted by the right, the icon, which has never been

institutionalised � after 1947 less so than before � has not proven to be strong

enough to be able to act as the figurehead of democratic politics.

The basic question, therefore, is whether Bharat Mata, who is Hindu in origin

and appearance, can, nonetheless, act as a supra-religious and hence inclusive icon.

Figure 9. Bharat Mata in Anna Hazare’s campaign (c. 2011).

Source: http://www.im.rediff.com/news/2011/dec/09pic3.jpg (last accessed: 2 July 2013).

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The greatest obstacle to the unifying power of Bharat Mata remains its religious

outlook, which, like the early nationalist pictures, for example the ‘Holy Cow

prints’26 sometimes excluded or even antagonised Indian non-Hindu (mostly

Muslim) communities (cf. Neumayer & Schelberger, 2008, p. 38). Linked to this is

also the controversy over the national anthem of India: although the song Vande

Mataram written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838�1894) has the status of

a ‘national song’, Jana Gana Mana by Rabindranath Tagore (1861�1941) has been

the national anthem of India since 1950. Although Vande Mataram had a unifying

effect during the freedom struggle, it was rejected as the national anthem on the

grounds that non-Hindu communities felt offended by its personification of the

Indian nation as the Hindu Goddess Durga.27

In this context, Figure 10 provides an interesting case of a strongly Hinduised yet

inclusive Bharat Mata. Ramaswamy (2010) describes this ten-armed goddess as an

all-purpose deity whose capacities are apparent from the range of objects she holds28

(cf. Ramaswamy, 2010, p. 62). The lion on which Bharat Mata rides is the vahana29 of

Figure 10. Bharat Mata as inclusive Hindu goddess (untitled print).

Source: http://www.hinduexistence.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/bharat-mata.jpg (last accessed:

2 July 2013).

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Durga, ‘the warrior goddess whom Mother India most closely mimics in attributes,

powers and visual persona’ (Ramaswamy, 2010, p. 63). Bharat Mata’s halo in the

picture ‘casts a glow on the spectral outline of the contested territory of Kashmir’

(Ramaswamy, 2010, p. 62), thus sending the message of the unifying power of theicon even to India’s only Muslim majority state. Beyond what we learn from

Ramaswamy, one could also comment on the white edifices that line the street

through which Bharat Mata rides. These are clearly houses of religious worship and

that too, of the major religions on the Indian subcontinent: there is a Christian

church, next to which stands a mosque, apparent from its minaret. On the other side,

what could either be a Hindu temple or a Gurdwara, a Sikh house of worship, is

visible. Again, the elements in the image are used to promote the idea of religious

harmony under the auspices of a Hindu religious icon. Figure 10 thus is an exampleof an inclusive Hinduism, one which represents an India that combines the sacred

image with a broad political and liberal domain, coterminous with India’s political

and sacred geography.30

Similar to the French case where Marianne was not an unrivalled image, Bharat

Mata was challenged in the Tamil-speaking parts of the subcontinent from the 1890s

onwards by another goddess of polity, Tamilttay, Mother Tamil, which was a

personification of the Tamil language personified as a goddess and a mother.

Bodyscapes of Mother Tamil have been circulated through various Tamil nationalistpublications since the mid-1930s and have occasionally been included in Tamil

schoolbooks (Ramaswamy, 2001, p. 108). Interestingly enough, ‘Mother Tamil

cartographically lays claim to the entire subcontinent as she occupies the map of

India, thereby challenging Mother India’s hegemonic presence’31 (Ramaswamy,

2001, pp. 108�109). The question, whether there is such a thing as ‘the real’ Bharat

Mata continues to be open, but the plethora of images embodying different regions,

sentiments and political interpretations of history show that ‘bodyscapes’ and

national allegories serve to enliven an abstract idea and transform the nation into anintensely human place, a home- and motherland.

Beyond India and France: the determinants of icon-isation

Images are closely linked to power because power requires legitimacy, which in turn

must respond to a deeply-seated need. Visualisation captures this, and therefore, if

applied strategically, can serve the purpose of securing power. In that sense, national

icons facilitate the filial attachment of the citizen to national territory, producingsentiments of longing and belonging that a geographical map cannot possibly

generate. Therefore, symbolic politics cannot be considered merely as a phenomenon

of the artistic and literary domain, but as something that is used as an effective

strategy in the struggle for national consciousness and identity as well as in the

political claim to power.

In comparison, it can be said, that the developments of both ‘Marianne’ and

‘Bharat Mata’ were neither linear nor free from controversy. There are more

differentiating factors than uniting ones between the two allegories (see Table 1).While Bharat Mata is often depicted as a deity and has after all emerged from a

religious background of the cults of mother goddesses, Marianne is a strictly secular

image, albeit one that has replaced Godmother the Virgin Mary, and has transferred

some of Mary’s duties to a worldly context. Also, as far as the national reach is

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concerned, the Indian icon is mostly restricted to the north of the country, while her

French counterpart has a nation-wide reach. Yet, the question of whether Marianne

is equally esteemed in parts of the country which like to stress their particular

identity, like Corsica and Brittany, remains open. What can be said, though, is that

Marianne as an established icon of the state, adopted by the bulk of the nation, is

generally accepted, whereas Bharat Mata is not. While a ‘national’ Bharat Mata

Table 1. The social base of national icons: an analytical grid.

France (Marianne) India (Bharat Mata)

Ontology Secular and modern (with traces of

France profondea)

Religious, but sometimes portrayed

as secular and national

Social base Broad social recognition of

Marianne as a national iconbHindu upper castes

Genealogy Well-known French artists

(Delacroix, Daumier)

Vernacular, anonymous placardists

with some exceptions

(Abanindranath Tagore, Shobha

Singh, M.F. Husain)

National reach Wide reach across the emotional

geography of the nation and its

presence overseas (including DOM-

TOMc)

Predominantly North-Indian;

episodically national at times of war

(see the reference to the 1962 Indo-

China war)

Canonisation as

state symbol

Institutionalised in the form of

seals, coins and stamps; obligatory

presence in town halls

No official recognition by the way

of ‘carriers of symbolic meaning’

(W. Speitkamp)

Emotional

geography

Unifying symbol with a dynamic

character; broadening

Remains static; seen as a divisive

ideological symbol in contemporary

Indian politics

Development in

time and space

Precursors of the present-day

Marianne date back to at least the

sixteenth century with subsequent

evolution successively as

revolutionary and Republican

symbol

Only emerged with the nationalist

movement at the end of the

nineteenth century; ceased to be a

public figure after India’s

independence

Cognitive

meaning

Singular Plural

Scholarly

attention

Extensive, thorough research Under-researched; hardly theorised

Historical

significance

Clear status as the icon of the

Revolution; historically accepted as

a visual factor in nation-building

Role of the icon in the struggle for

independence remains sketchy

aLa France profonde, sometimes translated as ‘deep France’ is a phrase denoting the existence of deep andprofoundly ‘French’ aspects of culture.bAccording to an anecdote, in 1797, when seeking a pleasant name for the new Republic, Paul Barras, oneof the members of the Directoire executif, the French Directory, which held executive power in Francefrom 1795 to 1799, during an evening at Jean-Francois Reubell’s, the President of the Directory’s house,asked his hostess’s name. ‘Marie-Anne’, she replied * ‘Perfect’, Barras exclaimed. ‘It is a short and simplename which befits the Republic just as much as yourself, Madame’ (http://www.ambafrance-us.org/spip.php?article619 (last accessed: 2 July 2013).cThe Departements et Territoires d’Outre-Mer, colloquially referred to as ‘DOM-TOM’ are the FrenchOverseas Departments and Territories, encompassing all French-administered territory outside Europe.

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played a role for the independence movement in the 1930s, following independence,

in its solicitude to distance the state from anything evocative of Hindu religious

iconography, the Republic adopted the four lions and the chakra as its symbol on 26

January 1950. The only recourse to the mythological origins of India is given inArticle 1 (1) of the Constitution: ‘India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States’.32

It was thus through benign neglect that Bharat Mata receded to the partisan political

camp. Table 1 along with the observations above can be used to develop a

generalisation: all states iconise national identity � some more, some less and with

varying degrees of success.33

Conclusion

On a general level, it can be said that images are re-used and modified according to

the needs of their times by political and cultural entrepreneurs in a manner that best

suits their strategic needs. Though the levels vary significantly, both Marianne and

Bharat Mata created integration as well as disintegration and anxiety, and, as such,

belong to the space of cultural negotiation where different political groups come to a

conflict in terms of their icons, with the eventual likelihood of the triumphant

selection of one over the others, or their fusion into a composite form. In India, pre-

modern myths of mother goddesses and in the French case, early personifications ofthe nation were re-used and brought to new life as icons of the modern nation. This

was a non-linear process and the icons were � and in the Indian case still are � heavily

contested.

The difference between France and India may, therefore, not be as radical as one

might think because even in France, for the combatively vocal but numerically small

supporters of the Front National, Marianne is not a supra-political image, but a

partisan political figure (see Figure 5). Both in France and in India, the collective

urge to form a republic and a nation found expression in the visual form of an iconicimage that conflated contradictory impulses � of desire for power, possession and

dominance, as well as its sublimation in love of an ideal, and the spirit of noble

sacrifice that accompanies it. A new genre � between the religious and the

representative � eminently amenable to poster art and mass consumption, these

iconic images gave vent to a widely shared sentiment of l’amour de la patrie in France

and deshabhakti in India � a hybrid and a liminal space between the merely material

and the conventionally religious.

In contrast to India, France has been more successful in establishing its nationalicon, giving it an institutional form and policing its use. As we have seen above, the

makers of Marianne � a conglomerate of state, society and market � have

successfully kept in step with changing times, drafting in a North-African model

in an effort to find a unifying symbol for a nation where substantial immigrant

minorities do not identify with the revolutionary myth. The French success also

derives from the fact that it is a much more homogenous nation, which has managed

to institutionalise the allegory by making it omnipresent and thereby keeping it alive,

as it were. Bharat Mata, on the other hand, a figure of nostalgia and a deity, one likemany others of its ilk, evokes little resonance in the hearts of a majority of the Indian

people.

We have shown in this essay how Marianne and Bharat Mata � two iconic figures

with striking similarities, leading their nascent nations into hope and glory, re-using

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local material and memory, and feeding them into local artistic imagination � have,

nevertheless, had such widely different careers. Beginning with her revolutionary

origin, Marianne has gone through myriad reincarnations and has survived

restoration of monarchy, conservative backlashes and the transition to multiculturaldemocracy. It has become, simultaneously, a self-sustaining historical myth and

political presence, adorning stamps, seals, monuments and public buildings. Mother

India, as already mentioned above, has been bypassed by the republic which has

chosen the more ancient � and less political � Ashoka Chakra and the four addorsed

lions as its icon, while Bharat Mata has receded from the public arena into the

shadow land of partisan politics.

That said, icon-isation of national identities remains an issue of great pride and

passion for the ardent nationalist struggling against overwhelming odds. A recentexample are the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the militant separatists

whose symbol of a roaring tiger with two crossed guns, which, created in 1977, in

1990 became the image on the flag of Tamil Eelam, the desired homeland they fought

for. However, icons, as one can gather from the efforts of desperate rulers of inchoate

masses seeking to establish a popular base (such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar

al-Gaddafi), can also constitute survival kits. And, as has been shown in the case of

the reinduction of Bharat Mata into the public arena at the height of the 1962 Indo-

China war, even when at a given point of time they do not fulfil their desired functionand become meaningless shibboleths, iconised national identities do not just

disappear into nothingness; they bide their time in the entrails of collective memory,

re-emerging when the context makes space for it.

Notes

1. This quotation has been cited in Ramaswamy (2003, p. 153).2. Reflecting on the contrast between the vision that the supporters of Bharat Mata would

like her to embody and the reality of the country she stands for, Nehru asks himself:‘‘Does the beautiful lady of our imagination represent the bare bodied and bent workers inthe fields and factories? Or the small group of those who have from ages past crushed themasses and exploited them, imposed cruel customs on them, and made many of them evenuntouchable? We seek to cover truth by the creatures of our imagination and endeavour toescape from reality to a world of dreams’’ (Nehru, 1936 [2001], p. 431; cited in Neumayer& Schelberger, 2008, p. 47).

3. The swastika and the sickle and hammer can, in Steven Heller’s (1992) terms, rightly bereferred to as ‘symbols of the century’. While the swastika was an ancient Indo-Europeansymbol that was used by Nazi ideologues to stress their supposed Arian descent, the sickleand hammer of the Soviet Union, though known in provincial heraldry, first appeared inits form in 1917 and signified the break of the new regime with Tsarist Russia in symbolicterms. The former, therefore, expresses continuity, while the latter stands for rupture and anew beginning. For a thorough discussion on the origin and conceptual development ofthe swastika see, for example, Quinn (1994) and Heller (2000). For the change in meaningof the symbol, see, for example, Weeber (2007). Heller (2008) is a sumptuous overview ofpropaganda art of the totalitarian governments of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the USSRand Mao’s China. By drawing on these cases, Heller shows how already existing symbolswere appropriated to convey a totalitarian message and to act as enforcers of identity.

4. The term is used by Jan Assmann who takes up what Berger and Luckmann have termed‘symbolische Sinnwelt’ (Berger & Luckmann, 2007, quoted in Assmann (2007, p. 16).

5. The seal is described as follows: ‘la France sous les traits d’une femme vetue a l’antique,debout, tenant de la main droite une pique surmontee du bonnet Phrygien ou bonnet de laliberte’ (Agulhon & Bonte, 1992, p. 17; cited in: Jurt, 2005, p. 119).

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6. For a more detailed analysis of the political art of the French Republic with a specificdiscussion of Daumier and Delacroix see Clark (1999).

7. Despite these different ‘Mariannes’ from which the republic could choose according to theoccasion, Marianne had to assert herself against rival images. One of them was the figureof the Greek demigod Hercules, favoured by those who demanded a more radicalinterpretation of the republic. A term which has been used to refer to the phenomenon ofcompeting images is ‘Erinnerungskonkurrenzen’�competition of memories (see Knabel,Rieger, & Wodianka, 2005, p. 12).

8. These are examples of what Speitkamp (1997) has labelled ‘Symboltrager’, carriers ofsymbolic meaning, of which he describes three types: those of the first degree likemonuments, national anthems and flags, which make a direct statement, those of thesecond degree like coins, notes, stamps and street names that demand an own symbolicbuilding up and those of the third type: objects which do not explicitly make a claim forsymbolic meaning but which become a symbol, like in the French case, the Bastille (citedin Jurt, 2005, pp. 115�116).

9. http://www.ambafrance-us.org/spip.php?article619 (Accessed 2 July 2013).10. The name of the association can be translated as ‘Neither Whores, Nor Submissive’ to

stress the aspect of women’s empowerment and to constitute a countermove to the earliermodels for Marianne who in the eyes of their critics contributed to the sexualisation of theicon.

11. Because of the attempt by the French Extreme Right to appropriate Marianne, theSocialist Party has often downplayed the cult around the national icon. During the 1989bicentenary of the French Revolution, President Francois Mitterrand hardly allowed forthe public appearance of Marianne. This was done not only in view of the associations ofthe icon with right-wing politics, but also in order to make the celebrations a consensualevent, recalling more the republic than the revolution.

12. Mahatma Gandhi is credited with having cancelled the national struggle after the ChauriChaura incident in 1922 where the mob set fire to a police station, burning to death 22policemen. Although some, like Jawaharlal Nehru, had reservations about Gandhi’sdecision, the Congress Party formally approved of it (Brown, 1989, p. 167).

13. Chowdhury (1998, p. 98) cites Kiran Chandra Bandhyopadhyay’s Bharat Mata, firstperformed in 1873, as one of the earliest plays to deal with that particular image of Indiaas the ‘mother’.

14. According to other sources, (Bagchi, 1990, p. WS70), the Tagore painting is entitledBharat Mata, and also Neumayer and Scheelberger’s caption text to the image reads:‘‘Bharat Mata in the famous painting of Abanindranath Tagore, who painted this picturein 1905 during the turbulent struggle against the division of Bengal and titled it ‘BangaMata’ or Mother Bengal’’ (Neumayer & Schelberger, 2008, p. 44). The authors would liketo express their gratitude to Dr Douglas Reid for bringing this to their attention.

15. Hindutva, literally ‘Hinduness’ is a collective term to describe phenomena of apoliticisation of Hinduism directed at the exclusivist construction of the Indian nationas Hindu (see also Savarkar, 1949). For the concept of reuse, see Hegewald and Mitra(2012); for its application to the iconographic contexts of France and India, see Mitra andKonig (2012).

16. What Arjun Appadurai referred to as ‘scapes’ are ‘dynamic landscapes’ which he definesas ‘deeply perspectival constructs, inflected by the historical, linguistic, and politicalsituatedness of different sorts of actors’ (Appadurai, 1997, cited in Brosius, 2005, p. 17).

17. McKean (1996), Brosius (1997, 2005, 2007), Ahmed-Ghosh (2003) and Kovacs (2004)provide further valuable insights into the topic of the Hindu nationalist use of the BharatMata imagery. From Ramaswamy (2001), we learn that the visual practice of the‘bodyscape’ which has been followed since the 1920s has facilitated the representation ofBharat Mata as a ‘goddess of territory and polity’.

18. By the time Rabindranath Tagore wrote Ghare Bhaire, The Home and the World, (1915�1916), the practice of imagining India as a female entity had already become a habitamong patriotic Indians.

19. The authors would like to thank the anonymous referee for drawing their attention to thisissue.

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20. There is further visual evidence for Bharat Mata portrayed as a caring mother figure. Pre-as well as post-independence images show her with national figures like Mahatma Gandhi,and Subhash Chandra Bose sitting in her lap. For details see Neumayer and Schelberger(2008, pp. 53�54 and 203).

21. For further information see the website of the Deccan Herald at http://www.deccanherald.com/content/210862/anna-hazare-begins-fast-strong.html (accessed 2 July 2013).

22. ‘Jantar Mantar’ is a public site in New Delhi that serves as a forum for large gatherings,among them the anti-corruption protests.

23. See the website of the Deccan Herald at http://www.deccanherald.com/content/153731/symbol-hazares-movement.html (accessed 2 July 2013).

24. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is a Hindu nationalist organisation.25. See http://www.indiatoday.intoday.in/story/anna-hazare-rss-links-ramlila-maidan/1/148

751.html (accessed 2 July 2013).26. Neumayer and Schelberger (2008, p. 38) describe the ‘Holy Cow prints’ as images that

conflate Mother India and the cow. While some show a cow containing within its body allthe sacred spaces of India, others depict the sun, the moon, and Hindu gods as forming thebody of the wish-fulfilling cow.

27. In 1937, the Indian National Congress (INC) discussed the status of the song ‘VandeMataram’. It was pointed out that while the first two stanzas evoked the beauty of India,later stanzas contain references where the motherland is likened to the Goddess Durga.Hence, the INC decided to adopt only the first two stanzas as the national song.

28. Ramaswamy (2010, p. 60) dates this untitled print by an anonymous artist to the early1980s. In addition to a Hindu trident Bharat Mata, in the visual coding of GoddessDurga, holds ‘a sword and shield in two of her hands. Water flows out of small pots in twoother hands presumably to nourish the outline map of India against which she issilhouetted. The fecundity of the country she embodies is also possibly suggested by thesheaf of grain and sickle that she holds in yet another hand. Additional hands hold a lotus(a symbol of fertility, purity and spiritual exaltation) and a rosary (indicating thebenediction of spiritual grace) as well as a manuscript signifying her status as a goddess oflearning’ (Ramaswamy, 2010, p. 62).

29. Sanskrit for ‘that which carries’. The term is used to refer to the companion animal ormythical entity of a deity.

30. See also Ramaswamy (2010, p. 20) for another example of a religiously inclusive HinduBharat Mata, that in one of her four hands holds a sign that reads ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God isGreat) in Urdu script. This image is used to betray ‘the easy convergence of ‘‘India’’ with‘‘Hindu’’ from nationalism’s earliest moments on the subcontinent (Ramaswamy, 2010,pp. 20�21).

31. The Indian nation was built out of sub-nations by re-use and strategic accommodation ofculture and identity. This socio-political process might explain the receding of the rivalimages to Bharat Mata.

32. Do note that in the Hindi version of the constitution the word order is reversed: ‘‘Bharat,that is India, shall be a Union of States’’.

33. Some states, like Germany, see an iconic discontinuity due to significant historicalruptures. Phillip Veit’s ‘Germania’ (1838) was the pictorial expression of a longing forGerman unity. Once the country was (politically) united in 1871, the image lost some of itssignificance, and the imagery of the Third Reich was centred on a personality cult that wasnot to tolerate a rival figure. For a detailed account of the fate of the German nationalicon see Brunn (1989).

Notes on contributors

Subrata K. Mitra is Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science at the SouthAsia Institute of Heidelberg University, Germany. Among his areas of expertise aregovernance, citizenship, comparative politics and state formation in South Asia. He is theeditor of the Routledge Advances in South Asian Studies.

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Lion Konig is a Doctoral Fellow at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in a GlobalContext’ at Heidelberg University, Germany. His research interests include citizenship,cultural nationalism, and political iconography in the Indian context.

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