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Mother India: The Role of the Maternal Figure in Establishing Legal Subjectivity

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Abstract

Psychoanalytic jurisprudence attempts to understand the images used by law to attract and capture the subject. In keeping with the larger psychoanalytic tradition, such theories tend to overemphasise the paternal principle. The image of law is said to be the image of the paterfamilias—the biological father, the sovereign, or God. In contrast to such theories, I would like to introduce the image of the mother and analyse its impact on the subject’s relation to law. For this purpose, I examine the history and use of the figure of Bharat Mata or Mother India and how it influences the Indian subject’s relation to law. When the subject is torn between his loyalties to the lawmaker–as–father and the nation–as–mother, who does he side with? Eschewing Greek myths and the Oedipus complex, I focus instead on Hindu mythology and the notion of an oedipal alliance to understand legal subjectivity in India. Lastly, I analyse a defining Indian political trial, the Gandhi murder trial, in which all these notions come to play and the accused justifies his decision to murder the father of the nation in the name of the motherland.

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Notes

  1. A term introduced by Jacques Lacan to denote the legislative and prohibitive function of the symbolic father. See Lacan (1977, 2013).

  2. Even for Goodrich the female images are linked predominantly to notions of justice rather than law. When Goodrich does attempt to trace a female law, it is in the context of common law and distinguished from the patriarchal civil law.

  3. Rex v Nathuram V. Godse and the Other Accused (1948–1949); Court of the Special Judge, Red Fort, Delhi, 1948. This was not a court of record; Godse’s testimony cited here is from the National Archives of India.

  4. This is in contrast to certain other Hindu nationalists, including his mentor and co-accused in the Gandhi murder trial, V.D. Savarkar, who in an attempt to portray India in as masculine a way as possible, attempted to portray the nation as a fatherland to hide its more common association with the mother/mother goddess. For instance see Savarkar (1949).

  5. This ‘second birth’ is a play on words since, while it refers to the son’s move into a world dominated by male members of the family and marks the beginning of his subjectivity, it also invokes the idea of higher caste boys being ‘twice born’. Within Hinduism, the second birth is a spiritual birth after which the boy would traditionally learn the trade of his caste and thus become part of the male world, albeit at an older age than the psychoanalytic ‘second birth’.

  6. A twelfth century Hindu Rajput King who ruled parts of Northern India.

  7. Attributed to Valmiki, the Sanskrit version dates back to the fifth—fourth centuries BC.

  8. The Rig Veda is one of the oldest Hindu texts and is believed to predate the Ramayana by a millennium.

  9. With the exception of a picture in which S.C. Bose is shown in Bharat Mata’s lap instead of Gandhi. However, in order to remove any ambiguity, that picture is titled Bharat Santan (India’s Child). Bharat Santan (mid 1940s?) by Sudhir Chowdhury. Chromolithograph published by SNS, Calcutta, India.

  10. Modern versions of similar images can be found online. Bharat Mata, late 1940 s, available on http://www.exoticindiaart.com/product/paintings/mother-india-wearing-sari-and-mahatma-gandhi-in-her-lap-WF14/ (Accessed 30 Dec 2016); and Bapuji on [sic] Eternal Sleep, circa 1948, available on http://www.exoticindia.com/product/paintings/death-of-satyam-shivam-sundaram-WC81/ (Accessed 30 Dec 2016).

  11. Kakar argues that it is the lack of oedipal complex in India and the ability of the child to identify with both the male and the female parent that in 1943 allowed Gandhi to publically proclaim that he had mentally become a woman (Kakar 2012a).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK

    Kanika Sharma

  2. SOAS, University of London, London, UK

    Kanika Sharma

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  1. Kanika Sharma
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Correspondence to Kanika Sharma.

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It would have been impossible to explore the figure of Mother India without taking recourse to her visual representations. I must thank Priya Paul, Urvashi Butalia and Sherna Dastur for the permission to use images from their collections; as well as Sumathi Ramaswamy who has lent me an image, her time and valuable guidance.

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Sharma, K. Mother India: The Role of the Maternal Figure in Establishing Legal Subjectivity. Law Critique 29, 1–29 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-017-9197-4

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