Sumathi Ramaswamy . The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India . Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2010. Pp. xix, 379. Cloth $99.95, paper $27.95.

Abstract

In this sumptuously illustrated book, Sumathi Ramaswamy builds an account of Indian nationalism that puts the visual at the center of its analysis. In the process, she combines innovative approaches to South Asian studies including visual history as pioneered by Christopher Pinney, gender studies, and the critical history of cartography. In a survey that encompasses the art of Abanindranath Tagore and M. F. Hussain, as well as the more demotic fields of print, poster, and calendar art, Ramaswamy takes as her subject the evolution of a highly unorthodox new Indian deity—“Mother India” (Bharat Mata). Ramaswamy traces the paradoxical emergence of this curious figure, which, though garbed with antiquity, had a life cycle exactly paralleling that of modern Indian nationalism. The plethora of anthropomorphized maps and cartographized matrons flourished from the late nineteenth century to independence, and has resurfaced in the 1990s and 2000s along with renewed contestation of...