Women and the narrative of nationalism in Raja Rao's The Cow of the Barricades

Abstract

This chapter attempts to critique the use of the woman figure in the narrative of Indian nationalism, especially as it appears in Raja Rao’s collection of short stories, The Cow of the Barricades (1947). It undertakes an exploration of Hindu iconography which was the blueprint for creating figures like ‘Bharat Mata’ [Mother India] on the one hand and the low social status of women in India on the other. An attempt is made to bring together these two dominant strands in the short stories with the intention of juxtaposing the transience of the emerging nation-state against Rao’s ironic treatment of the rigidity of tradition. The influence of Gandhi is overarching, beginning from his own employment of religious tropes in the political discourse of the time, to his popular projection as a divine character in the epic that is the freedom movement.