Long before the Constitution was inked into law, Bharat Mata lived in the soul of Bharat - as its collective civilisational conscience, and as the cultural sovereign of a timeless nation. To erase her from public life is not an act of secularism, but a severance from the Republic’s deepest roots and denial of the very soul that gave it life.

The recent controversy over the portrait of Bharat Mata at an official event in Kerala has ignited yet another debate around the place of civilisational symbols in public life. The incident, involving a walkout by a state minister and a sharp response from Raj Bhavan, has been framed by some as a violation of secularism and constitutional propriety. But to reduce Bharat Mata to a political or sectarian symbol is to misunderstand her true place in our cultural imagination - as a mother figure rooted in ancient reverence and spiritual nationalism.

Kerala Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar

The personification of land as mother is not a colonial construct or communal connotation - it is as old as our civilisation itself. As is said in Atharva Veda, माता भूमिः पुत्रोऽहं पृथिव्याः (The Earth is my mother, and I am her son.) This relationship between the individual and the land is not that of ownership, but of sacred kinship - one that transcends the modern contractarian view of the nation-state. In the Devi Sukta of the Rig Veda, the Goddess declares herself as both the sovereign of the people and the divine source of unity: “अहं राष्ट्री संगमनी वसूनां चिकितुषी प्रथमा यज्ञियानाम्।” (I am the Queen, the gatherer of treasures, the knower, first among those to whom sacrifices are offered.)

Thus, the idea of the nation as a Rashtra Devi is not invented nationalism but revealed symbolism, found at the fountainhead of India’s sacred texts. This civilisational devotion is perfectly encapsulated in a timeless Sanskrit maxim from Valmiki Ramayan: “जननी जन्मभूमिश्च स्वर्गादपि गरीयसी” (Mother and Motherland are greater than even heaven.) In Bharat, the land is not a resource, but a moral and spiritual obligation. It is no surprise then that the freedom struggle chose the symbol of Bharat Mata - not to divide, but to unite, inspire, and elevate.

The emotional foundation of Bharat Mata was laid by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, whose song Vande Mataram in Anandamath (1882) became the mantra of freedom: “वन्दे मातरम्, सुजलां सुफलां मलयजशीतलाम् शस्यश्यामलां मातरम्।” This poetic invocation of the land as fertile, bountiful, and maternal offered Indians a shared emotional compass across religion, caste, and language. It attributed the land a sacred connotation without institutionalising religion, making Bharat Mata a civilisational rather than a religious figure. The same has been adopted as our National Song.

Swami Vivekananda embodied Bharat Mata as synthesis of spiritual power and national service. He saw the Mother not just as a metaphor but as Shakti, calling upon the youth to awaken India’s divine feminine energy: “For the next fifty years this alone shall be our keynote - this, our great Mother India. Let all other vain gods disappear for the time from our minds. This is the only god that is awake, our own race - everywhere his hands, everywhere his feet, everywhere his ears, he covers everything.” [The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. III, Lectures from Colombo to Almora - “The Future of India”] To Vivekananda, Bharat Mata was not mythology - she was the living mother symbolising the nation who demanded service and upliftment.

Abanindranath Tagore in 1905, made a painting wherein Bharat Mata is depicted as a woman in saffron, holding a book, sheaves of paddy, a piece of white cloth and a rudraksha mala in her four hands. This became one of the first visual representations of Bharat Mata, which is even popular till date.

In 1909, when renowned poet Subramanya Bharathi took over as editor of the newspaper Vijaya, he published an image of Bharat Mata on the cover an image of Bharat Mata - depicted standing upon the map of Bharat, nurturing four children who symbolised the country’s major religious communities, including Muslims.

The continuity of this maternal imagery is evident in Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata published in 1912. Its first stanza was later adopted as India’s national anthem. In the fourth stanza, Tagore speaks of a dark night enveloping the nation. Amidst this gloom, he discovers the ‘auspicious, ever-wakeful, downward-looking, winkless eyes’ of the Mother offering silent protection — “Jāgrata chila tava avichala maṅgala natanayane animēṣē, duḥsvapnē ātankē rakṣā karilē aṅkē, snēhamayī tumi Mātā.” Here, Tagore invokes the Mother not as a passive symbol, but as a vigilant guardian who is unceasingly compassionate and watchful and who cradles the nation through its nightmares and civilisational agonies.

On 25th October, 1936, Mahatma Gandhi opened the famous Bharat Mata Mandir in Varanasi, where he was joined by over 25,000 people which included Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists and Harijans from all parts of the country. During the opening, he addressed: “The temple contains no image of any god or goddess. It has only a relief map of India made of marble stone in it. I hope this temple, which will serve as a cosmopolitan platform for people of all religions, castes and creeds including Harijans, will go a great way…It is this Mother Earth to the service and devotion of which we are dedicating ourselves today… Everyone who loved Mother India was welcome to the shrine to offer his or her worship according to his or her light and capacity…Let us all forget our divisions and differences, sacrifice them at her feet and bring the purest of our service to her.” [Complete Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 63, pg. 388]

The slogan desiring the ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ was popularised during the freedom struggle. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in the Discovery of India recalls that he used to ask his audiences the “meaning of the expression Bharat Mata”, and then he would decode the slogan. He writes, “…what counted ultimately were the people of India, people like them and me. who were spread all over this vast land. Bharat Mata — Mother India was essentially these millions of people, and victory to her meant victory to these people.”[The Discovery of India, Chapter III - “Bharat Mata”]

In view of the aforesaid, to claim that Bharat Mata has no place in official spaces because she is not mentioned in the Constitution is to adopt an impoverished view of public life, a myopic view of Bharat as a civilisational nation - one that forgets that the identity and history of Bharat predates 1947. Bharat Mata as such might not be a creature of law, rather she is a symbol and source of civilisational consciousness. Her legitimacy does not derive from legislative sanction, but from the deep wellspring of cultural reverence and collective emotion that has sustained India through invasions, foreign rule, colonialism, partition, and even modern transformation.

If constitutional recognition were the only standard for legitimacy in public life, we would have to question the presence of many other revered national symbols - for example, Vande Mataram- our national song that gave voice to a people under bondage and even our national anthem, find no place in the constitutional text and shares their status only by a parliamentary resolution.

On the same note, the tiger, lotus, and peacock declared the national animal, flower, and bird respectively are products of executive notification, not constitutional proclamation. Even the ubiquitous portrait of Mahatma Gandhi that graces every government office, courtroom, and currency note is not mandated by the Constitution. Yet we do not question their place, because they resonate with India’s civilisational grammar, resonating as enduring markers of who we are and what we revere.

Why then this selective scepticism toward Bharat Mata, arguably the most emotionally and civilisationally embedded symbol of all? If anything, she is older than the Republic, deeper than the Constitution, and broader than any legal charter. She speaks the language of the masses - across geography, religion, and generation - not as a religious figure, but as a symbol of the sacred geography and shared destiny of India. To bar her presence from official events is not a defense of secularism - it is an erasure of India's living civilisational memory, one in which law and culture are not at odds, but in dialogue.

Constitutionalism does not exist in silos - it must honour Culture and Civilisation. The Governor, as a constitutional head, presides over events that also reflect India’s civilisational ethos. An image of Bharat Mata cannot be said to be sectarian; it manifests India’s dharma - the ancient moral order that predates and transcends modern constructs. Thus, to oppose Bharat Mata is to deny India’s civilisational continuity. It is to reduce the land to a contract, rather than a relationship. For millions of Indians, Bharat Mata is not an icon of exclusion - she is a reminder of shared origins, shared struggles, and shared destiny. Today, as we confront modern challenges that seek to divide us, the symbol of Bharat Mata can once again offer unity, not by imposition, but by invocation.

To call Bharat Mata unconstitutional is to forget that she dwells not outside the Republic but within its very breath. As Nehru wrote, she is not an idol, but “the millions spread across this vast land”—a spirit echoed in the Preamble’s first words: “We, the People of India.” Bharat Mata is not a symbol awaiting state sanction; she is the ātmā, the civilisational soul from which the Constitution draws meaning. A Republic that forgets its mūla—its root—may survive in form but falter in spirit. To erase her from public life is not secularism—it is smṛti-lopa, a fading of memory, the first sign of civilisational decay.

वन्दे मातरम्।

Author is an Advocate practicing in the Supreme Court of India.


[The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.]

Aditya Kashyap