Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-7drxs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T15:36:03.423Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Maps, Mother/Goddesses, and Martyrdom in Modern India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2008

Sumathi Ramaswamy
Get access

Abstract

This essay explores the convergence of maps, mother/goddesses, and acts of martyrdom in patriotic pictures produced during the twentieth century in India in order to understand how artists pictorially transformed national territory into a tangible and enduring object deemed deserving of the bodily sacrifice of the citizenry. The archive for the essay is constituted by visualizations of Indian national territory produced by “barefoot” cartographic practice, which routinely supplemented the scientific map form of the nation with the anthropomorphic presence of Mother India. Such anthropomorphized maps, the author argues, prepared the ground pictorially for the map of the nation to receive the sacrifice of the passionate patriot.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 67 , Issue 3 , August 2008 , pp. 819 - 853
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Axel, Brian Keith. 2001. The Nation's Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh “Diaspora.”; Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Baecque, Antoine de. 1997. The Body Politic: Corporeal Metaphor in Revolutionary France, 1770–1800. Trans. Mandell, Charlotte. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayly, Christopher. 1996. Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blurton, Richard. 1989. “Continuity and Change in the Tradition of Bengali PaTa-Painting.” In The Sastric Tradition in Indian Arts, vol. 1, ed. Dallapiccola, Anna L, 425–51. Stuttgart: Steiner.Google Scholar
Brosius, Christiane. 2005. Empowering Visions: The Politics of Representation in Hindu Nationalism. London: Anthem Press.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cosgrove, Denis. 2001. Apollo's Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dave, J. H. et al. 1962. Munshi: His Art and Work. Vol. 1. Bombay: Shri Munshi Seventieth Birthday Citizens' Celebration Committee.Google Scholar
Edney, Matthew H. 1997. Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elkins, James. 1998. On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fenech, Louis E. 2000. Martyrdom in the Sikh Tradition: Playing the “Game of Love.”; Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Forbes, Geraldine. 1980. “Goddesses or Rebels? The Women Revolutionaries of Bengal.” Oracle 11 (2): 1–15.Google Scholar
Freitag, Sandria B. 1999. “Visions of the Nation: Theorizing the Nexus between Creation, Consumption, and Participation in the Public Sphere.” In Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Culture in India, ed. Dwyer, Rachel and Pinney, Christopher, 35–75. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ghose, Aurobindo. 1956. “Bhavani Mandir.” Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual 15: 14–27.Google Scholar
Godlewska, Anne, and Smith, Neil, eds. 1994. Geography and Empire. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Goswami, Manu. 2004. Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harley, J. B. 1983. “Meaning and Ambiguity in Tudor Cartography.” In English Map-Making, 1500–1650, ed. Tyacke, Sarah, 22–45. London: British Library.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. 1977. “The Age of the World Picture.” In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, by Heidegger, Martin, 115–54. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Helgerson, Richard. 1986. “The Land Speaks: Cartography, Chorography, and Subversion in Renaissance England.” Representations 16: 51–85.Google Scholar
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor, W. Adorno. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. Cumming, John. New York: Seabury.Google Scholar
Jain, Jyotindra. 2003. “Morphing Identities: Reconfiguring the Divine and the Political.” In Body.City: Siting Contemporary Culture in India, ed. Chandrasekhar, Indira and Seel, Peter C., 12–45. New Delhi: Tulika Books.Google Scholar
Jain, Kajri. 2007. Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Jervis, W. W. 1938. The World in Maps: A Study in Map Evolution. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kitching, Gavin. 1985. “Nationalism: The Instrumental Passion.” Capital and Class 25:98–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krishnaswamy, Revathi. 1998. Effeminism: The Economy of Colonial Desire. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Lannoy, Richard. 1999. Benares Seen from Within. Varanasi: Indica Books.Google Scholar
Landes, Joan B. 2001. Visualizing the Nation: Gender, Representation, and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mines, Mattison, and Vijayalakshmi, Gourishankar. 1990. “Leadership and Individuality in South Asia: The Case of the South Indian Big-Man.” Journal of Asian Studies 49 (4): 761–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, W. J. T. 1995a. “Interdisciplinarity and Visual Culture.” Art Bulletin 77 (4): 534–52.Google Scholar
Mitchell, W. J. T. 1995b. “What Is Visual Culture?” In Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views from the Outside, ed. Lavin, Irving, 207–17. Princeton, N.J.: Institute for Advanced Study.Google Scholar
Mitchell, W. J. T. 2005. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nehru, Jawaharlal. 1980. An Autobiography. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Neumayer, Erwin, and Christine, Schelberger. 2007. Bharat Mata: Printed Icons from the Struggle for Independence in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pal, Bipin Chandra. 1923. The Soul of India: A Constructive Study on Indian Thought and Ideas. 2nd ed. Madras: Tagore.Google Scholar
Pinney, Christopher. 1997. “The Nation (Un)Pictured: Chromolithography and ‘Popular’ Politics in India.” Critical Inquiry 23 (3): 834–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinney, Christopher. 2004. Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rai, Raghu. 2004. Indira Gandhi: A Living Legacy. New Delhi: Timeless Books.Google Scholar
Raj, Kapil. 2006. Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Scientific Knowledge in South Asia, 17th–19th Centuries. Delhi: Permanent Black.Google Scholar
Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 2000. “History at Land's End: Lemuria in Tamil Spatial Fables.” Journal of Asian Studies 59 (3): 575–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 2001. “Maps and Mother Goddesses in Modern India.” Imago Mundi 53: 97–113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 2002. “The Goddess and the Nation: Subterfuges of Antiquity, the Cunning of Modernity.” In The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, ed. Flood, Gavin, 551–68. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 2003. “Visualizing India's Geo-Body: Globes, Maps, Bodyscapes.” In Beyond Appearances? Visual Practices and Ideologies in Modern India, ed. Ramaswamy, Sumathi, 151–90. New Delhi: Sage.Google Scholar
Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 2008. “The Mahatma as Muse: An Image Essay on Gandhi in Popular Indian Visual Imagination.” In Art and Visual Culture in India, 1857–1947, ed. Sinha, G.. Mumbai: Marg Publications.Google Scholar
Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1985. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Geeti. 2002. Feminine Fables: Imaging the Indian Woman in Painting, Photography, and Cinema. Ahmadabad: Mapin.Google Scholar
Sparke, Matthew. 2005. In the Space of Theory: Postfoundational Geographies of the Nation-State. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. 1993. Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture, and Postcolonialism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tagore, Rabindranath. 1985. The Home and the World. Trans. Tagore, Surendranath. Repr. ed. Madras: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Thongchai, Winichakul. 1996. “Maps and the Formation of the Geo-Body of Siam.” In Asian Forms of the Nation, ed. Antlöv, Hans and Tønnesson, Stein, 67–91. London: Curzon Press.Google Scholar
Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Uberoi, Patricia. 1990. “Feminine Identity and National Ethos in Indian Calendar Art.” Economic and Political Weekly (Review of Women's Studies) 25 (17): WS41–48.Google Scholar
Wood, Denis, and John, Fels. 1992. The Power of Maps. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar