CHENNAI: A mother’s love is unparalleled. It is that warm blanket that gives strength on some of the coldest nights we experience, long after we’ve flown away from our safe nests. We now celebrate this love every Mother’s Day, thanks to Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia. Anna started this tradition in honour of her mother, a peace activist who organised Mother’s Day Work Clubs during the war, to promote public health. Following her death, Anna held a memorial service on May 12th, 1907 and soon, the day became significant in every corner of the world. Years later, she was so disillusioned at the commercialisation of the day, with greeting cards, gift-giving and all such paraphernalia being used to define it, that she spent the last few years of her life trying to put an end to the holiday she created.
Ancient civilisations, however, have always celebrated motherhood, eras before the modern version that we now acknowledge even existed. In India, the mother was not just a human form that birthed her children. She was the air, the fire, the river, the tree, the earth and the divine goddess. A walk down the annals of the history of Indian art will reveal myriad references to motherhood and landscapes rich with a heritage of venerating her.
MATRIKAS
Literally translated as divine mothers, Matrikas refer to a group of mother goddesses depicted together. They existed from as early as the Vedic times and the Indus Valley period. From the 9th century onwards, most temples featured these goddesses. When they first appeared in the 8th century in south India, temples were dedicated to them. Gradually by the 9th century, they were only found in the corners of temple structures and over time, they took on the role of guardian deities in village shrines. In Tamil Nadu, the matrikas are referred to as Kannimargal and the ancient practice of worshipping them still exists.
GODDESS AMBIKA OF KALUGUMALAI
Ambika, meaning mother, is worshipped as a Mother Goddess in Jain tradition. Once, when her husband and a few Brahmins left to perform rites, she fed a hungry disciple of Tirthankara Neminatha and this act which was concluded as a contamination of the food, made her husband so furious that she was driven out of her house with her two children. When he realised his mistake and the power of her virtue, he searched her out to seek forgiveness but, fearing his punishment, she jumped off a cliff only to become Goddess Ambika. She is shown with her two children under a tree in most sculptures.
The Kalugumalai Jain beds in Thoothukudi district in Tamil Nadu is one of the oldest Jain sites in South India. Built by the Pandyas, this temple structure consists of around 150 sculptures of Tirthankaras and only two are that of goddesses. The goddess at Kalugumalai is shown with her two children under a mango tree with her husband transformed into a lion as her vehicle.
MOTHER AND CHILD, RAJA RAVI VARMA
Known as the father of Indian art, Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings are considered national treasures. Famous for bringing home the gods with his paintings of Hindu deities, he also touched on motherhood in many of his paintings, from the divine love of Yashoda and Krishna to the mortal love of an earthly mother. An interesting fact is that the artist’s life began with a strange occurrence in his mother, Uma Ambabai Thampuratty’s life.
The story goes that on her return home from the temple, Uma Ambabai was possessed by a spirit residing in the banyan tree that she passed by. She was, of course, exorcised of the spirit but not before the departing spirit blessed her with a son who would be famous. Ravi Varma named his second daughter, Uma Amma as an expression of his love for his mother. Then comes Papa, one of his masterpieces, which features his eldest daughter Mahaprabha with her infant son, is another fine example of the artist’s works on motherhood.
M V DHURANDHAR
M V Dhurandhar, an eminent artist from the colonial period, was famous for his paintings of women living out their ordinary lives, especially in the city of Bombay. He also published a book titled My Wife in Art, in which he illustrated a mother’s love using references from his own family. It is heartwarming to see the artist’s observations as a father come forth as he went about capturing the beautiful bond between a mother and child through his sketches.
JAMINI ROY
One of the most significant artists from pre-independent India, Jamini Roy was known for rejecting the European style of painting and instead, finding his strength in folk traditions and iconography. His imagery was drawn from sentiments that enveloped his surroundings and the mother and child sentiment was one of his recurring themes. Simple in their execution and yet profound in the intensity of the emotion, his depictions of mother and child were not only confined to human relationships but also transcended beyond, encompassing local women as well as religious figures like Krishna and Yashoda and Baby Jesus with Mary.
THE COUNTRY AS MOTHER
No political rally in India can ever be devoid of the chants of Bharat Mata ki jai. But, how and when did a country take on the feminine form and that too, of a Mata or mother? The earliest representation of the nation as a mother was in a painting by Abanindranath Tagore, the nephew of Rabindranath Tagore. Deeply influenced by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s poem Bande Mataram, written in 1875, where the nation was referred to as Mother for the first time, Tagore decided to give the idea a visual form and painted the now famous Bharat Mata in 1905 when the nationalist movement was gaining ground. The spirit of the motherland was so well presented in the painting and by 1909, the artwork spread to all corners of the Indian subcontinent and was used in almost all the protest posters and banners. Well into the 75th year after independence, Indians still take pride in the concept of Mother India.
F N SOUZA
Francis Newton Souza’s oils on canvases of Mother and Child are glorious representations of motherhood, reflecting the close relationship he had with his mother. Born in Goa in 1924, Souza lost his father when he was still an infant and his mother moved to Bombay soon after. He was sent back to live with his grandmother in Goa when he contracted smallpox. His early childhood in Goa and the tales narrated by his grandmother deeply influenced his art practice.
On his recovery, he moved back to Bombay and his mother, who had in desperation offered her son as a priest in the service of the Lord to Goa’s patron Saint Francis Xavier in return for curing her son, enrolled him in St Francis Xavier’s College for the purpose. His rebellious nature did not allow him to fit in. He soon followed his passion for art by joining the JJ School of Art but was expelled from there too for challenging the system. It was his mother that he rushed back to on his expulsion.
From then on, he painted unapologetically and success soon found its way. A lot of his art obviously dwelled on the bond he shared with his mother. With the evolution of art, the idealised image of a pure and sacred mother has changed to a more realistic one. There is, however, one thing that will always remain a constant — the universality of a mother’s love.
RAMKINKAR BAIJ
Fondly remembered as the Father of Modern Indian Sculpture, Ramkinkar Baij was Rabindranath Tagore’s favourite ever since he arrived at Santiniketan in 1925 as a 19-year-old student. He experimented with outdoor sculptures which was something completely unknown at the time, except for public statues of a religious nature or of rulers. With his exceptional talent and his ability to portray the struggles of ordinary people, he quickly evolved an idiom of his own. His paintings, etchings and sculptures of mother and child turned the bond into something iconic — such was the power of his art. His art was rooted in the life of the villagers around him, especially the Santhals and maternal love took the form of rugged poetry through his works.
KHAJURAHO SCULPTURES
The ancient sculptures of Khajuraho instantly bring to mind only one word — eroticism. Located in Madhya Pradesh, the Khajuraho temples were built between 885 CE and 1000 CE by the Chandela dynasty. Famed for its sculptures, the erotic among them comprise barely ten per cent. Among the monuments, there are several stunning sculptures of mother and child and the portrayal of tender affection in the way the mother handles her child, it is a breathtaking marvel in stone that defies time.