‘Not many people know,’ Kashyap said. ‘It started in Europe. When their countries were forming. Britannia. Germania. Always a woman.’
Mayank thought about this for a second. ‘But we’ve all seen Bharat Mata so many times. On TV. Textbooks. How can she go viral today?’
Kashyap took a deep breath, and when he spoke his voice had shifted to a fluent resonance that was familiar from the show. ‘She’s sleeping. She first woke up a hundred years ago, when the British were stopping her from becoming who she is. Now she’s under attack from inside. From PhD-waale. Jihadis. Khalistanis. Maoists and missionaries. They don’t know her power comes from those who doubt. That she’s strongest when she’s attacked. We have to remind our countrymen she’s under attack. Our mother! When she wakes, she’ll show her full fury.’
‘Mother India’, Prayaag Akbar, HarperCollins, 2024.
A shadow fell into the room. Mayank’s eye moved to the clerestory window, small and smudged and spotted, the basement’s solitary source of natural light. A vendor’s cart had settled in front of it but he could hear the creaks and cries of the market.
All morning a tension had revolved under the low ceiling. Kashyap would walk out of his cabin, silver Sennheisers slung on his neck, pacing the length of the floor in the dramatic way he favoured when he was about to launch into one of his speeches. Then he would swivel, slamming the door on his way back inside. They heard him promise very loudly that he would turn an unknown party’s mother and sister into one entity. When he appeared at his doorway he was grinning dangerously.
‘How fucking dare he?’ Kashyap said. ‘I’m going to roast that bearded bastard. Him and all his Commie buddies.’
Immediately Mayank understood what was tormenting his boss. Late last night the head of the student union at Jawaharlal Nehru University had given a fiery speech. A video of the event made it to Twitter and from there exploded on to all the platforms, sometimes only as snippets. Mayank watched the whole thing. The speech began as a routine update on some matters related to admissions, final submissions, the canteen. Then a faction of flag-bearing students suddenly appeared. ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai,’ they chanted. ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai.’
Mayank could not understand why this simple chant seemed to rile up so many lefties. Why exactly did some people have a problem with hailing the motherland? It made him angry. Muslims, he knew, did not like to say it. They thought it would prevent entry into their heaven of waiting virgins. But it wasn’t as if they were being forced to say ‘Jai Shri Ram’, as in other videos that had gone viral recently. A street-cart vendor, a homeless person, some waif of a man caught in a barrage of shoving and swearing. ‘Jai Shri Ram,’ a half-dozen toughs would force the Muslim to say. When they watched such videos, Kashyap and Sushil would quietly exult, but Mayank always felt thrown a little out of balance: the white light bright upon the man’s face, his Adam’s apple ducking in and out of sight in fear, trembling cheeks, pleading implanted in the eyes. Mayank wanted justice for his people. For his country. This felt a bit like bullying.
Also read: Is RSS Going to Abandon ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ As a Muslim Came Up With Slogan?: Pinarayi Vijayan
The video featuring the student union leader ended in something approaching a brawl as two groups of perhaps twenty pushed against one another like clashing currents. Plastic chairs brandished overhead. The new arrivals had become incensed when the student union leader, who came from an embattled region of Jharkhand, refused to take up their chant. ‘I won’t say it,’ he said clearly into the microphone, his dark face hardly visible behind his beard. ‘Your Bharat Mata doesn’t look like my mother. I won’t say Bharat Mata ki jai.’
Pandemonium. Camera suddenly unstable like an earthquake has hit. Dust, shouting, fists. The factions had threatened each other, then presumably sauntered off to their own holes on campus. Mayank did not properly understand what happened on campuses. He could only summon impressions from movies, which were of no practical use. How did colleges actually work? You could ruck like this and then next morning meet peacefully at the dining hall? Go to class together? Kashyap cleared his throat. ‘Back in British times, patriots used to spread her image on calendars. Now we have social media. Just look at the data. The crucial thing, the most crucial thing, is how to frame the question. Do you respect my mother? If he disrespected our mother, if they dared to disrespect our mother, they’re going to have to pay.’
Prayaag Akbar an Indian journalist and novelist. The above is an excerpt from his novel Mother India.
