Whose Iconic Mother(Land)?: Visualising and Theorising National Identity

Abstract

Using established and familiar iconographic representations of the nation, this paper will make two intertwined arguments. The first of these is that by and large, narrations of the nation have a melodramatic structure. The second is that, the iconic and mythogenic figuring of the nation as Mother India/Bharat Mata, contrary to enduring assumptions about it, is, strictly speaking, not a ‘national’ one at all.