A Mother’s Image: Tracing Agency and Conflict in the Representation of an Indian Woman
Mother India is a 1957 melodrama which narrates the story of Radha, a peasant woman who faces hardship and injustice with hard work and perseverance. The title’s heavy-handed symbolism beckons the audience to view the Radha’s difficult life as representative of the hardships of millions of Indians and her moral character as the embodiment of the ideal Indian woman. This week’s readings emphasize Radha’s symbolic status, her conformity to traditional Indian values, and her image as a map of India. Furthermore, the direction of Radha’s gaze is particularly telling. Her controlled gaze fleshes out her character, signaling her human moments as well as asserting her symbolic status in Indian culture.
Radha’s controlled gaze emphasizes moments of desperation and creates a more thorough understanding of the ideal Indian woman. Throughout the movie, she rarely makes eye contact with other characters or the camera, consequently making her seem demure and passive. However, in moments of defiance and desperation, she makes direct eye contact. For example, when Radha defies her mother-in-law’s orders that her misbehaving son should go to bed without dinner, she makes eye contact with her son when she secretly gives him food. There is only one instance in which Radha makes direct eye contact, with the camera. When she momentarily relents, out of desperation to keep her family from starving, to sell herself to the moneylender, she fiercely gazes at the camera and declares her commitment to maintaining her principles. The careful use of Radha’s eye contact acknowledges her human weakness but also demonstrates her superhuman willpower.
The direction of Radha’s gaze also minimizes her human status and emphasizes her position as a symbolic figure. As she is laboring in the fields, struggling to keep herself and her children alive, she pauses with the plowing tool, gazing upward with closed eyes, posing in an epic stance. In another climactic scene, she holds a similar pose with a gun after having killed her bad son. Radha’s powerful body language in scenes of high emotion actually makes her seem more goddess-like instead of human.
The two articles emphasize the viewing of Radha as a national symbol, certainly not as a mix of goddess and unique character as I described. “Maps and Mother Goddesses in Modern India” by Sumathi Ramaswamy discusses ideas regarding maps. While conventional maps are “desocialized”(Ramaswamy 98) images, they indicate the decrease or spread of territory. However, the mapping on India on the woman’s body is a culturally-informed representation of territory (98). Keeping this in mind, the reader is encouraged to pay especial attention to Radha’s poses and body of language as indicative of political commentary. “The Texts of Mother India” elaborates on characteristics of the Indian “mother.” Author Prasad discusses laj, meaning shame or honor, and izzat, honor or self-respect, two important concepts of Indian womanhood (Prasad 70). In Aurat (meaning Woman), the precursor of Mother India, Prasad argues that laj primarily refers to sexual virtue, which the heroine and even the gods protect throughout the films (Prasad 71). Consequently, Prasad argues that such a heroine conforms to Indian values, depriving her of agency. However, I contend that the film does show Radha possessing a measure of agency when she struggles in deciding whether she should sell herself to the moneylender, even if she does conform to these powerful Indian concepts.
Since this film was made in 1957, in the aftermath of the partition of 1947, it is useful to consider how Mother India engages with the newly-independent India and Pakistan. Bose and Jalal explain that the overlapping forces of regionalism and nationalism following partition and the many similarities between India and Pakistan (Bose 187). If one looks at a Mother India map, one can observe where her arms include Pakistan, or at least beckon its inclusion. Consequently, Radha’s symbolic status seems to indicate a nationalist force, one that protests the partition of which the British were at least partially responsible.
In conclusion, Radha’s controlled gaze highlights moments of desperation and agency, ultimately solidifying her symbolic status. On the other hand, the texts place significantly less emphasis on Radha as a human character with agency and instead focus on her conformity to Indian woman ideals. Modern South Asia, depicting competing forces of regionalism and nationalism. Given Radha’s flickers of agency, possible “Mother of India” map interpretations could include India’s resistance to colonialism.
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