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CHAPTER SIX
THE GODDESS
Like Whitman’s feminism, Bharathi’s feminism and his conception of mother
goddess also were inspired by his devotion to his own mother.
But whereas Shelley handles such characters just for aesthetic purpose and to
create some sense of remoteness Bharathi uses them earnestly with religious and
political connotations.
- The Harp and the Veena (87, 86)
Child of Light! thy limbs are burning
Through the vest which seems to hide them;
As the radiant line of the morning
Through the clouds are they divine them;
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee wheresoe’er thou shinest.
- Prometheus Unbound (54-59)
Oh ye of the world bereft of all sense!
Can you not know her to be Umai, who mothered
And fostered you? “Mother and Father are
Indeed the visible deities on earth:”
Did not Avvai of old, affirm thus.
- Mother’s Greatness (46)
6.1. Mother Image 187
6.2. Man-Woman Relationship 192
6.3. The Real and the Ideal 196
6.4. The Moderate and the Radical 203
6.5. The New Woman 209
6.6. The Goddess and the Nation 214
6. The Goddess
6.1. Mother Image
Mother image and deity image are given to the world, wealth,
education, power, earth, sky and water. World is hailed after women as
Jeganmatha or Logamatha. The goddess of education is hailed as Kalaimagal.
The deity of wealth is hailed as Thirumagal. The embodiment of power,
namely Sakti, is Parvathi Malaimagal. Even some of the elements of the
universe are also named after women. The earth is Bhooma Devi, the sky is
Akashavani, water is Ganga, the language is Mother tongue, one’s native land
is Motherland (country). The great seer poet Thiruvalluvar20
has defined
women in his masterpiece as woman is a goddess who protects herself, her
dependants and her family tirelessly (56). Those women who have yielded
themselves to the atrocious power of rites and rituals, customs and
conventions have become voiceless and silent.
It is very strange that a man, born of a woman, born with women,
married a woman and begotten female children, considers women their slaves.
A woman is not a mere dust but a person. She is not an inanimate object but a
human being. Napolean Bonaparte once said that the future destiny of the
child is always the work of the mother. Emerson advocated this theory when
he said that men are what mothers made them. All the blessings of the Lord
20 Tark tut tarko!" pei!it takai c nra
Cork ttutc c#rvil $ pe!.
The good wife guards herself from blame,
She tends her spouse and brings him fame. (Trans: G.U. Pope)
188
God can be packed into a single word, and it will spell “Mother”. A Jewish
adage says God could not be everywhere and, therefore, He made mothers.
Mother is indeed God embodied (qtd. in Manimozhi 9-14).
One of the reasons why all poets attribute a quality of ‘motherness’ or
‘motherliness’ to things that are eternal, noble, sublime and magnificent, is
that there is a goddess and godly element in a mother, who is a woman. For
example, the earth in which we live is venerated as Mother Earth and the Sea
that surrounds the Earth is normally called a Sea Mother and most of the poets
attribute motherly qualities to every object of Nature. One’s country is also
referred to as Motherland. Father and Mother and words known by all in the
universe and all living beings have parents – Father and Mother – it is the
parents who perpetuate the progeny. Yet the differences between men and
women or father and mother when it comes to parenting or nurturing or
bringing up the children to make them fit citizens of the world, are varied or
different from one another. Although there are people who subscribe to the
dictum that men are just as good as women at parenting, but normally, the
general perception is that women are better parents and better at parenting for
three reasons (My Home Fun 1). The bond of motherhood which is umbilical
cord related, the societal roles where she plays the role of a guardian angel
and the emotional sustenance which is based on the loving kindness and
tender mercies that mother manifests in her relationship with her children.
The love between mother and the child is the most basic human
relationship. It is the deepest and the most selfless love. The bond of
189
motherhood usually comes naturally and starts in pregnancy. Maybe that men
do not experience pregnancy, the bond of fatherhood is not as deep and as
spiritual and as absolute as the bond of motherhood. It is the mother who
feeds the baby in its earliest stage of growth and development. Motherhood is,
in a way, therefore, may be described as the most sacred function for women.
It is the mother who can understand better than the father does, her daughter’s
monthly cycle (1). Similarly in matters of societal roles and emotional nature,
women are endowed with a few inexplicably subtler and softer traits that one
doesn’t find in men (1). Perhaps this could have intuitively instilled in the
minds of poets, a sense of ‘motherliness’ being projected on to the universal
objects and the living beings of nature, that protect, nurture and provide
succour to the vast sea of humanity. Conceiving the whole earth as mother is
but one step towards perceiving mother as a goddess, endowed with powers
of creativity and thus replenishing the whole earth. The mother goddess image
is a recurring image almost in all poets, more so in the case of Shelley and
Bharathi.
Shelley’s Queen Mab, his first poem, published in 1811, is basically
conceived as a poem representing and imaging women as an intermediary
between the divine and the human (829). It certainly may not be a misreading
of Shelley to re-read Queen Mab as a poem with seeks to install the robe and
image of divinity on the central protagonist. During the eighteenth century
Queen Mab was the title character (like mother goddess) in numerous
collections of children’s stories. Shelley’s choice of this innocent sounding
190
name for the intermediary between the divine and the human is wrought with
contextual and universal significance. It is this character in its image as a
near-divine-being (a goddess) who teaches the soul of Ianthea a revolutionary
lessons of the past situation, of the present, and the hopes of the future. In
short, the moral, ethical, social, spiritual and even political exegesis almost
border on a homiletic of eternity that brings within its focus, the past, the
present and the future A world rift of a divine showers of blessings becomes
desolate and withered and there is no shade and no shelter for human person.
This is the environment Queen Mab in the beginning presents, obviously
highlighting the need for a divine touch of a goddess for the prosperity of
humankind:
Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps
From its new tenement, and looks abroad
And desolate a tract is this wide world!
How withered all the buds of natural good!
No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms
Of pitiless power. (IV.121-27)
Shelley presents a similar image in “The Triumph of Life”,
Prometheus Unbound, and also in “The Sensitive Plant”. Ultimately it is the
grace of the divine dispensation as manifested in the form of women goddess
that recreates a healthy harmonious universe through her virtues.
All things are recreated, and the flame
Of consentaneous love inspires all life:
191
The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck
To myriads, who still grow beneath her care,
Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:
Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:
Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,
Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream. (VIII.107-15)
Where divine virtues fall on evil days that which results is a moral
desert. Shelley’s notion of morality may be interpreted in the larger
perspective as a need for divine intervention for the good of humankind.
After noting that “where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood / There is a
moral desert now” (II.162-63), Shelley turns to the ancient Mayan
civilization, where once “arose a stately city / Metropolis of the western
continent,” there is now only a wilderness (II.187-88). States that deviate
from the virtue of independence, labour, and equality produce wilderness.
Shelley takes his republican environmentalism further to reach the
extraordinary visionary conclusion that there is no spot on earth, no matter
how wild, that was not once a populous city. “There’s not one atom of yon
earth” (II.211), he writes:
But once was living man;
Nor the minutes drop of rain,
That hangeth in its thinnest cloud
But flowed in human veins;
And from the burning plains
192
Where Libyan monsters yell,
From the most gloomy glens
Of Greenland’s sunless clime,
To where the golden fields
Of fertile England spread
Their harvest to the day,
Thou canst not find one spot
Whereon no city stood. (II. 211-24)
And so far prosperity and blessing the world needs, the benevolent
mother goddess of grace and mercy offers, without which the whole earth
goes dry and dreary.
6.2. Man-Woman Relationship
Bharathi while talking about the husband and wife relationship in his
poem “Anttipolutu”, he presents the image of woman as wife, a pure wife, a
chaste wife (21-23), the bond of purity and chastity takes her to the level of a
woman goddess in Indian tradition and mythology, Sakthi - the primordial
principle of creative energy, the primal cause of the creation of earth, the
whole universe. Bharathi elevates Chellamma on the pedestal of his heart and
worships her. He is fascinated by her physical beauty. “Her eyes are verily
blue eyes / The face of Kannamma is red lotus”. Her “beauty is lightning-like
/ Her brow is like the bow of Manmata” (Kannamma – A Description 1-2).
She is the goddess Lakshmi who became one with Kannan. She is the
daughter of Kali, she is the abode of power and she is the heroine of the
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poet’s home. She gives life to what is lifeless, shines light on what is dark,
and beautifies each occurrence in the poet’s life (Vijaya Bharati 1-3).
The selfless, honest, deep and equally passionate, physical, intellectual
and emotional bonding between a man and a woman or his wife or life
partners, Bharathi was fully convinced was at once the foundation of and the
resultant product of the union of the human souls. It is this state of the union
of souls that Bharathi calls ‘chastity’. Bharathi thus conceives chastity, as a
divine state, as a spiritual quality that makes him treat women as goddess and
Sakti (Mony 182). Love of knowledge and quest for wisdom is far greater
than love of physique and passion for flesh. Intellect is superior to the body,
but eternal love or love of the bonding of the human souls is still far greater
and nobler than the love and passion for knowledge and intellect. It is this
most sublime, passionate union of the human souls is what Bharathi calls
chastity. This extraordinary perception of Bharathi has indeed led him to
idealizing women as goddess and mother of the universe or mother of all
(183).
The difference between Bharathi and other Tamil poets like Bharathi
Dhasan and others is that, unlike other poets, Bharathi treats women, as a
whole, as a complete human-person, not disintegrating the body from the
mind, the intellect and the soul, but treating the womanliness or the feminity
in woman as the highest expression of the divine. This is a recurring image in
Bharathi. Bharathi looks upon even the body, the exterior which attracts the
human eye, as the divine display of a woman goddess. He ascribes woman,
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womanliness, and the feminity to the woman, as she is the wonder and marvel
that is inexplicable and inexpressible. She is the nectar of the ocean of passion
and desire, a body of miracle, a grand vision of the divinity, this woman,
womanliness and feminity (Vijaya Asir 6).
Bharathi also conceives woman as the mother of Dharma. With the
sixty crore hands she is the dispenser of Dharma in the world. In her being a
goddess, she embraces the entire humanity and in the process transforms them
into the state of divine being and thus she is the all powerful Parasakthi
(Vijaya Asir 13). Bharathi describes women as the daughter of the great
Sakthi, he also says that which takes the grandeur appearance of a woman as
mother is Shivashakthi. In other words, Bharathi’s image of woman as
goddess is a natural outcome of Bharathi’s idea of woman as the creator, the
protector, the sustainer and the power giver of the entire humankind. There is
no great god or goddess than the mother (Kumaraswamy 80).
What is remarkable about Bharathi is that in worshipping, praising and
the eulogizing of every Indian goddess, Bharathi invariably identifies all these
goddesses with women and the goddesses in themselves become an image of
woman with their extraordinary qualities of love patience, virtues, beauty and
bravery. Sakthi is a woman goddess. She annihilates and destroys everything
that is unjust, evil and wicked and establishes a reign of goodness, peace and
justice (“Veri kon"a T i” [“The Frenzied Mother”] 14). Vani is the goddess of
arts and letters, Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth and prosperity, Kotravai is
the goddess of success, victory and accomplishments. All these are women
195
goddesses, goddesses embodying the virtues, and qualities of the womanness,
womanliness and feminity (79).
As Kumarasamy argues that even as Bharathi grandieloquently sings
of the grace and gift of all these goddesses, he sees is each one of them an
image of a woman, an Indian woman, a Tamil woman who, in a similar way,
ought to, all because of her acquisition of knowledge, bravery and beauty,
chastity and purity and expression of art and aesthetics, elevate and evolve
themselves into the status of a goddess (Kumarasamy 79)
It is this basic perception of Bharathi that every goddess is an image of
a woman that forced him to present P rata M ta, (Mother India), Cutantira
Tevi (Goddess of Freedom and Liberty) and Tamil T i (Mother Goddess
Tamil) as mothers basically endowed and infused with all divinity of a
goddess. Even in nationalist songs and poems, Bharathi speaks very highly of
the great virtues, power and strength of women as goddesses, and goddesses
as women. This mutually inclusive image that lends a greater degree of
credibility to Bharathi’s presenting women as goddess.
Bharathi also sees every woman as a living earthly incarnation of
Shakthi, possessing all divine virtues and so ‘everyone’ is a goddess
(Kumarasamy 79). As Bharathi himself puts it, in all women goddess that you
worship you could see the power, the grandeur ,the glory of Shakthi as hidden
in women as manifested as the mother, the wife, the sister and the daughter.
So far not yet fully revealed Amman is also mother (cf. Chapter 4: The
Beauteous and the Brave 143-44). What is very significant is that, like her,
196
one must also see the women as wives, sisters and mothers, and must radiate
all around the splendour of light and life (Kumarasamy 79). If every life on
earth be God, then is not / the wife too aged? (“Pe! Vi"utalai” [“Manumission
of Women”] 45).
The virtue of a god is to protect and preserve all lives with love and
grace. The noble and exalted virtues of knowledge, modesty, tolerance,
motherhood, beauty, gentleness, pleasure that we find in a woman are indeed
godly virtues. Bharathi subscribes to the notion that a woman who is the
embodiment of all these inalienable divine virtues must be adored as
goddesses (Kumaraswamy 79).
6.3. The Real and the Ideal
Shelley and Bharati have not only pictured ordinary sensible women,
but also strange feminine creatures, nymphs, savage queens, oriental princes
and deities in their quest for idealisation of woman and womanhood. (John
Samuel 85). The quest for idealized as well as unreal women is apparent in
the poems of these two poets. Similarities are seen in them especially to
signify the woman’s radiance and strength. And both the poets have placed
women on a higher pedestal like mother or deity of a high order. Shelley and
Bharati have composed poems in such a way that they engender a nuance of
subtle feelings such as reverence, honour, docility and piety towards women.
They see women as goddess, cradle of charity, birth-place of knowledge, seat
of zeal and zest, fertile land of valour and replica of prudence.
197
Shelley’s heroines have been described as visionary, unsubstantial and
ethereal; and they are said to scorn the ground. They are the delicate products
of the Ariel-like imagination of the poet. There is a happy blending of the
sensuous and the super-sensuous elements that gave them a definite form
which is within the grasp of the reader’s imagination.
The original of the heroine of “Epipsychidion” is an Italian woman
Emilia Viviani and the two elements, one ideal and other real, seem to meet in
Shelley’s portrait. Emilia is Shelley’s conception of beauty and she is also the
Italian woman. There is more in her than these two traits. And she is
transcended to the state and status of a goddess. She is
Seraph of Heaven! Too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman.
All that is in supportable in thee
Of light and love, and immortality!
Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse
Veiled Glory of this lampless universe!
There Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form
Among the Dead!. Thou Star above the Storm!
Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty and thou Terror!
Thou Harmony of Nature’s art! Thou Mirror
In whom, as in the splendor of the Sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on! (21-32)
198
She is a ‘Sweet lamp’, ‘Sweet Spirit’ a lovely soul formed to be blessed and
bless.
Like Emilia, Bharati’s Kannamma is another divine creature. She is
Sun, Moon and Stars to the poet. The Kannan songs are twenty-three in
number. In them Kannan undergoes several metamorphoses. In some poems,
the speaker is the lady longing for her lover Kannan. In some others, Kannan
becomes the maiden Kannamma, with whom the speaker is in love. Kannan is
also sung as a father, mother, god, goddess, monarch, comrade, disciple,
servant and child. Kannan becomes Kannama and he portrays him as a girl
child worthy of veneration as a goddess or a deity. In the poet’s own words
(Prem Nandakumar 31).
My little, flitting bird;
My soul’s dear treasury;
Thou dost uplift my life
To pride from misery. (1)
One can call a woman a mother but calling Lord Kannan,a male God,
mother is a novel trend set by Bharathi alone. His addressing of Kannan as
Kannamma has a feminine connotation and quality.Woman image to Kannan
sets a daring trend both in concept and poetry. He infuses feminine charm into
Lord Kannan and transforms him into a female deity, thereby he lifts up the
image of woman (Prema Nandakumar 32).
Shelley’s Cythna is the first “New Woman”. She is faith, hope and
charity as revealed in Panthea, Ione and Asia respectively. She is Intellectual
199
Beauty. From Queen Mab to “Hellas” she waits and watches in unwavering
hope for the triumph of the good cause either in her mortal form, or translated
to the rank of the intermediary between men and gods. Such is the glory of the
new woman in the poetry of Shelley.
Bharati transforms the New Woman into a goddess. He hails the New
Woman’s glory, who has come
To transform and renew our world,
To make all men immortal like gods,
The eager goddess, our great Mother
Has of her grace become a girl. (10)
Here Bharati elevates woman to Mother stage and status and salutes
her. He praises the creative power of the Mother and also hails her protective
power. Actually these are the qualities attributed to God. By this he blends the
divine and the human, the mother with God (Goddess) and God (Goddess)
with the mother and both into one, one being and one image and that is, the
woman image to mother image, and then to deity image (Prema Nandakumar
96). He has made us acknowledge in “Bharathi Sixty-six”.
I have declared a law Manumission
Of Women hearken to its nature:
If every life on earth be God, then is not
The Wife too a god? ( 45)
For Bharathi woman, when she is a mother, is the root and sum and
substance of family life. One of the oldest Tamil proverbs is “The Mother and
200
the Father are primary deities”.21
This he assures in his “Mother Greatness”.
Mother, as a woman, is a terribly moving force in Bharathi for the simple
reason that he always looks upon the mother as an exteriorisation of the
divine in the human-person.
Oh ye of the world bereft of all sense!
Can you not know her to be Umai,22
who mothered
And fostered you? “Mother and Father are
Indeed the visible deities on earth.” (46)
In Indian Literature, both ancient and medieval, the mother is normally
identified with Sakthi. In the view of Bharati, Mother Goddess is
universalized as the sacred image of every Indian. She invests India itself with
holiness, because it is her playground. India is the dear land where the mother
as child learns to lisp her language, spends a happy maidenhood in the
company of girl companions of her age, plays on the moon blanched sands,
cools her golden body in pellucid streams and above all, her golden youth in
sweetness and love in the company of the father (“N ""u Va!akkam”
[“Adoration of the Country”] 11-22).
21 Annaiyum pit vum munneri teyvam. [The mother and father are our first god and
goddess]. This is the first line of one of the great ethical treaties, in Tamil, Konrai Ventan
by Avvaiyar, a great Tamil poetess.
22 In Hindu mythology Uma Devi is P rvati, the wife of Lord Shiva. And Bharathi
conceives Umai as the begetter of every Indian child, and hence the mother of every
Indian; and she is also the mother of the entire humankind. Thus Umai is universalized
as the instance of a goddess becoming a mother, and hence a woman. This reversal
process of goddess-mother is a fine example of an anti-thesis of mother-goddess or
woman-goddess image in Bharathi.
201
It is Bharati who raises the status of women to an adorable deity. He
gives an account of gods who have goddesses as part and parcel of them and
he declares that his beloved wife is indeed Sakti (“Bharati Sixtysix” 50). He
also greeted the future woman as an emanation of Shiva and gives divine
energy to women (52). Thus he elevates an ordinary woman to goddess level
and assures that a man attains godhead only through her (50). Again, he
confirms it and says that if all life on earth has divinity, the wife at home also
has the divinity and she is goddess.
In The Revolt of Islam, Shelley has pictured his doctrines of liberty and
justice. In the “Preface” to The Revolt of Islam Shelley has marked that this
poem is
a succession of pictures illustrating the growth and progress of the
individual mind aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of
mankind …. Its impatience at all the oppressions which are done under
the sun its tendency to awaken public hope and to enlighten and
improve mankind; the rapid effects of the application of that tendency;
the awakening of an immense nation from their slavery and
degradation to a true sense of moral dignity and freedom (32)
Mary Shelley, his wife, in her “Note on The Revolt of Islam” draws the
attention of readers to the fact that,
For this Shelley chose therefore for his hero a youth nourished in
dreams of liberty, some of whose actions are in direct opposition to the
202
opinions of the world… He created for this youth a woman such as
delighted to imagine - full of enthusiasm for the same objects. (154)
And they are Laon and Cythna. Laon appreciates Cythna on whom he
has confidence that,
‘O Spirit vast and deep as Night and Heaven!
Mother and soul of all to which is given
The light of life, the loveliness of being,
Lo! There dust re-ascend the human heart,
Thy throne of power, almighty as thou wert
In dreams of poets old grown pale by seeing
The shade of thee. (2197-03)
And Laon sees Cythna not as an ordinary woman but one who has divine
power for this great cause.
Shelley imagines and images Cythna as mother, for Cythna possesses
the qualities of a mother – pity, love, strong tenderness, sympathy, divinity
and sacrifice. Every one of her dear ones has “the pity and the love” that she
possesses in abundance and offers as a free gift. Laon acknowledges that,
In me, communion with this purest being
Kindled intenser zeal, and made me wise
In knowledge, which, in hers mine own mind seeing,
Left in the human world few mysteries:
How without fear of ail or disguise
Was Cythna! – What a spirit strong and mild,
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Which death, or pain or peril could despise,
Yet melt in tenderness! (946-52)
Cythna becomes a mother for, the “homeless orphans find a home near her”
(1603). Thus Cythna grows throughout the poem almost to the stature and
status of a deity and goddess.
6.4. The Moderate and the Radical
Bharati was totally different in his views from the people of his own
age. There were many writers who were there for the uplift of women-folk.
They were all moderate in their approach. But Bharathi was daring and
extreme in his views and ideas. He has imaged women as Sakti, Pudumaip
Pen, Bharat Matha, Mother Goddess. Nivedita Devi’s advice, worship of
Mother, loss of his mother and the influence of other western writers made
Bharathi sing on and absent and praise and eulogise women. Women to
Bharathi is none else than the Mother Goddess herself. He glorifies her by
singing in “Glory of Womanhood” (Prema Nandakumar 22).
Blow the conch! Dance in joy!
For women is sweeter than life itself.
She is the protectress of life and creatrix too,
She is life of our life and soul of sweetness. (6)
Gradually he elevates the human mother into Mother Goddess. And in
this connection, Sachithanandan in his Whitman and Bharati: A Comparative
Study notes:
204
In Bharati’s poems the mother image assumes three guises: the human
mother, Bharata Mata, the Mother country, and the Mother Goddess
Sakti. At the height of his patriotic fervor, he makes no distinction
between Bharata Mata and Sakti. (163)
In “Krishna My Mother”, Bharathi’s delineation of the Mother
God(dess) image is noteworthy. Mother is a delightful combination of human
and divine traits. Like any devoted mother, she puts the poet-child on her lap
which is the earth and entertains him with wonderful tales. Thus she teaches
man the true nature of life. Bharathi’s God-Mother awakens the aesthetic
instinct in the child. So she surrounds him with natural objects like the sun,
the moon and the mountains. Under divine auspices, man discovers the
fascinating world of nature and experiences a renascence of wonder (1-10).
In “Mak caktikku vi!!appam”[ “Beseeching the Mother”], he urges
her to bestow on him a healthy body and a taintless mind. But these personal
endorsements are needed to enable him to work more effectively for the
common cause (2-9). Again in “Wanted a Plot of Land”, a lyrical celebration
of the slogan of “Land to the Tiller” he demands Mother-Goddess a plot of
land, a majestic mansion, a grove of coconuts and all that, including a chaste
wife ‘for poems to be born in their mutual joy’. He hopes to pour forth such
powerful verses that will transform the world (1-3).
Thus, both Shelley and Bharathi, pray to Mother Goddess to bless
them with grace of writing poetry. Shelley in “The Spirit of Solitude” prays:
Mother of this unfathomable world
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Favour my solemn song, for I have loved
Thee ever, and thee only; (18-20)
He describes a vision in his sleep in which he had Poesy, a veiled maiden, sat
near him talking in low solemn tones of knowledge, truth, virtue and hopes of
liberty. Shelley here personifies Poesy and elevates her above a human
woman, telling this Damsel Poesy is Gracious and Sweet.
While picturing a human mother, Bharati unconsciously transforms
her into God Mother. Many of his poems proclaim the traits of human mother
but ends with God Mother qualities. As for instance, in The Oath of P ñc li,
P ñc li was indeed an obedient wife of the five valorous Pandava kings. She
was loyal to them. But her devotion does not make her blind to the higher
values of life. She has the courage of her conviction and points out her lord’s
grievous error in the assembly of warriors and sage councillors (34-45).
When they are debating within and among themselves as to the propriety of
the auction of Duhshasana, she speaks her mind in a fearless manner. This
freedom of speech is quite characteristic of a modern woman whose traits he
has described in his poem “Pu"umai Pe!!”. Her arguing in the assembly
reminds us of Ka!!aki’s pleading in the Pandyan Court in Ilango Adigal’s
Cilappatik ram ([The Anklet] 20. 55-63). Her terrible rage and faith, her
unshakable trust in Lord Krishna and her absolute surrender to him are
conveyed in such a way as to make her all but a deity.
P ñc li who was introduced as human woman was transformed into
divine woman. There is a subtle blending of the ideal and the real in the
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portrait of P ñc li. The highest ‘Sweetness, Joy, Beauty, Love’ and
Immortality have gone into her making as a deity, a deity of rage and wrath,
righteous indignation and divine dispensation. This deity image develops
from where the charioteer fled to the abode of P ñc li by the order of
Dhuryodhana to bring her to the court. He addresses her as “Hail Mother!
Hail protectress of righteousness!” Here Bharati adorns P nc li with Mother
(Goddess) Image (IV. 99-100). Bharati does not picture P nch li as a lady
when she was in the court. He describes as: “Duhshasana rose up and began /
To disrobe the Mother in that court” (292). Gradually the human mother
changes into Mother Goddess, ‘one with the Inner Light’, when Duhshasana
as the ghoul
Busied himself in disrobing
She became one with the Inner Light;
Dead to the world, the Mother tuned into Oneness. (292)
Bharati develops the images as P ñc li a woman, daughter of Draupata
(V. 268), sister of Dristaduymna, “the noble lady” (IV. 245), “the golden
queen”, “the queen among women” (V. 284) who is made “Mother” (IV.
100), “protectress” (IV. 100), the angel and then finally one with God.
As the wretch
Continued to disrobe, robe after new robe
Grew and grew and grew on her,
They defied reckoning; many, oh many
Were their hues and poly-genitive. (V. 300)
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Bharati beautifully transforms P ñc li into D%vi and Devi (Draupati) P ñc li
swears an oath.
Om! I declare
The fiat of goddess Parasakti;
The red blood of sinner Duhshasana
Must flow to meet the blood gushing from
Blasted Duryodhana’s body: at their confluence
I’ll soak my tresses, then bathe clean
And with odoriferous oil scent my hair
And gather it all into a bun, and not before (V. 307)
And “Devas chanted: “Om, Om Om”. / Heaven rumbled its “Amen” (V. 308).
Bharati describes the country ruled by Dharman and how it got shaken
when a woman was dishonoured. The country over which Dharman rules is
really a land over-flowing with milk and honey. Lofty mountains, lovely
sheets of water, fruit-laden groves, waving fields of corn – all these adorn his
country. The seasons that gently glide across the lotus pond, the hum of the
innumerable bees, the lisp of the parrots, the sweet voice of the cuckoo, the
soft south wind that carries with it the fragrance of the flowery groves all
these smooth the love laden heart of lovers (I. 7-15). Earth is filled with
happiness and voice of peace is heard all over it as long as there is the sway
of truth and justice. But at the same time Bharati presents before the readers a
hideous picture of the universe when a woman is about to be dishonoured. It
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is shaken to the very fountains and even gods and goddesses tremble and
totter on their thrones (IV. 252.10).
Bharati considered every woman as Goddess Sakti and he himself
assumed the pseudonym, besides Shelley Dason, Sakti Dason. He calls
women the source of creativity and the embodiment of the creative power of
the cosmos. According to him, the powerful mother Parasakti took the shape
of a virgin to convey truths for elevating her humankind into immortals. In
his evocative vision of the “New Woman,” in four gem-like poems23
she is
imagined as an emanation of Shiva-Sakti herself. She is the brave mother,
bringing up sturdy sons, a warrior’s mother like Vidhula or Jiji Bai.24
According to Bharti womanhood is holy, womanhood is strength,
womanhood is spiritual-Agni [fire] for a nation’s greatness. Woman is but an
avat r of the divine mother, born into this world “to return it and to make
men immortal”.
Shelley’s “The Witch of Atlas” is
A lovely lady garmented in light
From her own beauty –
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And her low voice was heard like love and drew
All living things towards this wonder new
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 “The New Woman”, “Liberation”, “The Kummi of Women’s Freedom” and “Woman’s
Liberation”. (P rati P !alka" 10, 16, 18, 21)
24 Vidhula or Jiji Bai belonged to the Rajput family, known for courage, valour and
selflessness in fighting for the liberation of one’s homeland.
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The magic circle of her voice and eyes
All savage natures did imparadise. (81-82, 87-88, 103-104)
Shelley has transformed the human into divine so subtly, so artistically and
hence so successfully. There is something unearthly in the excessive
brilliance of Atlas’ beauty, that almost borders on the divine and the heavenly
beauty.
6.5. The New Woman
Bharati’s ‘New Woman’ is the legitimate successor of Shelley’s New
Woman embodied in his heroines from Cythna to Emilia. Bharati’s profound
belief in Shakti cult and his reading of Shelley inspired him to treat women
with reverence and revolutionary ardour. To him, woman is Goddess, Sakti,
Lakshmi or Saraswati. It is she who assumes the role of mother or wife to
protect man. Woman is the very embodiment of Dharma. He pictures the
New Woman as Parasakti and makes it strong by describing the sweetness of
her voice when she speaks of freedom for her downtrodden sisters.
Women too have the right to be free!
These words emerging from your lotus mouth
Was it Naradas Vina I heard
Or the honey-sweet flute of Krishna himself?
Perhaps the Vedas as a golden girl
To save and exalt in spoke those words
Or straight from heaven has nectar descended
To wipe out at once both old age and death? (2)
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Her voice uttering the accents of freedom sounds like celestical music
to the poet (2). The same quality of thrilling mystery is discernible in the
voice of Cythna when she sings hymns to freedom, specially composed by
Laon (XXII. 1609-1611).
Shelley’s ideal woman sometimes assumes superhuman forms like
Asia and the Witch of Atlas. Certain delineations of Bharati’s ideal woman,
too, reveal the same characteristic features. His portrait of Sister Nivedita
bears a strong resemblance to the Lady of Atlas. The qualities which Bharati
bestows on Nivedita are the qualities of a goddess. When he met Sister
Nivedita in Calcutta (Kolkota), he had at a glance recognized in her the
manifestation of Sakti, his favourite deity.
Shelley’s the Witch is of divine birth, her father being the sun and her
mother being “one of the Atlantides”. As for the lady of Atlas, “Her voice
was heard like love and drew / All living things towards this wonder new”
(87-88). Shelley attributes goddess-qualities to Emilia also. He describes her
voice as heard in sounds and in silence. Both Shelley and Bharati are
generous in giving goddess image to the women they see, they feel and they
admire.
For Bharati, Sister Nivedita is like the radiant sun that drives out the
darkness of ignorance from the heart of the poet. She is wisdom personified.
Sister Nivedita, an Irish lady originally known as Margaret Noble, had
undergone a sea change on listening to Swami Vivekananda’s exposition of
Indian thought in England. She had followed him to India and became his
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disciple (Ramakrishnan 21). Named Nivedita by the Swami, the ascetic lady
had been pioneering women’s education in Bengal. Bharati was inspired by
Sister Nivediata’s powerful plea for educating women and enabling them to
play their due role in public life and for forgetting all caste and other
distinctions and loving all men as fellow-men of equal status. Her message
reinforced in him his deep held convictions about social and gender equality
(Ramakrishnan 21). Bharati has elevated her from friend to mother and then
to the level of a goddess, “the divine spark of Truth”. In his poetic homage to
her, he sings
Nivedita mother,
Temple consecrated to Love,
Sun dispelling my soul’s darkness,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
O you divine spark of Truth
My salutation to you. (239. 1-3, 7-8)
He glorifies Sister Nivedita as a version of the Goddess of Sakti. It is nothing
but her divine power that attracts all beings, including the poet, towards her.
Shelley describes the beauty of the Witch of Atlas that “made the
bright world dim” (XII. 137-138), and she is “wisdom’s wizard”. For Emilia,
the Shelleys were one bright star, and she was ready to praise them with
Italian extravagance and candour. In one letter she said of Shelley “he has
human exterior, but the interior is all divine” Shelley returned the compliment
in “Epipsychidian”, the most exalted of love songs, where he hailed Emilia as
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a “Seraph of Heaven, too gentle to be human” (21). Emilia, a human being, is
pictured as a heavenly being, a goddess as it were. He feels her divinity and
wishes to worship her.
. . . in the fields of Immortality
My spirit should at first have worshipped
A divine presence in a place divine. (133-35)
Shelley introduces Emilia as a seraph. And Asia in Prometheus
Unbound is addressed as “Life of Life” (II. V. 48), “Child of Light” (54) and
“Lamp of Earth” (66). He attributes to them godly qualities and heightens
them to the level of deity.
The conception of supreme power as Wild Mother or Jaganmatha
appealed to Bharati and roused his poetic fire to sing of the love, glory and
power of the mother and offer plaintive prayers to her for the well being of
his motherland and humankind at large. Bharati was a great devotee of Sakti.
Sakti is movement that is full of strength, life and speed, attraction and
vigour. Bharati’s ideal was to possess in his soul and spirit, body and mind,
great vigour. Attainment of vigour through any means is the path of Sakti – a
way of life. According to him every incident on this earth may be understood
as the movement which take place on earth are only different forms of this
movement. So he portrays Sakti, who is the cause of the movement of the
world, as the Mother (“Cakti K&ttu” [Dance of Sakti] 1-4).
Bharati gives deity image to his homeland India, too. He is the sole
poet in Tamil Literature who has given a mother image to a nation for the
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first time in literary history. He derives inspiration for this mother image from
a few sources. He was touched by the patriotic fervour of the Bengalis who
see their land as mother (John Samuel 26). He was also influenced by the
French and the English who consider their nation as mother. The qualities of
a mother and a country are the same – ‘Modesty, Beauty, and Power’. The
nature of the mother to be delivered of children and edify them is same as the
nature of a nation to produce and bring up eminent men (E!kal T i [Enkal
Tai] 1-12).
India is Bharat, the mother, who struggles, hopes and despairs and
will ultimately master and transcend the current ‘budget’ of limitations.
Prema Nandakumar in her Poems of Subramania Bharati remarks that for
‘Bharati, India is mother:
This Mother is ageless, ever young; she is sworn to righteousness, and
can attain the pose of the Yogi; she is a demoness in revenge, and a
lover of poetry and music. She glows in freedom’s image, and she is
the lighthouse of the spirit for the whole world. (16)
During his early first creative spell at Madras, when he was rapidly
turning out patriotic songs, Bharati began equating India with Sakti herself.
Nivedita’s presentation of the vision of Mother India reveals the mighty form
of the Mother to Bharati. In his national songs, one finds this picture of the
mother imprinted firmly on the emotional screen of the poet’s personality,
presented from a variety of angles. As Vijaya Bharati rightly comments: “The
completeness of his vision has earned for his national poems the reputed title,
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“Desopanishad” comparing the poems with the Upanishadic wisdom of
ancient India” (15).
Bharathi realized India as mother Sakti herself. His poems express this
realization directly and clearly. He saw mother Uma, the creator and the
distributor of the flame of this universe as Bharata Sakti. In “Our Mother” he
describes,
Heroic daughter she is
Of the snow-clad Himavant;
Even if his might should melt away
She will grow from strength to strength (st 12)
The same picture is elaborated in “The Frenzied Mother”, too
Our Mother – a demon is she
Full of frenzy wild and fury.
Her lover is a madman of fire
Whose palm doth sport the blazing fire. (1)
6.6. The Goddess and the Nation
The image of the nation as the divine Mother is a recurrent one in the
poetry of Bharati. But unlike many of his contemporaries, who merely
idealized this heightened image, Bharati remarkably blended the vision of the
ideal with the real. In the poem entitled “Vande Mataram” Bharati draws up a
living portrait of his Mother India (Vant% M taram, the Mantra [Va! tei M ta
ram] 1-30). His reverence for the Mother implies something more substantial
and concrete than mere lip service and empty worship. Bharati’s P ppa P ""u
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written originally for his little daughter Shakuntala, tells and teaches the child
to venerate and worship Bharat, the Mother. Thus he reverentially offers a
deity image to the Nation.
Mother India’s glory is expressed in his national songs in various
forms and the poems deal with various aspects of the Mother. Bharati
identifies the force of Parashakti with that of Mother India. The process of
creation inevitably involves destruction as well as creation, preservation and
protection. Mother Parvati is the symbol of passion and anger and kindness,
as well as the symbol of grace manifested in Kali. Bharati visualizes this twin
aspects of Mother India, Mother Sakti, as the force of wrath as well as grace.
In the poem entitled “Our Mother”, this complete form of Bharata D%vi is
beautifully described. He presents together the alternate forms of Bharata
Devi, the contradictory forces of grace and wrath.
Vedas are the speech
Of this sword – wielding Lady;
Merciful to her votaries,
She extirpates evil men,
If vile wretches there are
That seek to subdue her,
She routs them all
And reduces them to pulp. (5, 7)
It is the nature of Bharata Devi to protect the good and to destroy the
evil in passionate wrath. If dharma is violated by design and the principle of
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love is violated by persecution, the force of Mother India rises up to establish
the forces of love and dharma. The force of Bharat which puts up with the
acts of evil to a limit becomes passionately active when the bounds are
violated and uproots the evil forces. The same idea of co-existence of grace
and wrath is reflcted elsewhere in “Ka!!an P ttu”.
In “Kannan My King”, Bharati praises and portays Kannan as a force
of Bharata Sakti. He writes of Kannan’s tolerance of the evil forces. As
volcano erupts after a long time of accumulation of fire and heat in its belly,
so Bharata Devi will passionately rise to destroy the evil forces whose
wrongful doings she had tolerated.
When the time comes and the fruit is ripe,
For he will burst, a cobra hissing,
Like the churned poison striking with terror
The entire universe, nothing missing
Finished the foe, root and branch
Scorched the very earth on which he stood;
What our world and heaven a thousand years
Endured, in a second will be made good (9- 10)
Whenever Bharati sings of Bharata Devi, he simultaneously expresses these
two contradictory emotions, so very characteristic of the national and native
deities as portrayed in Indian legends and literature.
Bharathi brings forth the image of Bharata Devi in his “P rata T%viyin
Tiru T sa'kam”. Bharathi mentions name, nation, city, stream, mountain,
217
chariot, missile, drum, garland, flag as the ten limbs of Bharata Devi.
According to Vijaya Bharati,
“The ve!p p ""iyal” defines the structure of D sa#ka. The king’s or
hero’s mountain, stream, country, city, garland, war-house, elephant,
flag, drum and sceptre are called the D sa!kam, which is composed in
metre nerisai ve$p . The ten things regarded as the limbs of a king are
D sa'kam. (20)
One of the D sa!kams is the river Ganges. He says that the holy water
of the Ganges adds strength like nectar to the soil, puts life in the earth. He
gives woman image to the Ganges. He gives divinity by mentioning the
Ganges as holy.
In “Ka!!an P ""u”, and “Ka!!am Enn#"a Kulateyvam”, Bharathi
transforms Kannan, the god into Kannama and he calls her/him Divine
Mother. He prays to Goddess Kannamma to show him the path of love (4).
Know no more sorrow, despondence, defeat,
And let virtues spring in the print of Love’s feet.
Of evil and good what do we know?
Weed the bad out, let the good grow (5-6)
The same images are pictured in the Krishna songs. The song “Krishna,
My Mother” has its own poignancy; for, Bharathi’s mother had died when he
was a mere boy (Prema Nandakumar 31). Bharati conceives Kannan (Krishna)
as a divine mother who hugs her child with her arms, places him on her lap of
earth. Krishna (Kannan), the mother, gives him also toys, the moon, the sun,
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the stars, rivers and hills. For playmates there are birds, beasts and fishes. And
groves and gardens to play and she gives nice things to eat (Krishna, My
Mother 5). He views Krishna as the very quintessence of womanhood. He
sings as though he has daily experienced their Divine Omnipresence. “In the
rolling ocean wave, I saw thy face; / And only thy face in the broad expense
of sky” (4).
Though we have Goddess image in abundance in both Shelley and
Bharathi, what is of real significance is that they both extend their image to
various abstract ideas as well. Shelley in The Revolt of Islam sings of
‘wisdom’ as the mother and soul, the source and living principle of the
manifested universe. Next he personifies ‘freedom’ and elevates to the
pedestal of Mother. Mother is a creator and thus he equalizes Mother with
God(dess). And one obviously understands that he intends to give it a deity
image. The same mother image is given to freedom in “Ode to Freedom”.
There he worships freedom and thus goddess image is made clear. Again his
poem “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” contains his devotion and worship of the
principle of Beauty, who is looked upon as deity. In “Song of Proserpine”,
Shelley personifies Earth, he gives mother image and promotes her to the state
of deity and addresses her as “Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth” (1.1). This
image is repeated in his “Lines Written on Hearing the News of the Death of
Napoleon”. Shelley addresses the earth as mother and the earth replies “To
my bosom I fold / All my sons when their knell is knelled” (21-22). In
Prometheus Unbound, there is a conversation between Asia and Earth. Asia
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addresses Earth as ‘Mother’ (III. III.108). The cloud says, “I am the daughter
of Earth and Water” (73) which indicates that the Earth is the mother.
Bharathi deifies not only human mother or Mother India but he gives
deity image to freedom, like Shelley. Bharathi invokes Mother Freedom to
bless his land and people with the gift of true liberty. The poem “Vande
Mataram” is literally “Mother, we bow to you”. Bharathi, his name itself has
divine connotation, meaning, of Goddess of Learning. He addresses Tamil
language as Mother Tamil (Tamilt T y [Mother Tamil] 12). He exhorts her
children to create a new history and spread the glory of the language to the
eight directions (“Tamilt T y” [Mother Tamil] 12).
And perhaps it is not at all an exaggeration if, as a result of the study of
the goddess images in Shelley and Bharathi, one arrives at the decisive
inference that Shelley, the avowed atheist and Bharathi, the fervent theist,
have one thing in common, and that is fighting for the total liberation of the
oppressed section of humankind, that includes the entire womankind, for
which they knowingly or unknowingly, consciously or unconsciously, sought
the divine intervention of an Omnipotent being, by whatever name one
chooses to call it.