IN 2016, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat stated that the time has come to teach our new generation to chant ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ at every occasion. To this, Asaduddin Owaisi, chief of the All India Majlis-e Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), said that even if a knife is put to his neck, he will not do so.
Recently (June 2025), the issue was revived again in Kerala. Governor RV Arlekar organised a prize distribution programme for scouts in collaboration with the state government’s education department. In this programme, he put the image of Bharat Mata in the backdrop. The image was typical of the one projected by RSS. Bharat Mata looks like a Hindu goddess holding the saffron flag.
The Education Minister of the Kerala Government was there, and he boycotted the programme. He congratulated the winners and walked out. The governor took it as an offense, while the state Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, stated that the governor’s act was unconstitutional as Bharat Mata is not part of the country’s Constitution.
V Sivankutty, the education minister who boycotted the programme, very aptly said: “It is essential to ensure that Indian nationalism is not founded on a single cultural image, but on the inclusive and democratic vision enshrined in our Constitution. The governor should clarify whether the Sangh Parivar’s Bharat Mata concept recognises the borders of the country. India is not a monolithic entity built around any symbol, form, or image. Our republic was born from a conscious decision to assert a pluralistic, federal and secular political identity. Calling the image of a woman carrying a saffron flag as the sole symbol of Indian patriotism ignores this fundamental reality. To suggest that patriotism should be viewed only through a single cultural perspective is not only simplistic, but also undermines the rich history of our freedom struggle.”
Commenting on the display of images linked to the RSS in Raj Bhavan, Pinarayi Vijayan said that the governor’s office should not be used to promote the ideological agenda of the RSS.
The imagination of presenting the country as a respectable human figure was first conceptualised by Azimullah Khan, the close associate of Nana Saheb Peshwas in the mid-19th Century. He had gone to England to plead for issues related to the pension for Nana Saheb. There, he witnessed an atmosphere of hatred for the Indians. Out of self-respect for the country and countrymen, he coined the phrase “Mader-e-Watan Bharat ki jai’. (Hail the mother nation) This was used by the people here quite extensively. Later, Avnindranath Chatterjee drew a figure of a religion-neutral woman as Bharat Mata.
During the freedom movement, many slogans were used to enthuse the people in the struggle against the British. Jawaharlal Nehru presented Bharat Mata in a lovely way. One of the episodes of Bharat Ek Khoj by Shyam Benegal, based on Nehru’s ‘Discovery of India’, deals with the issue. Nehru is addressing a public meeting in a village. The audience is shouting ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’. Nehru asks the people who Bharat Mata is. They respond variously that Bharat Mata is the mountains, rivers, jungles and the land of the country. Adding on to this, Nehru says that yes, they are Bharat Mata, but above all, Bharat Mata is the collectiveness of the people of India.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in his novel Anand Math gives a total Hindu goddess image of Bharat Mata and composes Vande Mataram around that. In this song, the total imagery after the first two stanzas is that of a Hindu goddess. That was the reason that only its first two stanzas were kept as the National Song, while a more plural and inclusive ‘Jana Mana Gana’ by Rabindra Nath Tagore was chosen as the National Anthem.
As RSS has a different version of nationalism, the Hindu nationalism, they tried to defame Jana Gana Mana as being written in praise of George V. It says the word ‘Adhinayak’ stands for George V, while Tagore himself clarified that Adhinayak there stands for the power which has been shaping the destiny of our nation for centuries.
In 2020, as has been noted above, Bhagwat again wanted all the youth to make it a habit to chant this slogan at every suitable time. While releasing the book ‘Kaun Hai Bharat Mata’ by eminent academic Purushottam Agarwal, late Dr Manmohan Singh made a very important observation. We know the slogan of Bharat Mata ki Jai is raised by a section of the people. Some people want to impose this on everybody, he said that nationalism and the Bharat Mata Ki Jai slogan were “being misused to construct a militant and purely emotional idea of India that excludes millions of residents and citizens.” One can add to this that the Kerala governor is using his constitutional post to propagate the symbolism of RSS ideology.
Our country is very diverse and plural, our symbolism best comes in the ones selected by the Constituent Assembly. RSS-inspired Bharat Mata carries a saffron flag, which is contrary to the Tricolour, adopted by our Constitution. As RSS is opposed to the Indian Constitution, it also criticises the Tricolour, our flag. For the RSS, number three does not spell a good omen. Its ideologues have regularly been arguing in favour of the Saffron flag as our national flag. Incidentally, in RSS shakhas, it is saffron that is hoisted. The Saffron flag is also regarded as the symbol of RSS. Also, RSS did not hoist the Tricolour at its head office for 52 years.
As far as the Governor Arlekar following the practice which is not in tune with the Constitution, we should know that for RSS trained swayamsevaks and pracharks, RSS and its ideology come first and foremost. Let’s recall the Janata Party Government formed in the elections post-Emergency. The RSS’s political offspring, the Bhartiya Jana Sangh (BJS), had merged into the Janata Party. So, some members of the Janata Party called for the BJS component to cut off its relations with the RSS. Instead of that, they preferred to walk out of the Janata Party government and formed the Bhartiya Janata Party. Can we expect those with an RSS background to follow the norms of the Constitution rather than following the norms that suit their Hindu nationalist ideology?
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Ram Puniyani is an eminent author, activist and a former professor at IIT Mumbai. The views expressed here are personal and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them.
