Motherland — a geopious notion
People are often willing to go so far as to die for “their” country, “their” land. The “land” and “country” they are willing to die for may be a piece of property, it may be a land for a culture to live in, it may be a “holy” place, and so on. The scale varies.
Fervour and devotion for a place are called geopiety. Geopiety covers a range of attachments and is expressed in many different ways. Art, architecture, laws and other forms of culture are routinely used to express it.
No nation refers to itself as weak, boring, immoral, lazy, cowardly, or negligible. On the contrary, nations refer to themselves as beautiful, divine, moral, brave, important, and, overall, just ‘Heaven on Earth.’ People may disagree with these characterizations, but these do exist and play a very significant role in fostering cohesion. Nations use such references as a ‘centripetal force’ — a uniting force.
Songs, hymns, legends and so on are important vehicles for this. Every nation’s anthem, too, is an example of geopiety. A nation’s anthem is only about itself, not about any other country — one nation’s anthem will not praise or glorify another nation.
In a nation as culturally diverse as India, “nationalism” is often used to evoke a sense of cohesion, of unity. Cultural integration and human-environment integration are very important aspects of our idea of nation — they are also part of geography.
Our national anthem, janaganamana … is full of both elements. Our national hymn, vande maataram … could be for our nation or for all Earth — the word maataram (‘mother’) could be for Mother Earth or Mother India.
The pre-independence, pre-British era had a very fragmented India. Hundreds of princely states vied with each other for power, territory, and resources. Each had its own cultural characteristics. However, there has always been some sense of a larger ‘land’ called Bhaaratam.
Even though the powerful elites (the princely rulers) fought among each other, the ordinary people still traveled a lot.
When people travel, they meet others. When they meet, they share ideas with each other. It may be a song, a raaga, techniques and technologies to do things, arts, sciences, stories, beliefs, and so on. Human circulation brings about the circulation of ideas.
With these, cultural beliefs and practices change slowly over time. However, we don’t usually lose all of our old cultural systems. We try to hold on to the familiar, old patterns to an extent. This means, we can identify cultural regions. Even now, we can identify, for example, regions in India based on language, cuisine, ethnicity, and so on. The ubiquitous (i.e., ‘generally found everywhere’) presence of the salwar kameez worn by women is a very visible example. This adoption has not removed the tradition of many women wearing the bindi on their forehead or wearing a sari.
As cultural exchanges are inevitable in a free-flowing population, there is naturally a desire to balance the original with the new. People may also fear that the ‘good old ways’ are being lost to unacceptable modern trends.
The larger form of this fear is that the nation may disintegrate. This fear may or may not be well-founded, but it occurs. In this age of rapid communications and spread of ideas, this fear is quite great. Just look at the often violent resistance to ‘new’ ideas and the struggle to uphold ‘tradition’!
In earlier times, poets were very important agents of propagating ideas of unity. Their compositions were taken up by wandering minstrels who carried the songs to the places they visited — yes, spread of ideas!
In more modern times, the mass media are the minstrels who can reach often far-off places more efficiently, effectively, and faster. For example, janaganamana, spread through people learning it from each other in person, in groups, through loudspeakers and radios broadcasting the song to large numbers of people, in different places, at once. The official status it enjoys as the national anthem also helps its spread. No matter where in India, the national anthem is sung with some degree or other of fervour.
Other songs have also provided us with such articulations. I give you two examples here.
The naada geetey of Karnataka jaya bhaarata jananiya tanujaatey (composed by the amazing poet Sri K V Puttappa, popularly known as ‘Kuvempu’) depicts Karnataka as ‘daughter born of the body of Mother India.’ The song clearly invokes and evokes the natural features of Karnataka, the cultural icons of Karnataka, and the same for India. It clearly connects Karnataka’s natural and cultural heritage with that of India as a whole. Thus, Karnataka is a proud child of Mother India.
Any anthem tends to at least partially set aside differences and tries to give one larger identity to people — ‘people of Karnataka’, not ‘a Tamizhan in Karnataka’, ‘a Malayali in Karnataka’, etc.
Likewise, the nationalist Tamizh poet, Sri Subrahmanya Bharati has composed songs on national unity in which he invokes and evokes the ties that bind India together. Perhaps his most famous one is sindhu nadiyin misai nilaviniley — “under the full-moon-light of the Sindhu river.” He talks of the young maidens of Chera country (Kerala), beautiful Telugu, the agriculture, the rivers, the mountains, and so on. The idea is to connect and link all of these into one larger whole.
Thus, smaller geographical identities (southerner, northerner, northeasterner, etc.) are brought together under a larger (Indian) identity. The smaller identities are not denied or erased. Quite the opposite. They are celebrated. But they are also shown to be part of a larger, shared, geographical identity.
On Republic Day, this idea of celebrating ‘unity in diversity’ is on display in the massive parade in New Delhi. Along with the demonstration of ‘national unity’, the country also puts its military power on show. This is propaganda. And it is part of the image that India gives to her own people and to the rest of nations of the world.
So, watch the parade this Republic Day and look at how the geography of cultures plays out in the form of the floats, dances, songs, etc.
Things you can do:
- Watching the parade in New Delhi and the one in the capital of your own State, what are the chief similarities and differences that you notice? (This is also a good way of learning about that important geography concept — scale.)
- Listen to the Kannada song jaya bhaarata jananiya tanujaatey and identify the various natural features and cultural features (especially icons) that the song mentions. Which of these are ‘local’ and which of these are ‘national’?
- Likewise analyse the Tamizh song sindhu nadiyin misai nilaviniley and identify ‘local’ and ‘national’ features mentioned.
- Similarly, analyse the Hindi song janaganamana.
- And here is another very popular geopious production on the unity of the nation of India. What geographic strands do you see connecting together here?
- If you know other Indian languages, research the anthems of those states and analyse them similarly.
- BONUS: Here is janaganamana by deaf children in sign language.
(A version of this article appeared in the Deccan Herald Student Edition on 15 January 2015)
