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)

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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

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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

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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:

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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

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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

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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,

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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.

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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)

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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:

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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.