Published on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of India’s Independence, Sugata Bose’s collection of essays, The Nation As Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood, could not have been better timed. In the context of the fractured nature of the Indian State and the distortion of democratic principles and nationalism, the need to revisit the lineages of the multiple visions of the national ethos is indeed pressing.

Bose’s perception and critique of accepted theories of nationalism, sovereignty and the federal nature of Centre-state relations inform the interrelated pieces. These include scholarly essays, review articles, lectures and Lok Sabha speeches. Bose’s argument evolves through explication and interpretation of such themes as patriotism, majoritarianism, nationhood and the binaries of secularism and communalism in the context of colonial and post-colonial discourses.

The opening set of 10 essays, some of which are revised versions of earlier presentations, covers a wide range of themes. The first three are set against the backdrop of the Babri Masjid demolition and post-1991 economic liberalization. The remaining ones deal with the author’s other visions of nationhood, all of which are well annotated. Selected speeches delivered in Parliament between 2014 and 2017 make up the second set of writings.

“The Nation as Mother”, the ‘title essay’, encapsulates the theme of crafting and positioning the Mother figure in popular imagination in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The process of engaging with the colonial power had begun. Would this period witness the gradual emergence of a collective identity from within a mosaic of multiple social entities and fragmented identities? The initial locus of the effort to inspire such a collective consciousness was religion. The deployment of sacral symbols in different spheres of literary and artistic productions was intended to invoke a sense of rootedness and emotional attachment to a concrete geopolitical space. This was the (new) religious nationalism Nehru was apprehensive about. Bose, however, is wary of Nehruvian secularism and rues the mistake of “regarding religion as the enemy of the nation”.

The author illustrates the way in which the Mother figure is projected as a symbol of an engendered patriotic fervour. He directs attention to the writings of Bipin Chandra Pal, Aurobindo Ghose, and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, to Tagore’s stirring prose, poetry and lyrics, to D.L. Roy and Atul Prasad Sen and Abanindranath’s portrayal of Bharat Mata as the focal point of an emerging collective identity.

The question is whether the  crafting of this symbolic representation uniformly inspires the sentiments of the different castes and faiths. Was it inclusive enough to mobilize multiple ethnic, linguistic and religio-cultural groups? Bose argues in related essays that diversity is not necessarily oppositional to unity, that in late 19th-century India, “religious sensibility could... be perfectly compatible with a rational frame of mind”. Just as the universalism in Gandhian political philosophy, in Tagore’s writing and Vivekananda’s discourses and the cosmopolitanism espoused by Aurobindo and Subhas Chandra Bose are not antithetical to patriotism.

Bose upholds the Gandhian model of acknowledgment and acceptance of difference. An identical concern for plurality and inclusion within a “free and flexible federal union” is expressed in the selection of speeches addressed to Parliament. The inclusion of an article on M.A. Jinnah, and two speeches on Kashmir and on vigilantism in the academic arena is heartening. The resolve to address sensitive issues through reasoned objectivity and timely intervention is the mark of a historian.