Bhawani Bharati (Bharat that is India) | 4. The Mystery of Form and Name

For what is a nation? What is our mother-country? It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha-Mardini sprang into being from the Shaktis of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharati, is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred millions of people; but she is inactive, imprisoned in the magic circle of tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons. [Bande Mataram, CWSA 06:83]

Here comes the mystery of the Name and the Form. To the ancient Indian mind the name and form had their own significance in the sense that they must represent the truth of the soul. Naming of a child is still an important event. It must be in harmony with the inner truth or the inner being of the child. When seekers went for initiation to a spiritual Master, very often his name would be changed to be representative of what the aspirant’s true being represented. It was regarded as a second birth. Some Masters including Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Aurobindo would look at the form or the photograph of a person to enter into his soul, the true being that is hidden behind its physical appearance. What applies to an individual applies to a nation as well. What we crudely call today as the boundaries of a nation is in reality its outer form as foreseen in the Ideal World. To keep this form intact is, from the spiritual point of view as important as not transgressing or dismembering the form of other nation units. The shaping and reshaping of the outer form takes centuries and millennia sometimes. But once it is moulded then it is important to safeguard it. The rightful self-defense of a nation is not only of practical but also deeply spiritual value. That is why we see the ancient Scriptures of India describing the geography of the country in a way as if it is a living being, a goddess inhabiting this seed plot that we call as a country. When we look at India from the larger cosmic vision with reference to the world it will look somewhat like a heart that once joined two continents. But if we look at it in itself we can see the goddess there with Himalaya peaks as her head while the clouds above and around her like flowing hairs. The Ganga and the Yamuna are like garlands flowing around her neck and the Vindhyas are like the girdle around her waist. The ocean is washing her feet. The lion opens its mouth on the Western frontiers while her right hand holds the trident. Her left hand is dipping into the ocean waters stirring them with her light. All around her is the radiance born of sacrifice in the form of the different parts of the body of Sati, the consort of Mahadeva. Her death is not a death but a sacrifice only to emerge stronger and even more radiant as the daughter of the Mountains. The seven rivers that run across her body are like ornaments, the forests are her raiment and the cities are the jewels that she adorns. Each of these cities have a history in antiquity linking it to the gods. The great Scriptures, the Vedas and Upanishads, the Gita, the Puranas are her voice. All creatures who take shelter in her being are like so many cells of her body. Some love her and help her function smoothly and fulfil the mission for which she has arisen out of the folds of night as the dawn in the eastern skies. Others are indifferent to her, ready to exploit all that she can give materially and spiritually but return nothing. Still others with darkened and distorted minds and crooked hearts long to harm, mutilate and dismember her and commit the greatest of offence one can ever imagine, of harming one’s own mother. Yet the gracious mother shelters them all giving them all that they need generously and equally without special favours, without those outer considerations of religion, ideologies, self-interests that human beings bring in their relationships.

And yet we must not make the mistake that her generosity is blind to the mischiefs of her children. She carries the ages of Wisdom in her heart and if needed she can assume the form of Durga or even more fiercely wear the mask of Kali, the goddess terrible and fierce and magnificent and powerful and divine. For Bharat Mata is a Shakti, a goddess, a portion of the Universal Mother, a power of the Divine Mother and behind her stand the army of the gods that no Titan and its forces, – cruel and demonic and the undivine hordes that surge from the bowels of the dark nether worlds and fill God’s fair world with carnage and massacre and plunder and ruin, can eventually resist. It is because of this that Bharat is the singular example of a nation attacked so many times and for so long by powerful Titanic forces and yet none could completely occupy her fields or destroy her culture and the light of the Ages she has borne. Temporarily it was dimmed but never extinguished, temporarily certain portions of her body was overpowered but her mind and heart always resisted until out of her vast and mighty souls hero warriors and sages emerged and armed with the fiat of her word and the sword of her knowledge and power threw back the powers of darkness and restored her body. And whatever is not yet restored is bound to be restored soon for her Light is needed not only for herself. Nor is her rise only for her own good. Bharat that is India rises for the good of the world. Bharat Mata has the wisdom, the key to solve the problems of the world and humanity in ways that can endure the rub and change of Time. After the frustrated efforts of Religions and Ideologies and Science and Industry to find a lasting solution to the problems of man, after the failed efforts of Imperialism and Democracy and Socialism and Communism and Technology to unite the world, the eyes of the world are bound to turn towards Bharat for the key is here. Having gone through every possible ups and downs, every possible invasion and assimilating every possible diversity and divergences, after experimenting with ultimate aspects of materialism and spirituality, without losing her soul, Bharat is singularly qualified to lead the world and find not just sustainable but lasting solutions. That is the reason why destiny is making Bharat that is India rise again, or shall we say Bhavani Bharati. It is here that we come to the mystery of the Name.