Why I hesitate to call my country “motherland?”

Is it the tense, convoluted, complex relationship that daughters have with their mothers, the kind that has spawned books, articles and doctoral research works across disciplines that makes me hesitate so? After all, a daughter-mother relationship, that between two women is not an easy one. It is a power struggle mired with desire, anger, jealousy as much as it is with passion and belonging in a way that only two women can understand—of being and becoming. It is a relationship that develops in the shadow of the father whose presence endarkens, smudges and alters the quality of our emotions. So it is that and more.

Is it that as a cultural idiom, for me as an Indian woman, it does not indicate a sense of permanence but that of departing? For don’t we women in India depart from our mother’s house, our childhood memories and belongings, of sweet-nothings to a life of responsibility and accountability in our husband’s home? A departing that to the parents is a relief from the burden called the “girl-child,” a relief of no longer having to watch when she comes home, with whom she goes out, of being done with saving money for her marriage, and a prayer that there won’t be any more money needed to be saved for her. A departing that is tinged with familial duties and obligations—the first time when she will return home with her husband, the first pregnancy, and ritualistic presence in all of religious events in her new family. And for the daughter, a ritualistic gratitude for all that her mother’s house gave her –in Bengal, as she steps out, the daughter throws puffed rice three times over her head into what was once her own house, as a sign of gratitude. So it is this and more.

Is it that the term “motherland” does not evoke testosterone-pride and desire to protect and instead indicates that female helplessness when your mother and your upbringing are criticized? For wherever we go, we never become us. We are the porters of cultural traditions—by what we wear, how we cook, how we conduct rituals, and what we say—we merely carry water pots of cultural fatwas that have been passed to us through our mothers. And every time, we break those pots, the mother is invoked in litany of insults. 

And you watch helplessly—the mother becomes the symbol of your powerlessness. So it is this and more.

Is it that when people equate gratitude to motherland to gratitude to mother’s milk, it confuses women within whom that milk flows? For who does not remember the engorged breasts, tender and painful to touch, finding relief in the infant that suckles and suckles every few hours? For who does not remember the milk mess during the missed feeding times, the frantic rush of women to clean themselves in India and to pump milk in United States? For who does not remember feeling like a cow that needs to be milked, of a disdain for this bodily dependence, and of the relief when the infant finally weans? And when it is over, who does not remember the confusing and yet, most overwhelming desire to do it all over again—be the cow and seek your calf again? To what do I pay gratitude? So it is this and more.

Is it that the call for the motherland is essentially a male call—the call to which he responds best—to protect and seek self in the act of protection? Is it that women respond better to the call to nurture? While look at our mothers helplessly, we come to our being as mothers. Our fierceness aroused around our cubs, our alertness and skills toned around the gurgling sounds of infants asking for love. It is as mothers we daughters come to be whole and full. Mothers of human children, of small creative projects, of ideas and beliefs, of this earth, this land, this country. And so I say, I am most fierce when I call my country as my daughterland—protective of her lands, her forests, her resources and her people, proud of her qualities and abilities and her potential, strict when she needs disciplining so that she can wean off bad habits and attitudes, and yet forgiving again and again as she thrashes around, hurting and injuring me. So I say I am most fiercely loving when I call this land my daughterland and smile and wait for her to grow into all she can be.

I cannot say Jai Hind—Victory to India, for in the crooks of my heart, there are no wars to be fought and won. There is only an upsurge of love. So I chortle—I love you, my dearest one and blessings.