Maternal Fictions: Writing the Mother in Indian Women’s Fiction

In light of the current re-appropriation of the idea of Bharat Mata (Mother India) and the resurgence of patriarchal notions of motherhood propagated by right-wing Hindu forces, a critical examination of Indian maternal narratives is more necessary than ever. Connecting motherhood studies and literary studies, Indrani Karmakar’s pioneering study, Maternal Fictions, emerges as a timely and critical intervention into the domain of motherhood as presented in selected Indian women’s fictions. Recognizing the postcolonial concern of nationalist identities imagined through maternal images, Karmakar shifts the focus from the metaphorical to the material dimension of motherhood, an under-researched field, to address key questions such as “what it means to be a mother” and “what possibilities these polyphonic maternal narratives offer” (5). Through a nuanced analysis of the complex textual maternal identities and practices, Karmakar convincingly argues that these fictions problematize dominant motherhood ideologies and resist the resurgent homogenizing tendencies in India, therefore inviting readers to reflect on “the literary, socio-political and philosophical questions relating maternity in its increasingly complex forms and shapes” (18–19).

Karmakar’s book brings together a plethora of Anglophone and Bhasha writings by female authors from diverse regional, religious, class, and caste backgrounds. What binds these writers, including well-known writers such as Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande and underrepresented voices like Urmila Pawar and Gogu Shyamala, is their shared preoccupation with maternal subjects. Drawing upon feminist scholarship on motherhood and postcolonial feminism, Karmakar organizes the six-chapter monograph into five thematic areas of maternal ambivalence, caste and maternal agency, the mother–daughter relationship, motherhood and diaspora, and non-biological motherhood. While not a few literary critics have offered some insightful analyses of representations of motherhood in Indian women’s writing, Karmakar’s monograph-length study stands out for its more comprehensive coverage of maternal matters and a more rigorous examination of the transformative potential of demystified maternal acts, along with the latent tensions and ambivalence, making it an especially refreshing contribution to Indian feminist writing.

For instance, Chapter 1 astutely investigates the deviant maternal figures in the novels of Arundhati Roy and Anita Desai. These characters not only subvert the dominant ideologies of motherhood by acts of abandonment and perinatal depression, but also reveal their intricate subjectivities characterized by feelings of conviction, guilt, and ambivalence, thereby making motherhood humane. Karmakar continues by turning her attention to the “Other” side of the nationalist construction in her next chapter. By pivoting on the literary representations of mothers from marginal castes and communities—in the works of Urmila Pawar, Gogu Shyamala, and Mahasweta Devi—she underscores the inextricability of maternal identity and Dalit identity. Moreover, she elucidates a profound ambivalence within these maternal figures, wherein “both agency and victimhood uncomfortably co-exist” (67). Chapter 3, incorporating Deshpande’s and Salma’s works, delves into the often-overlooked thematic of the mother–daughter relationship. Through a psychological and socio-cultural analysis of different mother–daughter pairs, Karmakar teases out core emotions including the shared sense of loss, and mutual identification, highlighting their uneasy relationship marked by “the coexistence of conflict and compassion” (16).

Chapter 4 delves into the diasporic maternal experience, a crucial aspect that researchers, including Karmakar, cannot afford to overlook, as portrayed by diasporic writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Thrity Umrigar, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. It offers an in-depth exploration of diverse maternal roles, examining both those who successfully integrate into diasporic life and those who struggle to do so. Furthermore, in Chapter 5, in her attempt to embrace an inclusive definition of motherhood, Karmakar centers on literary non-mothers, such as female kin and paid nannies, in the texts of Desai, Tishani Doshi, and Nandita Bagchi, and elaborates their potential to challenge the pronatalist paradigm by their “practice of mothering” (120) while also suggesting the underlying conventional gender roles and power asymmetries.

Maternal Fictions surveys a wide landscape of maternal identities, encompassing not only the dominant upper-class/-caste Hindu mothers, but also those from other religious communities (Muslim and diasporic Parsi) and marginalized groups (Dalit and tribal), underscoring the complexities inherent in diverse maternal experiences. One of Karmakar’s most valuable contributions is her resistance to a unified, homogenized definition of motherhood. Meanwhile, this comprehensive work, with vernacular literature included, disrupts the monolithic postcolonial interpretations of well-worn English writings, fostering a pluralistic understanding of Indian literature. While a comparative analysis with maternal narratives from other postcolonial regions could have provided additional global insights, this minor limitation does not detract from the fact that Maternal Fictions remains a pivotal contribution to the field and serves as an essential resource for scholars of postcolonial literature, Indian women’s writing, and South Asian studies.