Incarnations of the Mother Goddess

Mother's Day in India didn't exist when I was growing up. The notion of buying your mom flowers on a particular day of the year, or taking her out to dinner, seemed crassly commercial. Even today, Mother's Day is not as big a deal in India as it is in America. Which is not to say that India in general, and Hindus in particular, don't celebrate motherhood. They do. Both Hindu myths and modern day Bollywood movies are rife with stories of men and women who sacrifice everything simply because their mothers said so.

The Ramayana, Hinduism's most famous epic, is set in motion because Rama's stepmother, Queen Kaikeyi, banishes Rama to the forest so her own son can rule the kingdom. Rama, ever the dutiful son, takes this to heart and gives up kingdom, wealth, title, and power because Mother Kaikeyi said so.

The Mahabharata, another great Hindu epic, features five Pandava princes who marry one princess, Draupadi, because their mother inadvertently commands them to. Arjuna, one of the Pandava princes, wins Draupadi's hand in a contest. He triumphantly returns home with his new bride and his brothers. "Look, mother," he says from the door. "Look what I won." Without turning around, the mother replies, "Whatever it is, share it equally with your brothers." And so it is that Draupadi becomes the wife of all five brothers because Mother Kunti said so.

Even modern-day Hindi movies feature heroes who risk life and limb because their mother is captured by the villain; or in other instances, heroes who bring villains to the sword's edge only to spare them because the mother says, "No, son. Thou shalt not kill."

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