Mothers: Beyond Maternalism

Mothers are so splendiferous that no one can deny their bio-social presence. Although a mother is always a mother, but motherhood is in reality culturespecfic with respect to different social locations. Then comes the issue of particularism in the study of mothers and motherhood, and the paradigmatic differences between motherhood of the East and the West. Here again language matters as language and reality create each other. So the term matritva in Indic culture cannot easily be equated with the European construct of motherhood. The hermeneutics of motherhood in the context of Indian society should entail the 'feelings' of Indian mothers in dharmic perspective where matritva has got a divine dimension. Thus a unique socio-religious status has been bestowed on mothers in dharmic culture signifying a kind of social agency crossing the limits of usual study of motherhood.