Making the case for a new kind of visual history, The Goddess and the Nation charts the pictorial life and career of Bharat Mata, "Mother India," the Indian nation imagined as mother/goddess, embodiment of national territory, and unifying symbol for the country's diverse communities. Soon after her appearance in the late nineteenth century, artists began to picture her in various media, incorporating the map of India into her visual persona. Filled with illustrations, including 100 in colour, the book draws on visual studies, gender studies, and the history of cartography to offer a rigorous analysis of Mother India's appearance in painting, print, poster art, and pictures from the late nineteenth century to the present. In The Goddess and the Nation, Sumathi Ramaswamy teaches us about pictorial ways of learning the form of the nation, of how to live with it?and ultimately to die for it.