No Country for Mothers: Reimagining Motherhood and Mothering in Contemporary India with Special Reference to Jammu and Kashmir
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Building on Rich’s (1976) foundational distinction between “motherhood” as a patriarchal institution and “mothering” as a lived, embodied, and relational experience, this article explores how maternal identities are constructed, contested, and reimagined within contemporary India, with particular focus on the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Taking a cultural studies approach following Woodward (2015; 2022) and Hall (1997), it investigates the politics of representation and the material conditions that shape maternal experiences across the subcontinent. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from sociology, political theory, gender studies, and cultural analysis, the article examines the maternal as both a site of meaning-making and sociopolitical negotiation. In contemporary India, motherhood has emerged as an increasingly prominent and contested issue—idealized in religious and nationalist rhetoric, yet materially unsupported for vast numbers of women (Bagchi, 2017). This disjuncture between symbolic valorization and structural neglect is particularly acute in Jammu and Kashmir, where ongoing political conflict, economic precarity, and entrenched patriarchal norms intersect to produce a uniquely challenging terrain for mothers (Shafakat & Ors. v. J&K Bank, 2026). The article argues for the necessity of introducing a matricentric perspective in the Indian context—a mode of feminist thinking and activism that centres mothers’ experiences and foregrounds the maternal as a critical site of resistance, negotiation, and possibility (Frigeni, 2024a; O'Reilly, 2021).
Institution: Cluster University of Jammu
Language: English
Topic: Gender and Feminist Studies
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7168787243