The "One Mother, Many Tongues" exhibition in Delhi’s Humayun’s Tomb forces us to rethink motherhood. Not as softness alone, but as power, rage, and protection.Chamunda with her garland of heads. Hariti, the child-devourer turned protector. Jyeshtha, who brings disease but also wards it off. These are not gentle Madonnas. They are mothers who fight.
Indian art has long understood what the West often forgets: to protect life, one must sometimes destroy. The matrikas were not nurturers in the conventional sense. They were warriors against chaos. Their exposed veins and fierce eyes are not grotesque. They are honest. This matters today. We reduce mothers to caregivers, to sacrifice. We rarely acknowledge their anger, their agency, their capacity to be fearsome. Yet every society that survived did so because women protected their own, sometimes with violence.
The exhibition also shows syncretism. A 2nd century ivory mother from Bengal mirrors Krishna on Vasudeva’s head. A Buddhist Hariti becomes a guardian deity. Art crosses borders, but the theme remains: mother as shield. In an age where women’s roles are constantly debated, these sculptures remind us that power and care are not opposites. They are twins. Museums often sanitize history. This show does not. It presents mothers as they were imagined: complex, dangerous, divine.
We need that reminder. In a world of increasing violence against women and children, perhaps we need more Chamundas -not to devour, but to stand guard.