Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the manner in which Catholic friars responded to the popularity of the goddess in India and how medias became an essential tool to present a new constructed image of Mary to the native people.

Paper long abstract:

Christianity in India has a long history, but the major encounter with Catholicism came in the sixteenth century with the arrival of the Portuguese in Southern India.

After the arrival of Vasco de Gama in India (1498), the task of evangelization was in the hands of the missionary orders, who mostly venerated the "Immaculate Virgin". When they reached India, they found a country which had dedicated a cult to the mother goddess since antiquity, symbolizing the regenerating forces of nature.

The advent of the Roman Catholic faith introduces new images and practices. Catholic missionaries while trying to comprehend Hindu religiosity and devotion to the goddess they also had to work to translate their conception of the female divine into Hindu terms and locate the Catholic faith as at "home" in the Hindu world. They used media known to the native people while variating some patterns of representing religious content.

This paper analyses the process of construction and legitimation of a new religious tradition where medias became an essential tool to draw Hindus to the worship of Mary. The paper will discuss these issues as well as Mary's complicated entanglement in the Indian's attempt to create a national identity over the course of a century that began in 1880s. The myriad ways, in which Mother India has been visualized in painting, print poster art and pictures include an iconography, which refers directly to the Mother of Christ in the Christian tradition.