“Earth, home, protection”: an encounter with the mother as “other” among Hindu migrants in Rome

Thinking about one’s own mother as an individual, distinct from the role she has taken on, is all but an obvious process: it implies recognising that she is an “Other”, with wishes and contradictions of her own, which may likely be in conflict with the institutionalised ideal of motherhood sanctioned by patriarchal societies. This is the case of Hindu India, whose religious and popular narratives pervasively and compellingly popularise virtuous models of womanhood, discouraging any attitude that could clash with them. The present paper, then, aims at recounting narratives of the “maternal” emerged during my fieldwork among Hindu migrants living in Rome. Through the psychoanalytical reading of a wellknown Hindu myth and the adoption of the psychoanalytical concepts of “incorporation” and “introjection”, I present a repertoire of voices narrating the “maternal” and its striking contradictions.