36 SOCIAL SCIENTIST how women could be utilised as symbols, for proclaiming a better status for a particular sect. The women's question became a site for composition of various group identities. Out of these debates, at the turn of the century, a powerful image of a moral, nurturing, spiritual Mother India was to develop, symbolizing the essence of the cultural superiority of the Indians. But this was preceded by a period when this image had not yet crystallized, it was in the process of formation. This paper is a study of those debates in urban Punjab, which ultimately led to the conceptualization of that nationalist image. The participants were various sects and communities, who, in the meanwhile, were trying to make their women 'moral', to achieve dignity and self-respect for themselves. There seems to have taken place an important development in the debate on women's question from the time in which Dayananda was writing. Dayananda's interest lay in creating a 'manly' race of Aryas. And he tried to utilize women primarily for the reproduction of this race. The issue of women's morality was undoubtedly important but it remained subsidiary to this all-important concern. Dayananda's concern with 'manliness' echoed a similar interest displayed by the middle-class elite elsewhere in India. Speaking of Bankim Chandra's insistence on a Bengali historiography for history of Bengal (and India) a part of his project of nation-formation (jatipratishtha), Ranajit Guha has shown the central place of bahubol (a physical strength of arms) of Hindus in it.4 It was especially important to show the physical prowess of the Hindus, when the physical power of the British seemed insuperable (after the Mutiny, and the triumph of the British in the Anglo-Sikh wars). However, in time, the nationalist project became equally if not more concerned with establishing the spiritual superiority of the Indians. The spiritual sphere was seen as an area where the contribution of the Indians was unsurpassed. Bankimchandra, in his later years, along with stressing the importance of bahubol was amongst the first nationalist ideologues' to proclaim India's spiritual and moral domination to the world.5 This changing idiom of nationalism, perhaps took place because the Indians felt their physical powers established (Lajpat Rai, e.g., would take the physical parity of Indians with Europeans for granted). The 'discovery' of the Aryan origin of both these peoples may have contributed to that self-confidence. However, it was a concern that was not altogether given up, and a significant section of Arya Samaj stayed involved in that debate. Also the colonial state, by the end of the nineteenth century gave up legitimization of its rule on the argument of its superior physical force, as it assumed the role of 'mai-baap' of Indian masses. The 1890s in the Punjab, witnessed the beginnings of this changing rhetoric of nationalism. The important concern with physical fitness