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).