Which of the following books portrays three images of the Mother Goddess: "Mother as she was", "Mother as she is" and "Mother as she will be"?

Correct — C, Anandamath. The scene is one of the most quoted passages in Indian nationalist writing. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's Anandamath, published in 1882, is set against the famine of 1770 in Bengal and the rising of the sannyasis against Company rule. When Mahendra is brought to the rebels' hideout, the leader of the santans takes him through three chambers of the temple and shows him three images of the Mother. The first, the goddess Jagaddhatri, is the Mother as she was — the land in its plenty and its former glory. The second, Kali, black and stripped, is the Mother as she is now, wasted by famine and by the drain of her wealth. The third, Durga in her ten-armed majesty, is the Mother as she will be once her children have freed her. The passage is where Bharat Mata takes visual shape as a goddess in three tenses, and it is also the novel that carries the song Vande Mataram. The other three options are Bankim's novels too, which is what makes the question a real test: none of them contains this scene.

• (a)Durgeshnandini — Bankim's first Bengali novel, of 1865 — a romance set against the Mughal-Pathan warfare in Bengal. Its title contains the name of a goddess but the book has no temple of three images.
• (b)Kapalkundala — Bankim's romance of 1866, about a girl raised in the forest by a Kapalika ascetic. It turns on tantric ritual and personal fate, not on the nation figured as a mother.
• (d)Devi Chaudhurani — The closest of the three, since this 1884 novel is also set in the same eighteenth-century world of Bengal's agrarian disorder and also has a woman at its centre. But its heroine is a human bandit-queen, not the Mother in three images.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, 1838-1894, was a deputy magistrate in the Bengal service and the first major novelist in Bengali. Anandamath, serialised in Bangadarshan and published as a book in 1882, took the sannyasi rebellion of the late eighteenth century as its subject and turned it into a story about the country as a mother to be served and rescued. The hymn Vande Mataram was placed in that novel, and later became the song of the Swadeshi movement; the first two stanzas were adopted as the national song of India.

The question is designed so that recognising the author does not help: all four titles are Bankim's. What decides it is whether you can attach the three-image scene to a plot. The mental shortcut worth carrying is that Anandamath is the political novel of the four — famine, rebellion, an order of ascetic soldiers, and the country worshipped as a goddess — while Durgeshnandini and Kapalkundala are romances and Devi Chaudhurani is a novel of dacoity and dharma. Anything that sounds like an allegory of the nation belongs to Anandamath. A note on the printed spellings: the paper writes Durgeshnandini, Kapalkundala and Devi Chaudhurani, which are all standard transliterations of the Bengali titles.

• Anandamath was published in 1882 and is set against the Bengal famine of 1770 and the sannyasi rebellion.
• The three images shown to Mahendra are Jagaddhatri as the Mother that was, Kali as the Mother that is, and Durga as the Mother that will be.
• Vande Mataram appears in this novel; its first two stanzas were adopted as the national song of India in January 1950.
• Durgeshnandini, 1865, was Bankim's first Bengali novel; Kapalkundala followed in 1866 and Devi Chaudhurani in 1884.
• Bankim's Rajmohan's Wife, 1864, was written in English, unlike the rest of his fiction.

• Choosing Devi Chaudhurani because its title names a goddess-like figure; its heroine is a woman, not the Mother in three forms.
• Assuming the question is about the author when every option is by the same author.
• Placing Vande Mataram in Devi Chaudhurani or in a poetry collection rather than in Anandamath.

Usually by asking which novel contains a particular scene or song, or by matching a Bankim title to its historical setting.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The song Vande Mataram first appeared in which one of the following works?

  • (a)Durgeshnandini
  • (b)Anandamath
  • (c)Gitanjali
  • (d)Kapalkundala

  Answer(b) Anandamath — Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay placed the hymn in this 1882 novel, and its first two stanzas were later adopted as India's national song.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Anandamath is set against the background of which one of the following?

  • (a)The Santhal hool of 1855-56
  • (b)The Bengal famine of 1770 and the sannyasi rebellion
  • (c)The Indigo Revolt of 1859-60
  • (d)The partition of Bengal in 1905

  Answer(b) The Bengal famine of 1770 and the sannyasi rebellion — the novel follows an order of ascetic rebels formed in the wake of the famine.