Who painted the famous image of Bharat Mata to visually associate the identity of India, as a Nation ?

Correct — option (2), Abnindranath.

NCERT's Class X history text (India and the Contemporary World – II, chapter 'Nationalism in India') gives both the stem's idea and its answer.

It says that in the twentieth century 'the identity of India came to be visually associated with the image of Bharat Mata'. It then says: 'Moved by the Swadeshi movement, Abanindranath Tagore painted his famous image of Bharat Mata.' Its figure caption dates the painting to 1905.

In this painting, NCERT writes, Bharat Mata is an ascetic figure, 'calm, composed, divine and spiritual'. The caption adds that she dispenses learning, food and clothing, and that the mala in one hand stresses her ascetic quality.

Wikipedia notes the work was first titled Banga Mata (Mother Bengal) and later renamed Bharat Mata, on Sister Nivedita's suggestion.

The Hindi version of this question asks which painter first (sarvapratham) created the picture. Booklet instruction 12 treats the English version as standard in any ambiguity between the two, and the English asks who painted the famous image.

So the painter is option (2), Abnindranath, the printed spelling of Abanindranath Tagore.

The idea to remember: Bankim Chandra created the image in words ('Vande Mataram', 1870s); Abanindranath Tagore painted it (1905).

Why the others are wrong

• (1)
  Gagnendranath — Gaganendranath Tagore (1867–1938) was Abanindranath's brother, a painter and cartoonist of the Bengal school. Wikipedia records that the brothers founded the Indian Society of Oriental Art in 1907.

  He is known for cartoons and for modernist experiments from 1920; Partha Mitter calls him the only Indian painter before the 1940s who used the language of Cubism. The 1905 Bharat Mata is his brother's.

• (3)
  Bankim Chandra — This is the trap in NCERT's own wording, which says the image of Bharat Mata 'was first created by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay'.

  Bankim created the image in words. In the 1870s he wrote 'Vande Mataram' as a hymn to the motherland, later included in his novel Anandamath. The stem asks who painted the image, and NCERT names Abanindranath as the painter.

• (4)
  Rabindranath Tagore — Rabindranath was Abanindranath's uncle. He came to painting late: Wikipedia says 'At sixty, Tagore took up drawing and painting', and his paintings were exhibited in Paris and London in 1930.

  In NCERT's chapter he appears for something else: in Bengal he began collecting ballads, nursery rhymes and myths, and led the movement for folk revival.

A nation is an abstract idea, so nationalists gave it a face. NCERT's Class X text explains that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists personified nations as female figures, such as Marianne in France and Germania in Germany.

Bharat Mata did this for India. The figure could carry meaning through what she held: in Abanindranath's painting, learning, food, clothing and a mala.

NCERT adds that the image later took many forms in popular prints, and that devotion to this mother figure came to be seen as evidence of one's nationalism.

Key facts

• NCERT (Class X): in the twentieth century the identity of India came to be visually associated with the image of Bharat Mata.
• NCERT (Class X): Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote 'Vande Mataram' in the 1870s as a hymn to the motherland; it was later included in Anandamath.
• NCERT's caption dates Abanindranath Tagore's Bharat Mata to 1905; she dispenses learning, food and clothing and holds a mala.
• Wikipedia: the painting was first titled Banga Mata (Mother Bengal) and later renamed Bharat Mata.
• NCERT (Class X): by 1921 Gandhiji had designed the Swaraj flag, a red, green and white tricolour with a spinning wheel in the centre.

Common traps

• Reading NCERT's 'first created by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay' as a painting: Bankim created the image in a hymn and a novel; Abanindranath painted it.
• Mixing the Tagore brothers: Abanindranath painted Bharat Mata, while Gaganendranath is known for cartoons and Cubist-influenced painting.
• Picking the Nobel laureate Tagore: Rabindranath took up drawing and painting only at sixty, long after 1905.

UnlockIAS will link similar questions from RAS Pre 2013 here once that paper is published on this site.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who wrote 'Vande Mataram' in the 1870s as a hymn to the motherland, later included in the novel Anandamath?

  • (a)Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
  • (b)Rabindranath Tagore
  • (c)Abanindranath Tagore
  • (d)Natesa Sastri
  Answer(1) — NCERT (Class X) credits the hymn and the novel to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Option (2) collected ballads and led the folk revival in Bengal; option (3) painted Bharat Mata in 1905; option (4) published a four-volume collection of Tamil folk tales.
• practice — not a real PYQ

  The tricolour flag designed during the Swadeshi movement in Bengal had which colours?

  • (a)Red, green and yellow
  • (b)Red, green and white
  • (c)Saffron, green and blue
  • (d)Red, white and blue
  Answer(1) — NCERT (Class X) describes it as red, green and yellow, with eight lotuses and a crescent moon. Option (2) is the Swaraj flag Gandhiji had designed by 1921, with a spinning wheel; options (3) and (4) match neither flag NCERT describes.