Question

Which of the following statement(s) about Bharat Mata is/are true?

• A. Bankim Chandra personified India as a mother goddess in the 1870s.
• B. Bharat Mata finds herself mentioned in Jana Gana Mana.
• C. Abanindranath Tagore painted Bharat Mata at the time of the Swadeshi Movement.
• D. Bharat Mata was painted as a beautiful young ascetic figure.

Answer 1

Answer: (A), (C), (D)

Bharat Mata was painted as a beautiful young ascetic figure.

In the 1870s, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote the famous ‘Vande Mataram’- a hymn to the motherland. In this hymn, he personified India as a mother goddess. He later included the hymn in his novel Anandamath. In 1905, during the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, ‘Vande Mataram’ was widely sung. Abanindranath Tagore, moved by the Swadeshi Movement, painted the famous image of Bharat Mata. The icon of Bharat Mata very quickly acquired wide-ranging visual forms and registers such as calendar, lithograph, border of dhoti, matchbox labels, and cartoons. The identity of India came to be visually associated with the image of Bharat Mata. Devotion to the mother figure was also seen as evidence of one’s nationalism.