Benoy Sarkar, a Bengali intellectual, wrote an article, ‘The Futurism…

Benoy Sarkar, a Bengali intellectual, wrote an article, ‘The Futurism of Young Asia’. Given below are two statements: one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other is labelled as Reason (R).

Assertion (A): Benoy Sarkar considered the Oriental Bengal School of Art regressive and anti-modern.

Reason (R): E. B. Havell, an Englishman, was in favour of return to native art to create a true modern Indian art.

In the light of the above statements, choose the correct answer from the options given below:

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: option 2

The correct answer is Option (2) → Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is NOT the correct explanation of (A).

Assertion (A): Benoy Sarkar considered the Oriental Bengal School of Art regressive and anti-modern. — True. He sided with the anglicists, and for him the Bengal School was regressive and anti-modern.

Reason (R): E. B. Havell, an Englishman, was in favour of return to native art to create a true modern Indian art. — True. Havell stood on the other side of the divide from Sarkar.

Why R does not explain A? R gives Havell’s view, not the cause of Sarkar’s view. The two together only show that the divide was not based on race. The correct reason for A: Sarkar considered modernism that was growing in Europe as authentic, so the Oriental Bengal School looked regressive to him.

Note: This topic was not named in the CUET 2026 syllabus, but it was part of the NCERT chapter. In 2025 and 2026, NTA also asked questions on topics in NCERT that the CUET syllabus did not name. So our mocks have questions from every part of the NCERT chapter, to give you enough practice. Read the whole chapter, not only the sub-topics named in the syllabus.

NCERT (2026-27): “Different Concepts of Modernism: Western and Indian The divide between anglicists and orientalists, as mentioned earlier, was not based on race. Take the case of the Bengali intellectual, Benoy Sarkar, who sided with the anglicists and considered modernism that was growing in Europe as authentic in an article, ‘The Futurism of Young Asia’. For him, the Oriental Bengal School of Art was regressive and anti-modern. On the other hand, it was E. B. Havell, an Englishman, who was in favour of return to native art to create a true modern Indian art.…”