Three of the following persons in colonial India favoured a return to Indian art traditions. Which one is the odd one out?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Benoy Sarkar
Option (1) E. B. Havell — Favoured Indian art. Though an Englishman, he was in favour of a return to native art to create a true modern Indian art.
Option (2) Ananda Coomaraswamy — Favoured Indian art. This art historian wrote about Swadeshi in art.
Option (3) Benoy Sarkar — Sided with the anglicists. This Bengali intellectual saw European modernism as authentic. He called the Bengal School regressive and anti-modern.
Option (4) Abanindranath Tagore — Favoured Indian art. He was the first major supporter of Swadeshi values in Indian art.
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.…” |