The British held a view of Indian art during colonial rule. Given below are two statements:
Assertion (A): Nationalist art emerged in India, with the Bengal School of Art as a prime example.
Reason (R): The British saw fine arts as European and felt that Indians lacked the training and sensibility to create it.
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
Assertion (A): Nationalist art emerged in India, with the Bengal School of Art as a prime example. — True. The Bengal School, nurtured by Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell, was a prime example of nationalist art.
Reason (R): The British saw fine arts as European and felt that Indians lacked the training and sensibility to create it. — True. This was the British view of fine arts in colonial India.
Why R explains A? R describes the colonial bias of the British. Nationalist art emerged against this bias, so R gives the cause of A.
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): “Introduction to Modernism in India Fine arts was seen as European by the British. They felt that Indians lacked training and sensibility to be able to create and appreciate fine arts. …As mentioned in the previous chapter, it was against this colonial bias that nationalist art emerged, and the Bengal School of Art, as nurtured by Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell, was a prime example.” |