NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 9 India as the ‘Mother’ (Fig. 2.14 and Fig. 2.15) — LET’S EXPLORE

Book page 52 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

In what ways are these two representations of Mother India similar or different?

Answer

Both turn India into a mother-goddess; but one is a meditation and the other is a poster.

	Fig. 2.14 — ‘Bharat Mata’, Abanindranath Tagore (Bengal, 1905)	Fig. 2.15 — cover of Vijaya, Subramania Bharati’s magazine (Madras presidency)
Medium	A painting in soft washes — yellows and saffron, blurred edges, no hard outline	A printed line drawing on the cover of a magazine — black ink, strong outlines, made to be reproduced cheaply and often
The figure	A calm young woman in the saffron of a renunciate, with a halo behind her head and four arms. She stands on the bare earth	A more dramatic figure, one arm raised, drawn over an outline map of India, with people gathered below her
What she holds / stands on	Four objects, one in each hand — a white cloth, a sheaf of paddy, a manuscript and a rosary: usually read as the Mother’s gifts of clothing, food, learning and spiritual life	No gifts. She is placed on the land itself — the peninsula and the island of Lanka are clearly drawn behind and below her
Words in the image	None	भारतमाता (Bharat Mata) on a banner across the top, वन्देमातरम् (Vande Mataram) beside her, and the Tamil title விஜயா above the frame
Mood	Quiet, inward, devotional — she gives	Public, rousing, political — she is being hailed by a crowd

What they share: both were made in the Swadeshi years; both come out of the idea the chapter describes, “partly inspired by Bankim’s Anandamath, they saw India as a divine motherland”; both make the nation something you owe love and duty to, rather than an administrative unit on a British map; and both were meant for Indians, not for the government.

The most important difference — and why it matters: Abanindranath’s Mother has no map. Bharati’s Mother is the map. Once the figure is drawn over the outline of India, the picture makes a territorial claim: this land, whole and undivided, belongs to her — which is a direct answer to a government that had just cut Bengal in two. That is the difference between a spiritual image and a political one.

And notice where they come from: one from Bengal, one from the Tamil country, within a few years of each other, saying the same thing in different languages and different visual traditions. That is the chapter’s Big Question 1 answered in two pictures.

Q2.

What details can you discern in the front cover of Subramania Bharati’s Vijaya?

Answer

Working down the printed cover, these are the details that can be made out:

A thin ruled line at the very top with small print at either end — the issue and volume details of the magazine.
The title in large Tamil letters, விஜயா (Vijaya, meaning ‘victory’), with an ornamental plant-like motif rising above it, and a short line of Tamil beneath it — the magazine’s subtitle or its editor’s line.
A ruled rectangular frame enclosing the whole illustration.
A banner scroll across the top of the frame carrying the name भारतमाता — ‘Bharat Mata’, in Devanagari.
The words वन्देमातरम् — ‘Vande Mātaram’ — printed to the right of the figure, again in Devanagari.
An outline map of India filling the frame behind the figure: the peninsula tapering to the south, with the island of Lanka off its tip.
The Mother figure standing across the map, robed and with an arm lifted — the same gesture a leader makes when addressing a crowd.
Small groups of people at the bottom of the frame, drawn much smaller than she is, looking up towards her; a flag stands among them on the right.

The detail worth arguing about: a Tamil magazine, edited by a Tamil poet, for Tamil readers — and yet the Mother’s name and the song beside her are printed in Devanagari, in Sanskrit words. That is a deliberate choice. Bharati had already translated Bande Mataram into Tamil, so he could easily have used Tamil script here. Keeping the Sanskrit form says that this Mother is not Tamil Nadu’s alone — she is the same Mother a reader in Bengal or Punjab was invoking. The cover is making a pan-Indian claim, in one glance, without a word of argument.

Reading pictures: Relative size in an illustration is never accidental. The people are tiny and the Mother fills the frame — the message is that the nation is larger than any of the individuals who serve it.

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