Modern Indian art, cinema & cultural institutions

From the Company School to the Bengal Renaissance

Modern Indian art begins with the Company School (c. 1770-1850), a hybrid idiom in which Indian artists at Murshidabad, Patna, Tanjore and Delhi painted natural-history studies, monuments and daily life in watercolour for East India Company patrons, fusing Mughal miniature technique with European perspective and shading.

The academic-naturalist phase peaked with Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906) of Travancore, who rendered Hindu deities and Puranic episodes in oil with European realism. His Ravi Varma Press (founded 1894 near Mumbai) mass-produced oleographs, democratising religious imagery for the middle class.

The nationalist reaction came through the Bengal School, led by Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951), whose Bharat Mata (1905), painted amid the anti-partition Swadeshi agitation, depicted the nation as a four-armed ascetic goddess. Guided by E.B. Havell at the Calcutta School of Art, the Bengal School rejected Western academic oil for the wash technique and drew on Ajanta, Mughal and Japanese sources (the wash absorbed from Okakura Kakuzo and Yokoyama Taikan). Nandalal Bose, a leading exponent, designed the illustrations of the original manuscript of the Constitution of India.

Santiniketan, the Progressives and Contextual Modernism

Rabindranath Tagore founded Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan in 1921; its Kala Bhavana under Nandalal Bose nurtured contextual modernism, with Ramkinkar Baij pioneering modern Indian sculpture (Santhal Family, 1938) and Benode Behari Mukherjee creating the Lives of the Medieval Saints mural (1947).

The Progressive Artists' Group, founded in Bombay in 1947 by F.N. Souza, with M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, K.H. Ara, S.K. Bakre and H.A. Gade, broke from both academic realism and revivalist nationalism, embracing international modernism—Cubism, Expressionism—while retaining Indian themes. Husain became India's best-known painter; Raza's bindu motif and Tyeb Mehta's Mahishasura and Diagonal series command record auction prices. Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941), though predating the group, anchored the modernist turn with works like Three Girls (1935).

Why this matters for the exam

In Prelims GS, the UPSC repeatedly sets factual matching questions: artist-to-movement, painting-to-painter, and institution-to-founder. A 2014 Prelims question tested the Company School; another tested the founders of Santiniketan. You must retain: Ravi Varma = oleographs/academic realism; Abanindranath = Bengal School/wash/Bharat Mata 1905; PAG = Bombay 1947/Souza-Husain-Raza; Nandalal Bose = Constitution illustrations.

In Mains GS-1 (Indian heritage and culture), questions ask you to trace how art expressed the freedom struggle and national identity—e.g. how the Bengal School's revivalism served Swadeshi politics, or how the Progressives reconciled modernity with Indian identity. The high-yield analytical thread is: art as a vehicle of cultural nationalism. Cite the dated milestones above and link them to the broader political timeline (Swadeshi 1905, Independence 1947) to score the synthesis marks examiners reward.

The Evolution of Indian Cinema

Indian cinema began with Dadasaheb Phalke's Raja Harishchandra (1913), the first full-length Indian feature; the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, instituted in 1969, is India's highest film honour, conferred by the Directorate of Film Festivals. The talkie era opened with Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara (1931).

Post-Independence cinema split into the commercial mainstream and Parallel Cinema (New Indian Cinema). Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali (1955), the first of the Apu Trilogy, won the Best Human Document award at Cannes (1956); Ray received an honorary Academy Award in 1992 and the Bharat Ratna the same year. Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal and Adoor Gopalakrishnan extended the movement, supported after 1960 by the Film Finance Corporation (merged into the NFDC, National Film Development Corporation, in 1980).

Three Indian-associated films have won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language/International Feature only as nominations historically; Mother India (1957), Salaam Bombay! (1988) and Lagaan (2001) were nominated. India's documentary The Elephant Whisperers won an Oscar in 2023, and the song Naatu Naatu from RRR won Best Original Song the same year.

Statutory and Apex Cultural Institutions

UPSC prizes precise institutional facts. The three National Akademis, set up under the Ministry of Culture, are:

• Sangeet Natak Akademi (music, dance, drama), established 1953, the first;
• Sahitya Akademi (letters), established 1954, which confers the Sahitya Akademi Award and Jnanpith-distinct honours;
• Lalit Kala Akademi (fine arts), established 1954.

The National School of Drama (NSD) was founded in 1959, and the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, in 1960. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), founded by Alexander Cunningham in 1861, functions under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, which prohibits construction within 100 metres (prohibited zone) and regulates 200 metres (regulated zone) around protected monuments. The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) operates under the Cinematograph Act, 1952.

Cultural promotion abroad runs through the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), founded by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in 1950. UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list includes Indian entries such as Kutiyattam (2008), Vedic chanting, Ramlila, Kumbh Mela (2017) and Durga Puja in Kolkata (2021)—frequently set in Prelims.

Retention Anchors

Memorise founding years as a cluster: SNA 1953; Sahitya & Lalit Kala 1954; ICCR 1950; ASI 1861/AMASR Act 1958; NSD 1959; FTII 1960; NFDC 1980. Pair each award with its conferring body. These mechanical facts win Prelims marks; the cinema timeline and Akademi mandates feed GS-1 culture answers on how the state institutionalised cultural patronage after 1947.