Indian Culture Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Durga Bai Vyam is associated with the Gond Tradition.

Durga Bai Vyam, from Dindori district of Madhya Pradesh, is one of the best-known painters of the Gond (Pardhan Gond) tradition, which uses bright colours and patterns of dots and lines to depict myths, animals and trees. She illustrated the graphic biography of Ambedkar, Bhimayana, and received the Padma Shri in 2022.

Bhil painting is the art of Bhuri Bai and others, and Baiga and Saharia art are different tribal traditions, so they are not her tradition.

Answer: C

The name that is not a painter is Nana Saheb Panse.

Nana Saheb Panse is remembered as a master of the mridang or pakhawaj, titled Mridangsamrat, and a court musician at Indore. The Panse school of pakhawaj playing is named after him, and a memorial music festival at Bakayan in Damoh district bears his name. He is a musician, not a painter.

The other three names are given in the question as painters of the state. I did not check each of them separately; the answer follows from Panse being a musician.

Answer: C

The Gotmar fair is held in Chhindwara.

The Gotmar Mela takes place at Pandhurna on the day after the Pola festival. Villagers of Pandhurna and Savargaon on either side of the Jam river throw stones at each other while trying to capture a flag planted in the river. Pandhurna was in Chhindwara district at the time of the exam; it became a separate district in 2023.

Indore, Mandsaur and Khargone are in western Madhya Pradesh and have no connection with the fair.

Answer: A

The dance is the Moni dance.

The Moni (Moniya or Diwari) dance is the Deepawali folk dance of Bundelkhand, performed in Sagar, Chhatarpur, Tikamgarh, Datia and Panna districts of Madhya Pradesh and across the border in Uttar Pradesh. Men, mostly of the Ahir and Yadav communities, dance with peacock feathers from the day of Govardhan Puja until Dev Uthani Ekadashi, to the beat of drums, in memory of Krishna lifting the Govardhan hill.

The other dances named, Mandalya, Fefariya and Danda, are not the Deepawali dance of the Sagar region. I did not look up each of them separately; the choice rests on the Moni dance being the one tied to the festival.

Answer: C

The key gives Brahmpuri.

I could not find a source that lists Brahmpuri, Jagatpuri, Ramsiya or Kakanaya as old names of Chitrakoot, so this is not independently confirmed. Chitrakoot is the holy place where Rama is said to have spent much of his exile, but that does not bear on which alternative name is right.

Nothing I found shows another option to be a name of Chitrakoot, so the key stands.

Answer: D

The key gives Gond.

I could not find a source that describes Nohdora clay ornamentation or names the tribe, so this is not independently confirmed. The Gond are the largest tribe of Madhya Pradesh and are known for decorating house walls, which fits the key but does not prove it. Several searches, in English and Hindi, found no sign that the Bhil, Korku or Saharia are the tribe meant.

The Bhil are known for Pithora wall painting, which is paint on the wall, not clay ornament, and that is a distinct tradition.

Answer: A

Of these, Punjab holds the GI tag only for Phulkari, so the answer is Only 1.

Phulkari, the traditional floral embroidery of Punjab, is a registered geographical indication for Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

The others belong to other States. Katarni rice is an aromatic rice of Bhagalpur in Bihar. Sirsi Supari is the areca nut of Sirsi in Uttara Kannada, Karnataka. Chanderi saris are woven in Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh. So every option adding 2, 3 or 4 is wrong.

Answer: A

Jallikattu is the traditional sport of Tamil Nadu.

Jallikattu is a bull-taming sport held during the Pongal harvest festival, in which participants try to hold on to the hump of a bull let loose into a crowd. It has repeatedly been in controversy over animal welfare: the Supreme Court banned it in 2014, mass protests in Chennai in 2017 led Tamil Nadu to amend the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act for the State, and challenges to that law continued.

Kerala, West Bengal and Karnataka are not where Jallikattu is held; Karnataka's comparable buffalo race is Kambala.

Answer: D

The Commission's answer is A-3, B-1, C-2, D-4.

The Jarag mela is held at Jarg village in Ludhiana district. Malerkotla's fair is held at the shrine of Haider Sheikh, the Sufi saint who founded the town. Sirhind's Rauza Sharif is the shrine of Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi, where an annual urs is held.

Those three pairs (A-3, B-1, D-4) leave Mir Shah Husain for Nakodar (C-2), and only one option contains all of them. The others give Ludhiana the Haider Sheikh or Mir Shah Husain fair, which belongs elsewhere.

Answer: B

The correct statement is that the Moorish Mosque is patterned on the Grand Mosque of Marrakesh.

The Moorish Mosque at Kapurthala was built by Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala and completed in the 1930s, on the model of the Koutoubia (Grand) Mosque of Marrakesh, Morocco, with French architect M. Manteaux. It is a protected monument.

It stands in Kapurthala, not Malerkotla, and it was not built by a Nawab of Malerkotla. It has not been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.