Indian History Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The ICCR was set up in 1950.

The Indian Council for Cultural Relations was founded in April 1950 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, independent India's first Education Minister. It is an autonomous body under the Ministry of External Affairs that promotes India's cultural relations with other countries through cultural centres abroad, scholarships for foreign students and exchanges.

1947, 1948 and 1949 are all before its foundation.

Answer: D

The Marwar Hitkarini Sabha was revived in 1923.

The Sabha was one of the early political organisations of the Jodhpur (Marwar) state. After the original body lapsed, it was revived in 1923 by nationalist workers led by Jai Narayan Vyas.

1924, 1925 and 1926 are later years from the same period of the praja mandal movement and are distractors.

Answer: B

The one that is not a script is Pali.

Pali is a language: the Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Theravada Buddhist canon. It has no script of its own and has been written in Brahmi, Sinhala, Burmese, Thai and Roman letters, among others.

The other three are scripts. Brahmi is the ancient script of Ashoka's edicts and the ancestor of most Indian scripts. Kharoshti was written right to left in the north-west. Devanagari, descended from Brahmi, is used today for Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit and Nepali.

Answer: A

Neermahal was built by Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya.

The Neermahal, a water palace standing in the Rudrasagar lake at Melaghar, was built as a summer residence by Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur in the 1930s. Its architecture blends Hindu and Mughal styles.

Radha Kishore Manikya and Birendra Kishore Manikya were earlier rulers, and Kirit Bikram Kishore Manikya was Bir Bikram's son and successor, so none of them built the palace.

Answer: A

The Bhuvaneswari Temple at Udaipur was built by Maharaja Gobinda Manikya.

Gobinda Manikya ruled Tripura in the 17th century, when Udaipur (Rangamati) on the Gomati river was the capital. The brick temple he built there is now protected as a monument, and it is the setting of Rabindranath Tagore's novel Rajarshi and play Bisarjan, both drawn from the story of Gobinda Manikya.

Krishna Kishore Manikya moved the capital to Old Agartala in the 19th century, and Bir Chandra Manikya ruled later still, from 1862, long after the temple was built. Since a builder is named, 'None of them' is wrong.

Answer: C

The poem is Bhagna Hriday (The Broken Heart).

Rabindranath Tagore published the long poem Bhagna Hriday in 1881, when he was about twenty. Maharaja Bir Chandra Manikya of Tripura, grief-stricken after the death of his queen Bhanumati, found consolation in it and sent his minister to Calcutta to honour the young poet. That episode began the long friendship between Tagore and the Tripura royal family.

Kadi o Komal is a later collection of Tagore's poems (1886), and the other titles are not the work associated with the king's bereavement.

Answer: A

The king regarded as the Modern Architect of Tripura is Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya.

He ruled from 1923 until his death in 1947, just before Tripura merged with India. His reforms in education, administration, land reservation for the Tripuri people and planning of the state's development earned him the title, which is used for him in Tripura's official and popular accounts.

Bir Chandra Manikya (1862-1896) is also remembered as a modernising ruler, but his name is tied to the founding of modern Agartala city, its municipality (1871) and the first western school, so he is called the architect of modern Agartala rather than of Tripura. Govinda Manikya and Krishna Kishore Manikya ruled in earlier periods and do not carry the title.

Answer: B

The Rajmala was written in Bengali.

The Rajmala is the royal chronicle of the Manikya kings of Tripura. It was composed in Bengali verse by court scholars, begun in the fifteenth century under Dharma Manikya I and continued by later rulers, and it is one of the early works of Bengali literature as well as the main traditional source for Tripura's history.

It is not a Sanskrit or Persian text, and although Kokborok is the language of the Tripuri people, the chronicle was written in Bengali, the court language of the kingdom.

Answer: A

The king is Ratna Manikya I.

Ratna Manikya I, who ruled in the fifteenth century, issued the earliest known coins of Tripura bearing the royal title Manikya. From his time the Manikya kings struck coins regularly, which makes the kingdom's coinage one of the main sources for dating its rulers.

The other kings came later and so cannot have been first: Dhanya Manikya ruled around 1500, Govinda Manikya in the seventeenth century and Krishna Kishore Manikya in the nineteenth.

Answer: A

Agartala Municipality was established by Bir Chandra Manikya.

Maharaja Bir Chandra Manikya (1862-1896) reorganised Tripura's administration on modern lines, and the Agartala Municipality was set up during his reign to manage the growing capital, making it one of the older municipal bodies in the North East.

Radha Kishore Manikya was his son and successor (1896-1909), and Birendra Kishore Manikya ruled later still (1909-1923), so neither can have founded it. Since one listed king fits, 'None of these' is wrong.