Art & Culture Quiz: Festivals of India

The correct answer is C, Kerala. Thrissur Pooram is held at the Vadakkunnathan temple in Thrissur during the Malayalam month of Medam, which falls in April and May. Thirty caparisoned elephants, the panchavadyam and pandimelam percussion ensembles, the umbrella exchange called Kudamattam and a long fireworks display make it the largest temple festival of the state.

Option A, Tamil Nadu, is the commonest trap because the state borders Kerala and has its own great temple festivals, such as the Chithirai festival of Madurai. Option B, Orissa, now Odisha, is the state of the Puri Rath Yatra and of Bali Yatra at Cuttack, both of which are separate topics in the same syllabus. Option D, Karnataka, is known for the Mysuru Dasara procession and the Hampi festival, not for Pooram, which is a Kerala word for a temple gathering.

The correct answer is D, Odisha. Bali Yatra is held on the bank of the Mahanadi at Cuttack on Kartik Purnima and remembers the days when merchants of Kalinga sailed to Bali, Java and Sumatra. People float small boats of paper, banana bark or cork with lamps in them, and a very large trade fair runs beside the river for a week.

Option A, Tamil Nadu, had its own sea trade under the Cholas, who actually sent naval expeditions to Srivijaya, but its festival calendar has Pongal and the temple festivals, not Bali Yatra. Option B, Rajasthan, is a landlocked state whose big gatherings are the Pushkar Fair and the Desert Festival of Jaisalmer. Option C, Kerala, has Onam and Thrissur Pooram. The word Yatra and the Kalinga sea link should point the candidate to Odisha at once.

The correct answer is A, Nubra. The first ice climbing festival of Ladakh was held in the Nubra valley in January 2021, on the frozen waterfalls near the villages of the upper Nubra, as a way of building winter adventure tourism in a region that otherwise earns only in summer. Nubra lies north of Leh across the Khardung La and is watered by the Shyok and the Nubra rivers.

Option B, Ripchar, is a side valley on the Lamayuru to Chilling trek and hosts no such festival. Option C, Markha, is the valley of Ladakh's best known summer trek, between the Zanskar range and the Stok range. Option D, Dras, spelt Drass, lies in the Kargil district and is famous instead for being one of the coldest inhabited places in India and for the Kargil war memorial.

The correct answer is D, the President of India. Commemorative coins are issued by the Government of India under the Coinage Act, and the set marking the Nabakalebara of the Jagannath temple was released at a function in Puri in March 2018 by the President. Nabakalebara is the ritual in which the wooden images of Jagannath, Balabhadra, Subhadra and Sudarshana are renewed from fresh neem wood, in a year that has two months of Ashadha.

Option A, the Governor of Odisha, is the head of the state executive and does not release coins of the Union. Option B, the Chief Minister of Odisha, leads the state government, which had arranged the ceremony but did not issue the coins. Option C, the Prime Minister of India, releases commemorative coins on many occasions, which is why it is the trap here, but this particular release was made by the President.

The correct answer is B, Nagaland. The Hornbill Festival is held at the Naga heritage village of Kisama near Kohima from 1 to 10 December, the state formation day being 1 December. It is called the festival of festivals because every major tribe of the state sets up its own morung and presents its dances, songs, crafts, wrestling and food at a single venue, and it is named after the hornbill bird that appears in Naga folklore and headgear.

Option A, Mizoram, celebrates Chapchar Kut in spring with the bamboo dance Cheraw. Option C, Meghalaya, has Wangala of the Garo and Ka Pomblang Nongkrem of the Khasi. Option D, Manipur, has Yaoshang with the Thabal Chongba dance and Lai Haraoba. Each of these is a single-tribe or single-community festival, not a gathering of all the tribes of a state.

The correct answer is C, Rongali Bihu. Rongali Bihu, also called Bohag Bihu, falls in mid-April at the start of the Assamese month of Bohag and opens the new year and the sowing season. It runs for several days, begins with Goru Bihu for the cattle, and is the Bihu of the husori singing and the Bihu dance.

Option A, Magh Bihu or Bhogali Bihu, is the January harvest feast of Assam, celebrated with the meji bonfire and community eating, and it falls on the same day as Makar Sankranti. Option B, Kati Bihu or Kongali Bihu, in October, is the sober one, when lamps are lit before the tulsi plant and in the paddy fields at a time when the granary is empty. Option D, Ambubachi, is not a Bihu at all but the annual mela of the Kamakhya temple at Guwahati in June.

The correct answer is A, Onam. Onam is the harvest festival of Kerala, celebrated in the Malayalam month of Chingam, and remembers the yearly return of the mythical king Mahabali to his people. Its main day is Thiruvonam, houses lay out the flower carpet called pookalam, and the long canoes called chundan vallam race on the backwaters in the Vallamkali, the best known being the Aranmula and Nehru Trophy races.

Option B, Pongal, is the four-day Tamil harvest festival of January, marked by the boiling over of the sweet pongal and by Jallikattu. Option C, Ugadi, is the new year of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka in the month of Chaitra. Option D, Vishu, is the Kerala new year in mid-April, with the auspicious arrangement called Vishukkani, and it has no boat race.

The correct answer is B, Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Ganesh Chaturthi in the month of Bhadrapada had long been a household worship in Maharashtra. In 1893 Tilak organised it as a community celebration with public pandals, processions and lectures, so that people of every caste could gather in one place at a time when political meetings were watched. He used the Shivaji festival in the same way, and both became platforms of the early national movement.

Option A, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, was the moderate leader and founder of the Servants of India Society, who worked through councils rather than festivals. Option C, Jyotirao Phule, the social reformer who founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, died in 1890. Option D, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, belonged to a later generation. The 1893 date and the word public should fix the answer as Tilak.

The correct answer is B, Mizoram. Chapchar Kut is the best known festival of Mizoram, celebrated in late February or March after the jhum fields have been cleared and before the sowing. Its centrepiece is Cheraw, the bamboo dance, in which men tap long bamboo staves on the ground while women step in and out of the closing gaps, and the songs and dances Khuallam and Chheihlam are performed with it.

Option A, Tripura, is the state of Kharchi Puja and Garia Puja. Option C, Nagaland, holds the Hornbill Festival in December and tribal festivals such as Sekrenyi and Moatsu. Option D, Sikkim, observes Pang Lhabsol for the guardian deity of Khangchendzonga and Losoong as its harvest new year. Cheraw is the pointer that decides this question.

The correct answer is C, Nandighosha. In the Rath Yatra of Puri, three chariots are drawn from the Jagannath temple to the Gundicha temple in the month of Ashadha. Nandighosha, the tallest of the three and yellow and red in colour, carries Jagannath. The ropes are pulled by lakhs of devotees, and the return journey is called Bahuda Yatra.

Option A, Taladhwaja, is the chariot of Balabhadra, the elder brother, and carries the palm tree emblem in its name. Option B, Darpadalana, is the chariot of Subhadra, the sister, and is the smallest of the three. Option D, Padmadhwaja, is not one of the Puri chariots at all and is put in as a plausible Sanskrit-sounding distractor. The set of three names is asked in almost this exact form.

The correct answer is A, Haryana. The Surajkund International Crafts Mela is held every February at Surajkund in Faridabad district of Haryana, near the Delhi border. Craftspeople and weavers from across India set up stalls along with folk performers, one Indian state is named the theme state of the year and one or more countries are named partner nations, which makes the fair international in name.

Option B, Rajasthan, holds the Pushkar Fair on Kartik Purnima and the Desert Festival at Jaisalmer. Option C, Uttar Pradesh, holds the Magh Mela and the Kumbh at Prayagraj and the Taj Mahotsav at Agra. Option D, Punjab, has the Hola Mohalla at Anandpur Sahib and the rural sports meet at Kila Raipur. Surajkund itself is a reservoir built in the time of the Tomara rulers.

The correct answer is B, Garo. Wangala is the post-harvest thanksgiving festival of the Garo tribe of Meghalaya, held in the autumn in honour of the sun deity Misi Saljong. Long drums are beaten together by rows of men while women dance in line, and because a hundred or more drums may sound at one time, the festival is popularly called the Hundred Drums festival.

Option A, Khasi, is the tribe of Ka Pomblang Nongkrem, the five-day dance at Smit in the same state. Option C, Apatani, of the Ziro valley in Arunachal Pradesh, celebrates Dree for the crops and Myoko for friendship. Option D, Angami, of Nagaland, celebrates Sekrenyi, a festival of purification held in February. All three are real tribal festivals, which is what makes the distractors work.