Awards & Honours Mixed Quiz: Set 22

The correct answer is B, Rabindranath Tagore. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for Gitanjali, becoming not only the first Indian but the first Asian of any country to receive a Nobel Prize. Option A, C. V. Raman, won the Physics prize in 1930 for the scattering effect named after him, and he was the first Indian to win in a science subject, which is a different first and the most common confusion in this question. Option C, Mother Teresa, received the Peace Prize in 1979 and was the first woman holding Indian citizenship to be honoured. Option D, Hargobind Khorana, shared the Medicine prize in 1968 for work on the genetic code, but he had taken American citizenship by then and is counted as a laureate of Indian origin.

The correct answer is B, Balkrishna Doshi. Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi became the first Indian to win the Pritzker Prize when it was conferred on him in 2018; he had trained under Le Corbusier, and his works include the Indian Institute of Management at Bangalore and the Aranya low-cost housing at Indore. A is wrong because Charles Correa, the architect of the Jawahar Kala Kendra at Jaipur, received the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1984 but never the Pritzker, and he is the strongest distractor in this question. C is wrong because Laurie Baker, the British-born architect who worked in Kerala with low-cost local materials, received the Padma Shri but not the Pritzker. D is wrong because Raj Rewal, known for the Asian Games Village in Delhi, has also not received it.

The correct answer is C, 1954. The Bharat Ratna was instituted on 2 January 1954 by President Dr Rajendra Prasad, on the same day as the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri, and the first awards were conferred later the same year on C. Rajagopalachari, C. V. Raman and S. Radhakrishnan. Option A is wrong because 1950 is the year the Constitution came into force, which is often used as a distractor in award questions. Option B is wrong because 1952 marks the first general election and has no connection with the civilian awards. Option D is wrong because 1955 is the year in which the rules were amended to allow posthumous conferment; candidates who remember that amendment often give 1955 as the year of institution, which is the trap this question is built on.

The correct answer is B, saving or attempting to save a life. The series has three grades, the Sarvottam Jeevan Raksha Padak, the Uttam Jeevan Raksha Padak and the Jeevan Raksha Padak, and it is administered by the Ministry of Home Affairs and open to civilians, including children. Option A is wrong because distinguished service in an operation is rewarded by the Yudh Seva medals. Option C is wrong because work in literature and art is recognised by the Padma awards and by the awards of the national academies. Option D is wrong because gallantry in captivity is not a separate category; such acts are considered under the gallantry awards themselves. Notice once more the three-step pattern of Sarvottam, Uttam and the plain name. The award is announced by the Ministry and the certificate is signed on behalf of the President.

The correct answer is B, C. V. Raman. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for his work on the scattering of light, the phenomenon known as the Raman effect, which he announced on 28 February 1928; that date is kept as National Science Day. Option A, Jagadish Chandra Bose, did pioneering work on radio waves and on plant physiology and is honoured in India for it, but he never received a Nobel Prize, which makes him the strongest distractor here. Option C, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, won the Physics prize in 1983 for his work on the structure and evolution of stars, by which time he was an American citizen; he was also Raman's nephew. Option D, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, shared the Chemistry prize in 2009 and holds British and American citizenship.

The correct answer is B. Kabir Puraskar was instituted in 1990 by the Ministry of Home Affairs to honour ordinary citizens who show physical or moral courage in saving the lives and property of members of another community, especially during communal disturbance. Option A is wrong; the awards for Hindi and other literature are the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Jnanpith Award, and the name Kabir misleads candidates into choosing a literary answer. Option C is wrong because no national award is given for research on medieval saints; the award is named after Kabir for his message of harmony between communities, not for scholarship about him. Option D is wrong because handloom work is recognised by the Sant Kabir Award for weavers, a different honour given by the textiles ministry, and the similarity of names is exactly what the question is testing.

The correct answer is D, Jawaharlal Nehru. The first three recipients of the Bharat Ratna, all in 1954, were C. Rajagopalachari, the last Governor-General of India, the physicist C. V. Raman and the philosopher S. Radhakrishnan, who later became President. Jawaharlal Nehru received the award in 1955, along with Bhagwan Das and the engineer M. Visvesvaraya, so he belongs to the second set and not the first. Options A, B and C are therefore all part of the 1954 group and cannot be the answer. The question is set in the negative form, which is common in this chapter, so read the stem carefully: it asks who was left out of 1954, not who received the award. Remember the three 1954 names together, since a matching question often uses them.

The correct answer is B, P. Sainath. Palagummi Sainath received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2007 for journalism that placed the agrarian crisis, farmer suicides and rural poverty at the centre of national reporting, work also known through his book Everybody Loves a Good Drought. Option A is wrong because Arun Shourie won the Magsaysay Award earlier, in 1982, for investigative journalism in the Indian Express. Option C is wrong because the television journalist Ravish Kumar received the award in 2019. Option D is wrong because B. G. Verghese was honoured in 1975. All four names are genuine Indian winners in the journalism category, which is exactly why the question works: the year, not the name, is what is being tested. The award itself was instituted in 1957 and is administered from Manila, and the citation for Sainath praised his insistence that the rural poor be written about as people rather than as statistics in a table.

The correct answer is B, C. Rajagopalachari. The Bharat Ratna was instituted in 1954 and in that first year it went to three men: C. Rajagopalachari, the last Governor-General of India, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, then Vice-President and later President, and the physicist C. V. Raman. Option A, Jawaharlal Nehru, received the honour in 1955, a year later, which is exactly the near miss the examiner is testing. Option C, Indira Gandhi, received it in 1971 and was the first woman to be honoured. Option D, Lal Bahadur Shastri, received it in 1966, and his was the first Bharat Ratna conferred posthumously. Learn these four names with their four years together, because the question is set by swapping one for another. Note also that the Padma awards were instituted in the same year, 1954, and that the Bharat Ratna is announced by the President and carries no monetary grant.

The correct answer is C, the Cannes Film Festival, held every year in the French town of Cannes on the Mediterranean coast. Its highest award is the Palme d'Or, the Golden Palm, given to the best film of the main competition, and below it comes the Grand Prix, which Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine as Light won in 2024.

Option A, the Berlin Film Festival, called the Berlinale, gives the Golden Bear to its best film and Silver Bears in the other categories. Option B, the Venice Film Festival, the oldest of the three, gives the Golden Lion. Option D, the Toronto Film Festival in Canada, has no jury prize of that kind as its highest honour; its best known award is decided by the audience. The three European festivals and their animals or plants must be learnt as fixed pairs.

The correct answer is A, Lal Bahadur Shastri. The original rules of 1954 did not allow a posthumous award; the provision was added in 1955, and the first person honoured after his death was Lal Bahadur Shastri, the second Prime Minister of India, in 1966, the year he died at Tashkent. Option B is wrong because Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel received the award posthumously much later, in 1991. Option C is wrong because Dr B. R. Ambedkar, the chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution, was honoured posthumously in 1990. Option D is wrong because K. Kamaraj, the Tamil Nadu leader, was honoured posthumously in 1976, a decade after Shastri. All four are genuine posthumous recipients, so only the order of years separates them. Note also that the posthumous provision was introduced within a year of the award being instituted, which is why 1954 and 1955 are so often interchanged in this chapter, and that Shastri's award came in the same year as the Tashkent Declaration.

The correct answer is D, Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri. The Malayalam poet, known simply as Akkitham, received the 55th Jnanpith Award, given for the year 2019. The Jnanpith is instituted by Bharatiya Jnanpith and is regarded as the highest literary award in India.

Option A, Amitav Ghosh, won the 54th Jnanpith, for 2018, and was the first writer in English to receive it, English having become an eligible language in 2013. Option B, Raghuveer Chaudhari, is the Gujarati novelist who won the 51st award, for 2015. Option C, Chandrashekhara Kambara, is the Kannada playwright and poet who won the 53rd award, for 2017. All four are real laureates from nearby years, so the safe method is to anchor one pair, such as Amitav Ghosh with 2018, and count from there. Note also that the numbered award and the year of the award go together, while the announcement usually falls in a later calendar year.

The correct answer is B, Indira Gandhi. She received the Bharat Ratna in 1971, while she was Prime Minister, and she remains the first woman on the list. Option A, Mother Teresa, received it in 1980 and holds a different first: she was the first naturalised Indian, that is a person born abroad who had taken Indian citizenship, to be honoured, and she had received the Nobel Peace Prize the previous year. Option C, M. S. Subbulakshmi, the Carnatic vocalist, received it in 1998 and was the first musician to be given the award. Option D, Aruna Asaf Ali, the heroine of the Quit India Movement who hoisted the flag at the Gowalia Tank maidan in 1942, received the Bharat Ratna in 1997, and hers was a posthumous award.

The correct answer is B, 1901. Alfred Nobel signed his will in 1895 and died in 1896, and after his estate was settled the first prizes were given in 1901 in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace; they are presented every year on 10 December, the anniversary of his death. Option A is wrong because 1895 is the year of the will itself, not of the first award, and this is the commonest confusion in the question. Option C is wrong because 1913 is the year Rabindranath Tagore won the Prize in Literature. Option D is wrong because 1930 is the year of C. V. Raman's Prize in Physics. Note also that the prize in economic sciences was not part of Nobel's will and was added much later by the central bank of Sweden.

The correct answer is B, Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi received the Bharat Ratna in 1971, while she was Prime Minister, and she is the first woman in the list. Option A is wrong because Mother Teresa was honoured in 1980; she is remembered as the first naturalised Indian citizen to receive the award, not the first woman. Option C is wrong because Aruna Asaf Ali, known for her role in the Quit India movement of 1942, was honoured posthumously in 1997. Option D is wrong because M. S. Subbulakshmi received the award in 1998 and is remembered as the first musician to be honoured, a separate first that this question deliberately places among the options. Keep the three firsts apart: first woman in 1971, first naturalised citizen in 1980 and first musician in 1998.

The correct answer is C, five years. The prize was instituted by the General Assembly in 1966 and first awarded in 1968, which was observed as the International Year for Human Rights and marked twenty years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then it has been given once every five years, and the ceremony is held on 10 December, which is Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the Declaration. Option A is wrong because a two-year cycle belongs to the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh Prize for tolerance. Option B is wrong because no United Nations human rights prize follows a three-year cycle. Option D is wrong because ten years is twice the correct interval, and it is included because candidates who know the prize is rare often over-estimate the gap.

The correct answer is A, Lal Bahadur Shastri. He died at Tashkent in January 1966 after signing the agreement that ended the war of 1965, and the Bharat Ratna was conferred on him that same year, the first time the honour was given after the recipient's death. Option B, Vallabhbhai Patel, who died in 1950, received the award much later, in 1991, so his was also posthumous but not the first. Option C, B. R. Ambedkar, the chairman of the drafting committee of the Constitution, died in 1956 and was honoured in 1990, again posthumously and again not the first. Option D, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated in 1991 and received the Bharat Ratna in that year. The question turns entirely on which posthumous award came earliest, so fix 1966 in memory.

The correct answer is C, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. The Pashtun leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, called the Frontier Gandhi and the founder of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, received the Bharat Ratna in 1987 and was the first recipient who was not an Indian citizen. Option A is wrong because Nelson Mandela, honoured in 1990, is the second non-Indian recipient, not the first. Option B is wrong because Mother Teresa, born in Skopje, had become an Indian citizen by naturalisation before she was honoured in 1980, so she is counted as an Indian citizen. Option D is wrong because the Dalai Lama has not received the Bharat Ratna, although he is often placed in the options because of his long residence in India. Only two non-Indian citizens appear in the list, and the order of 1987 and 1990 is what the question tests.

The correct answer is B, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Known as the Frontier Gandhi and as Badshah Khan, he led the Khudai Khidmatgar movement in the North-West Frontier Province and became a citizen of Pakistan after partition; India honoured him with the Bharat Ratna in 1987, the first time the award went to someone who was not an Indian citizen. Option A, Nelson Mandela, was the second such recipient, honoured in 1990, which makes him the obvious trap. Option C, Mother Teresa, was born in Skopje but had taken Indian citizenship, so she is counted as the first naturalised Indian to be honoured, in 1980, and not as a foreigner. Option D, the Dalai Lama, has received many honours in India, but the Bharat Ratna is not among them.

The correct answer is A, Sachin Tendulkar. Until December 2011 the Bharat Ratna could be given only for art, literature, science and public service. The rules were then widened to cover any field of human endeavour, and in 2014 Sachin Tendulkar became the first sportsperson to receive the award, along with the scientist C. N. R. Rao. At forty he is also the youngest recipient. Option B is wrong because Major Dhyan Chand, the hockey player, has not received the Bharat Ratna, although his name is frequently proposed and he gives the national sports award its name. Option C is wrong because Milkha Singh received the Padma Shri, not the Bharat Ratna. Option D is wrong because Vishwanathan Anand, the chess grandmaster, received the Padma Vibhushan, a lower civilian honour.