Awards & Honours Mixed Quiz: Set 7

The correct answer is B, 1999. Pandit Ravi Shankar received the Bharat Ratna in 1999, along with Amartya Sen and Gopinath Bordoloi. He was the sitar player who carried Hindustani classical music to concert halls abroad, worked with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and taught George Harrison of the Beatles, and he played at the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. He had already been given the Padma Bhushan in 1967 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1981, so the Bharat Ratna was the last of the three. A is wrong because 1998 was the year of the awards to M S Subbulakshmi and C Subramaniam. C is wrong because no Bharat Ratna was conferred in 1996. D is wrong because the 1995 conferment does not include him. Exam tip: Ravi Shankar, sitar, Bharat Ratna 1999, in the same year as economist Amartya Sen.

The correct answer is B, Tanvi Shah. She was the first Indian woman musician to win a Grammy, in 2010.

Tanvi Shah, a singer and lyricist from Chennai, wrote and sang the Spanish lines of the song 'Jai Ho' from the film Slumdog Millionaire. The song won the Grammy for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media at the 2010 ceremony, shared with A. R. Rahman and Gulzar. The same film had already brought Rahman two Academy Awards, and Rahman and Resul Pookutty are the other Indian names students should keep with it.

A is wrong: Neeti Mohan is a playback singer with no Grammy. C is wrong: Shweta Pandit is a playback singer who has not won one either. D is wrong: Shalmali Kholgade is also a playback singer without a Grammy.

Exam tip: Tanvi Shah - first Indian woman to win a Grammy, 2010, for the Spanish lyrics of 'Jai Ho'.

The correct answer is B, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a body of film professionals in the United States founded in 1927. Its members vote on the awards, the first ceremony was held in 1929 for the films of 1927 and 1928, and the golden statuette given to a winner is universally called the Oscar.

Option A, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, gives the BAFTA awards in the United Kingdom, which are the British counterpart of the Oscars. Option C, the Recording Academy, gives the Grammy awards for music. Option D, the Directorate of Film Festivals, is an Indian government body that has handled the National Film Awards and the International Film Festival of India, so it belongs to a national list and not to an international one.

The correct answer is D, Smriti Mandhana. The India opener was named ICC Women's Cricketer of the Year for 2021 and received the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy in January 2022. She had scored 855 international runs across the three formats in that year, including India's first century in a day-night Test, made against Australia at Carrara. The trophy is named after Rachael Heyhoe Flint, the England captain who pushed for women's cricket at Lord's and for the first Women's World Cup in 1973. Option A is wrong because Mithali Raj, India's long-serving captain, has never won this particular trophy. Option B is wrong because Ellyse Perry of Australia won it in 2019, not for 2021. Option C is wrong because Lizelle Lee of South Africa took the ICC Women's ODI Cricketer of the Year award that season, which is a separate prize. Exam tip: the women's award is the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, the men's is the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy.

The correct answer is A, Tomb of Sand, from Ret Samadhi by Geetanjali Shree. The International Booker Prize honours a book translated into English, and the award is shared between the author and the translator. Geetanjali Shree's Hindi novel Ret Samadhi, translated by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand, won it in 2022, the first book in Hindi and the first in any Indian language to do so.

Option B names a later Indian winner of the prize and so cannot be the first. Option C, The Palace of Illusions, is a retelling of the Mahabharata written in English by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and a book written in English is not eligible for a prize meant for translations. Option D, Godaan, is Premchand's Hindi novel of 1936, long before the International Booker existed in its present form, which began as the Man Booker International Prize in 2005 and took its current shape in 2016. Keep the two prizes apart: the Booker Prize is for fiction written in English and the International Booker for a translated work.

The correct answer is D, Afghanistan. The Amir Amanullah Khan Award is Afghanistan's highest civilian honour, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi received it in June 2016 at Herat, on the day he and President Ashraf Ghani opened the Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier called the Salma Dam, which India built on the Hari Rud. The honour is named after Amir Amanullah Khan, the ruler who won Afghanistan full control of its foreign affairs from the British in 1919. Option A is wrong, although Saudi Arabia did honour the Prime Minister in April 2016; its top award is the Order of King Abdulaziz Al Saud, a different decoration with a different name. Options B and C are wrong because neither Uzbekistan nor Iran gives an award of this name, and neither conferred its highest civilian honour on him in that year. Exam tip: Amir Amanullah Khan Award means Afghanistan, 2016, Herat and the Afghan-India Friendship Dam.

The correct answer is D, Subramanian Raman. He received the Dronacharya Award of 2021 in the Regular category for table tennis, the award given to coaches whose trainees reach the podium at the Olympic, Asian, Commonwealth or World Championship level. Options A and B, Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, are players and not coaches, and they are put here because both are India’s leading table tennis names of the same years; Manika Batra won the Commonwealth Games singles gold in 2018. Option C, Mouma Das, is also a player, a long-serving international who received the Arjuna Award. The distinction the question rests on is therefore the class of award: the Dronacharya is for coaches, the Arjuna and the Khel Ratna for players, so a player’s name can never answer a Dronacharya question.

The correct answer is A, Wildlife protection. The Amrita Devi Bishnoi National Award is given for outstanding courage and devotion in protecting wildlife. It was instituted by the Union environment ministry in 1994 and carries a cash prize with a citation. It is named after Amrita Devi Bishnoi, who in 1730 at Khejarli near Jodhpur clung to a khejri tree to stop the Maharaja's men from felling it; she and more than 360 other Bishnois died in that protest. The Bishnoi community, which follows the 29 rules laid down by Guru Jambheshwar, still guards the blackbuck, the chinkara and the khejri tree of the Thar desert, and the Khejarli sacrifice is remembered as an inspiration for the later Chipko movement. Option B is wrong because energy saving is rewarded by the National Energy Conservation Awards. Option C is wrong because broader environmental work is honoured by the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar. Option D is wrong because biodiversity effort is recognised by the India Biodiversity Awards. Exam tip: tie Amrita Devi to Khejarli 1730, the khejri tree and the blackbuck of Rajasthan.

The correct answer is C, the Philippines. Ramon Magsaysay was President of the Philippines and died in an aircraft crash in March 1957. The award was created in his memory later that year, and it is given at Manila, the Philippine capital, on 31 August, his birth anniversary.

Option A, Indonesia, is wrong; no pan-Asian award of this standing is named after an Indonesian head of state. Option B, Malaysia, is wrong for the same reason, although the country's closeness to the Philippines makes it a natural distractor. Option D, Thailand, is wrong as well. A candidate can reason this out from the award's own description: it honours greatness of spirit in service to the peoples of Asia, and the Foundation that gives it sits in Manila, so the country in the answer must be the Philippines.

The correct answer is D, Dhyan Chand Award. The Dhyan Chand Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sports and Games was instituted in 2002 to honour sportspersons who not only performed well in their playing days but kept serving the sport after retiring. It is named after Major Dhyan Chand, the hockey wizard who won Olympic gold in 1928, 1932 and 1936; his birthday, 29 August, is celebrated as National Sports Day, when all the national sports awards are given. A is wrong because the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, started in 1991-92, is the highest award for the best performance over the previous four years, and in August 2021 it was renamed the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna, which is a different award from the lifetime achievement one. B is wrong because the Arjuna Award, started in 1961, is for consistent outstanding performance by active players. C is wrong because the Dronacharya Award, started in 1985, is for coaches. Exam tip: Khel Ratna best performance, Arjuna players, Dronacharya coaches, Dhyan Chand Award lifetime achievement; all given on 29 August.

The correct answer is D, Vinesh Phogat. The wrestler Vinesh Phogat was nominated in 2019 for the Laureus World Sports Award in the Breakthrough of the Year category, the first Indian athlete to be shortlisted in that category. The nomination followed a remarkable 2018, in which she won gold at the Commonwealth Games at Gold Coast and then gold at the Asian Games in Jakarta, becoming the first Indian woman wrestler to win an Asian Games title. She had already received the Arjuna Award in 2016. The Laureus World Sports Awards, begun in 2000 by the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, are often called the Oscars of sport. Option A is wrong because Anirban Chatterji is not a Laureus nominee. Option B is wrong because Pankaj Advani, a world champion in billiards and snooker, was not on the list. Option C is wrong because the sprinter Dutee Chand, known for her legal fight over hyperandrogenism rules, was not nominated that year. Exam tip: Vinesh Phogat - Laureus nomination 2019, Asian Games gold 2018, Arjuna Award 2016.

The correct answer is C, 1952. The Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's national academy of music, dance and drama, was created by a government resolution of 31 May 1952 and formally inaugurated on 28 January 1953 by President Rajendra Prasad. It was the first of the three national academies; the Sahitya Akademi for literature and the Lalit Kala Akademi for fine arts followed in 1954. Its annual awards, the Akademi Puraskar, have been given to performing artists since 1952, which makes it the oldest national honour for the performing arts in India. The higher honour, the Akademi Ratna or Fellowship, was started in 1954. A is wrong because 1961 is the year the Arjuna Award for sports began. B is wrong because 1950 is when the Constitution came into force, not when the Akademi was formed. D is wrong because 1959 is the year the National School of Drama was set up, not the start of the awards. Exam tip: Sangeet Natak Akademi 1952 (awards from 1952); Sahitya Akademi and Lalit Kala Akademi 1954.

The correct answer is B, RRR, the Telugu film directed by S. S. Rajamouli. Its song Naatu Naatu, composed by M. M. Keeravani with words by Chandrabose, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2023, the first time a song from an Indian production had taken that award. At the same ceremony The Elephant Whisperers won the award for Best Documentary Short Film.

Option A, Baahubali, is an earlier pair of films by the same director with music by the same composer, but no Oscar came to it. Option C, Pushpa, is a Telugu film whose songs were widely popular, and Option D, Kantara, is a Kannada film of 2022 that drew large audiences; neither won an Academy Award. The name of the composer and of the lyricist are asked as often as the name of the film.

The correct answer is B, Vinoba Bhave. Acharya Vinoba Bhave won the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1958, in the category of community leadership, and was the first Indian to receive it. The award was created in 1957 in memory of Ramon Magsaysay, the President of the Philippines who died in an air crash that year, and it is often called Asia’s Nobel Prize. Vinoba Bhave was honoured for the Bhoodan movement he began at Pochampally in 1951, walking from village to village to persuade landowners to give land to the landless. Option A is wrong because the cartoonist R. K. Laxman received the award much later, in 1984. Option C is wrong because Jawaharlal Nehru never received it. Option D is wrong because Mahatma Gandhi died in 1948, nine years before the award was instituted. Exam tip: Magsaysay Award began 1957, first Indian Vinoba Bhave 1958, Mother Teresa 1962.

The correct answer is B, Sahitya Akademi. The Akademi gives its annual award in the twenty-four languages it recognises, and it instituted the Bhasha Samman in 1996 to honour writers and scholars working in languages outside that list, as well as those who contribute to classical and medieval literature. It is a way of reaching the many Indian languages the annual award cannot cover.

Option A, Bharatiya Jnanpith, gives the Jnanpith Award and the Moortidevi Award and works only with the Eighth Schedule languages and English. Option C, the Lalit Kala Akademi, is the national academy of fine arts and gives no literary award; it shares Rabindra Bhavan in New Delhi with the Sahitya Akademi, which is why the two names appear together. Option D, the K. K. Birla Foundation, gives the Saraswati Samman, the Vyas Samman and the Bihari Puraskar. Remember the Akademi as the body that handles every language question, whether inside its list of twenty-four or outside it.

The correct answer is D, the television industry. The Emmy awards are the American honours for work made for television, covering drama series, comedy, news and documentary programmes, and they stand in the same relation to television as the Oscars do to cinema. The International Emmy awards are given separately for programmes produced outside the United States.

Option A, music, is the field of the Grammy awards, given by the Recording Academy. Option B, literature, is covered by prizes such as the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Booker Prize and the Pulitzer Prize, not by the Emmy. Option C, cinema, is the field of the Academy Awards, the BAFTA and the festival prizes at Cannes, Berlin and Venice. The four American awards are best learnt together: Oscar for film, Emmy for television, Grammy for music and Tony for theatre.

The correct answer is B, Viswanathan Anand. The award was instituted in 1991–92 and the chess grandmaster received it in that very first year, which is the fact papers return to most often. Option D, Karnam Malleswari, the weightlifter, holds a related first: she was the first woman to receive the Khel Ratna, in 1994–95, and candidates who remember one first and not the other are caught here. Option A, Leander Paes, the tennis player, received the award in 1996–97, the year after his Olympic bronze at Atlanta. Option C, Sachin Tendulkar, received it in 1997–98. All four are genuine recipients, so the question is settled by the order of the years rather than by the fame of the names, and the order to hold is Anand, Malleswari, Paes, Tendulkar.

The correct answer is C, 1957. The trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of New York set up the award in 1957, the year in which President Ramon Magsaysay died, and the first awards were given in 1958. Vinoba Bhave, honoured in that first year, was the first Indian to receive it.

Option A, 1947, is the year of Indian independence and has no bearing on this award. Option B, 1952, precedes Magsaysay's death and so cannot be the founding year. Option D, 1962, is the year in which Mother Teresa received the award for peace and international understanding, which is why it is placed among the options. Fix the sequence in mind: the award was founded in 1957 and first conferred in 1958, on Vinoba Bhave among others.

The correct answer is B, Aparajito, the second film of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy, which won the Golden Lion, the highest award of the Venice Film Festival, in 1957. The trilogy follows the boy Apu from his village childhood to his life in the city, and Aparajito is the middle part of it.

Option A, Pather Panchali, is the first film of the trilogy, made in 1955, and it was honoured at Cannes in 1956 rather than at Venice. Option C, Do Bigha Zamin, the 1953 film of Bimal Roy about a farmer who loses his land, was honoured at Cannes. Option D, Neecha Nagar, the 1946 film of Chetan Anand, shared the highest prize at the first Cannes festival, which makes it the earliest Indian success at a European festival but not a Venice winner.

The correct answer is B, Rajasthan. The Bihari Puraskar was instituted in 1991 by the K. K. Birla Foundation and goes to a writer from Rajasthan for a work in Hindi or Rajasthani. It is named after Bihari, the seventeenth century poet of the Riti period and author of the Bihari Satsai, who was associated with the court of Amber.

Option A, Bihar, is the answer the name of the award pulls candidates towards, and it is wrong: the award is named after a poet called Bihari and has nothing to do with the state of Bihar. Option C, Uttar Pradesh, and option D, Madhya Pradesh, have literary honours of their own; Madhya Pradesh gives the Kabir Samman for poetry and the Maithili Sharan Gupt Samman. The foundation's other awards are wider in reach, the Saraswati Samman covering every Eighth Schedule language and the Vyas Samman covering Hindi across the country.