Awards & Honours Quiz: State Government Awards and Honours

The correct answer is A, Kuvempu. The Karnataka Ratna was instituted by the Government of Karnataka in 1992 as the highest civilian honour of the state, and the first person to receive it was Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa, the Kannada poet known by his pen name Kuvempu, who had also written the state song of Karnataka. Option B, Shivaram Karanth, was a Kannada novelist and a Jnanpith awardee, but he was not the first Karnataka Ratna. Option C, Girish Karnad, was a playwright and film maker honoured with the Jnanpith in 1998, again not the first recipient of this state honour. Option D, U. R. Ananthamurthy, was also a Jnanpith awardee from Karnataka. All four are major Kannada writers, which is exactly why the question is set this way; the memory hook is that the state began its highest honour with the poet of its own state song.

The correct answer is C, 1996. The Government of Maharashtra instituted the Maharashtra Bhushan in 1996 as the highest civilian award of the state, open to work in literature, art, sport, science, social service, medicine and public administration, and the first award went to the Marathi writer and humorist Purushottam Laxman Deshpande, remembered as Pu La Deshpande. Option A, 1986, and option B, 1991, are earlier years in which the award did not yet exist. Option D, 2001, is after the institution of the award and after its first conferment. A useful way to hold the date is to pair the state honours by decade: Karnataka Ratna came in 1992 and Maharashtra Bhushan four years later in 1996, while the Assam and Kerala sets are far newer, dating from 2021.

The correct answer is C, 2021. The Government of Assam created a three-step set of state honours in 2021: Assam Baibhav at the top for exceptional service to the state, Assam Saurav next, and Assam Gaurav for distinguished work in specific fields. The first Assam Baibhav was conferred on the industrialist Ratan Tata for the Tata group's work on cancer care in the state. Option A, 2016, and option B, 2019, come before the awards existed. Option D, 2022, is the year in which a later round of these honours was given, not the year of institution, and this is the distractor most students fall for. Note the internal order carefully, because a question very often asks which of the three stands highest; the answer is Assam Baibhav, with Gaurav at the bottom of the three.

The correct answer is C, Kerala Jyothi. Kerala instituted three civilian honours in 2021, modelled on the idea of a graded set: Kerala Jyothi at the top, Kerala Prabha next and Kerala Sree third. The first Kerala Jyothi went to the Malayalam writer and film maker M. T. Vasudevan Nair. Option A, Kerala Sree, is the third of the three, and option B, Kerala Prabha, is the second, so both are real awards but neither is the highest. Option D is wrong because the whole point of the scheme is that the three are graded, exactly as the Padma awards are graded into Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri. A simple memory rule is that light gets weaker down the list: Jyothi is a flame, Prabha is a glow and Sree is an honorific.

The correct answer is C, West Bengal. The Government of West Bengal instituted Banga Bibhushan and Banga Bhushan in 2011 to honour people from the state in fields such as literature, music, cinema, sport, science and social service, with Banga Bibhushan ranked above Banga Bhushan. The word Banga itself is the Bengali name of the region, which is the quickest clue in the question. Option A, Odisha, runs its own set of state honours and does not use these names. Option B, Bihar, and option D, Assam, are also wrong; Assam's honours are the Assam Baibhav, Assam Saurav and Assam Gaurav set of 2021, which is a common mix-up because Baibhav and Bibhushan sound alike. West Bengal's older literary honour is a separate award, the Rabindra Puraskar, instituted in 1950.

The correct answer is A, Madhya Pradesh. The Kalidas Samman was instituted by the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 1980 and is given by rotation in four fields of the classical arts: classical music, classical dance, theatre and the plastic arts. It is named after the Sanskrit poet Kalidasa, whose association with Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh is the clue the question depends on. Option B, Maharashtra, gives the Maharashtra Bhushan and the cinema awards named after Raj Kapoor and V. Shantaram. Option C, Uttar Pradesh, gives the Yash Bharti Samman and the Bharat Bharati Samman for Hindi literature. Option D, Rajasthan, gives the Rajasthan Ratna. Madhya Pradesh runs the largest family of artist-named awards in the country, including the Tansen Samman for Hindustani classical music, the Lata Mangeshkar Award for light music and the Kishore Kumar Samman for cinema.

The correct answer is A, Hindustani classical music. The Tansen Samman is given by the Government of Madhya Pradesh for Hindustani classical music and is announced in connection with the Tansen Samaroh, the music festival held every year at Behat near Gwalior, the birthplace of Tansen, the great singer of Akbar's court and one of the nine jewels of his darbar. Option B, Kathak dance, would fall under the classical dance turn of the Kalidas Samman, not under this award. Option C, Hindi literature, is the field of the Maithili Sharan Gupt Samman of the same state, while Urdu writing has the Iqbal Samman. Option D, cinema, is the field of the Kishore Kumar Samman. The easy link to remember is singer to singer: Tansen was a vocalist, so his award is for classical vocal and instrumental music.

The correct answer is B, Uttar Pradesh. The Yash Bharti Samman was instituted by the Government of Uttar Pradesh in 1994 and is given for distinguished work in art, literature, music, sport, journalism and social service by people connected with the state. Option A, Uttarakhand, was carved out of Uttar Pradesh only in 2000 and has its own, later set of state honours. Option C, Bihar, and option D, Jharkhand, are wrong as well; Jharkhand was created in 2000 from Bihar. The pairing to remember is that Uttar Pradesh gives the Yash Bharti Samman for general excellence and, through the Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sansthan, the Bharat Bharati Samman for Hindi literature, the latter named after the long poem Bharat Bharati by Maithili Sharan Gupt. Remember also that a state award of this kind does not become a title, because Article 18 of the Constitution forbids titles.

The correct answer is B, Karnataka. The Pampa Award was instituted by the Government of Karnataka in 1987 as the highest literary honour of the state and is named after Pampa, the tenth-century poet regarded as the father of Kannada literature and the author of the Vikramarjuna Vijaya. Option A, Kerala, has its own highest literary honour, the Ezhuthachan Puraskaram, named after Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan, the father of Malayalam literature. Option C, Andhra Pradesh, is better known for the Nandi Awards for Telugu cinema. Option D, Tamil Nadu, confers the Kalaimamani title for music, dance, theatre and cinema. The pattern worth noticing is that each southern state named its top literary award after the earliest great poet of its language, so Pampa goes with Kannada and Ezhuthachan with Malayalam.

The correct answer is C, Article 18. Article 18 abolishes titles and forbids the State from conferring any title except a military or academic distinction; it also bars citizens from accepting a title from a foreign state. This is why the Supreme Court had to examine, in Balaji Raghavan versus Union of India in 1996, whether the Bharat Ratna and the Padma awards are titles, and it held that they are not, provided they are not used as a prefix or a suffix to the recipient's name. The same rule applies to state awards such as the Karnataka Ratna or the Maharashtra Bhushan. Option A, Article 15, prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. Option B, Article 17, abolishes untouchability. Option D, Article 19, guarantees the six freedoms, including freedom of speech and expression.