Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim GK: Statehood, Articles and Landmarks

The correct answer is B, Kohima. Kohima stands in the hills of the Angami country and has been the seat of government since before statehood; the Kohima War Cemetery recalls the battle fought here in 1944, and the Hornbill Festival is held each December at Kisama, a short distance away. Option A is wrong, and is the commonest wrong answer: Dimapur is the largest city of the state, the commercial centre and the only place with a railway station and an airport, but it is not the capital. Option C is wrong; Mokokchung is the chief town of the Ao country and an important district headquarters, but no more. Option D is wrong; Agartala is the capital of Tripura, placed here because the two states are often studied together. Remember the pairing as Kohima for government and Dimapur for trade and transport, which is exactly the distinction the question is testing.

The correct answer is A, 1 December 1963. Nagaland was created under the State of Nagaland Act 1962 out of the Naga Hills-Tuensang Area and became the sixteenth state of India on that day, the first of the north-eastern states to be formed after independence and well before the general reorganisation of the region. Option B is wrong for Nagaland but is the date on which Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura became full states under the North-Eastern Areas Reorganisation Act. Option C is wrong; 16 May 1975 is the day Sikkim became the twenty-second state, under the thirty-sixth amendment. Option D is wrong; 20 February 1987 is the day Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh became the twenty-third and twenty-fourth states. The four dates 1963, 1972, 1975 and 1987 cover the whole making of the modern north-east and are worth learning together.

The correct answer is B, Nagaland. Article 371A, inserted by the thirteenth amendment when the state was created, lays down that no Act of Parliament about Naga religious or social practices, Naga customary law and procedure, the administration of civil and criminal justice where decisions follow Naga customary law, or the ownership and transfer of land and its resources shall apply to Nagaland unless the Legislative Assembly so resolves; it also gives the Governor a special responsibility for law and order. Option A is wrong; Sikkim is covered by Article 371F, inserted in 1975. Option C is wrong; Mizoram has Article 371G, which was drafted on the pattern of 371A and is therefore the hardest distractor here. Option D is wrong; Tripura has no article of its own in this series, its tribal areas being protected instead by the Sixth Schedule through an autonomous district council.

The correct answer is A, Nagaland. The Hornbill Festival runs from the first to the tenth of December at the Naga Heritage Village at Kisama, a short distance from Kohima, and brings all the major tribes of the state together to present their dances, songs, crafts, food and games; it is called the festival of festivals because it gathers in one place what each tribe otherwise celebrates separately, and it takes its name from the bird whose feathers appear in Naga headgear. Option B is wrong; the festivals of Sikkim are Losoong, Saga Dawa, Pang Lhabsol and Bumchu, all tied to the Buddhist calendar. Option C is wrong; Tripura holds Garia Puja, Kharchi Puja of the fourteen gods and Ker Puja, and the orange festival of the Jampui hills. Option D is wrong; the great festivals of Assam are the three Bihus, of which Rongali Bihu in April is the best known.

The correct answer is B, Agartala. Agartala lies close to the Bangladesh border in the west of the state and holds the Ujjayanta Palace, built by Maharaja Radha Kishore Manikya at the turn of the twentieth century and now the state museum; it is the second largest city of the north-east after Guwahati. Option A is wrong; Udaipur in Gomati district was an older capital of the Manikya kings and has the Tripura Sundari Temple, counted among the Shakti Peethas, which makes it a plausible choice for a candidate who remembers the temple. Option C is wrong; Kailashahar in the north of the state is the town nearest the rock carvings of Unakoti. Option D is wrong; Gangtok is the capital of Sikkim, offered here because the two states are studied in the same chapter. Note that Udaipur in Tripura is distinct from Udaipur in Rajasthan.

The correct answer is B, Tripura. Neermahal stands in the middle of Rudrasagar Lake at Melaghar, about fifty kilometres from Agartala, and was built in the nineteen thirties by Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya as a summer palace; it mixes Hindu and Mughal elements with Islamic arches and is described as the only water palace in eastern India, the other in the country being the Jal Mahal at Jaipur. Option A is wrong; Nagaland has no palace of this kind, its historic architecture being the morung, the bachelors dormitory of a Naga village. Option C is wrong; Sikkim has the royal palace of the Chogyals at Gangtok and the Tsuklakhang monastery beside it. Option D is wrong; Manipur has the Kangla Fort at Imphal, the seat of the Meitei kings, which is the other royal site of the region and the usual distractor here.

The correct answer is A, Tripura. Unakoti is a hillside near Kailashahar in the north of the state covered with huge rock-cut images of Shiva, Ganesha, Nandi and others, carved into the rock face and dated to roughly the seventh to ninth centuries; the name comes from the legend that Shiva passed the night here with ninety-nine lakh ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine companions, all turned to stone at daybreak. Option B is wrong; the great rock-cut and stone sites of Odisha are the Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves and the Konark and Lingaraja temples. Option C is wrong; Nagaland has no comparable rock sculpture, its heritage being in textiles, wood carving and the stone monoliths of some villages. Option D is wrong; Assam has the stone sculpture of Madan Kamdev and the Ahom monuments of Sivasagar, but the carvings of Unakoti are distinctly Tripura.

The correct answer is C, Tripura. Kokborok, whose name means the language of the people, is spoken by the Tripuri and related communities and is an official language of the state along with Bengali and English; it belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family, unlike Bengali, which is Indo-Aryan, and the two sit side by side in the state. Option A is wrong; the languages of Sikkim are Nepali, Sikkimese or Bhutia, Lepcha and Limbu, with several more recognised by the state. Option B is wrong; the official language of Nagaland is English, and Nagamese, a creole based on Assamese, is the common speech between tribes that do not share a tongue. Option D is wrong; Meghalaya has Khasi and Garo alongside English. Keeping Kokborok with Tripura and Meiteilon with Manipur solves most of the language questions set on this region.

The correct answer is C, 1975. Sikkim had been a kingdom under the Chogyals of the Namgyal dynasty, with India responsible for its defence and external affairs; the thirty-fifth amendment of 1974 made it an associate state, and after a referendum in April 1975 the thirty-sixth amendment made it the twenty-second state of India with effect from 16 May 1975, inserting Article 371F at the same time. Option A is wrong; 1963 is the year Nagaland became the sixteenth state. Option B is wrong; 1972 is the year Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura became full states and Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh became Union Territories. Option D is wrong; 1987 is the year Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh became states and also the year Goa became the twenty-fifth state, which makes it a crowded year and a tempting guess.

The correct answer is B, Kanchenjunga. At 8,586 metres it stands on the border of Sikkim and Nepal, is the highest peak in India and the third highest in the world after Everest and K2, and is worshipped as a guardian deity in Sikkim, which is why climbers stop short of the actual summit. Option A is wrong; Nanda Devi in Uttarakhand, at 7,816 metres, is the highest peak lying wholly within Indian territory, a distinction that makes this question tricky and that is itself asked separately. Option C is wrong; Mount Saramati on the Nagaland and Myanmar border is the highest peak of Nagaland but only around 3,826 metres. Option D is wrong; Anamudi in the Western Ghats of Kerala, about 2,695 metres, is the highest peak of peninsular India and of South India, a different superlative altogether.

The correct answer is C, Sikkim. The state began phasing out chemical fertilisers and pesticides in the mid two thousands, converted its whole cultivated area to certified organic management, and was declared India first fully organic state in 2016; the policy won a Future Policy Gold Award from the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Future Council in 2018, the first time an Indian state had received it. Option A is wrong; Nagaland practises jhum cultivation over much of its hill land and has moved towards organic certification for particular crops, but not as a whole state. Option B is wrong; Tripura is known for rubber, bamboo and tea rather than for an organic policy. Option D is wrong; Mizoram, like other hill states, has a low use of chemical inputs, which makes it a plausible guess, but the declaration and the award belong to Sikkim.

The correct answer is A, Sikkim. Yuksom, in the west of the state, is where three Tibetan lamas consecrated Phuntsog Namgyal as the first Chogyal in 1642, founding the dynasty that ruled until 1975; the name means the meeting place of three learned ones, and the Norbugang throne and the nearby Dubdi monastery mark the spot. The capital later moved to Rabdentse, then to Tumlong and finally to Gangtok. Option B is wrong; Nagaland had no monarchy of this kind, each village being governed by its own council. Option C is wrong; Arunachal Pradesh was the North East Frontier Agency administered from Shillong before Itanagar was built. Option D is wrong; the Manikya kings of Tripura ruled first from Udaipur and later from Agartala, which is the capital sequence to keep separate from this one.