Odisha GK: Formation, Geography, History and Culture

The correct answer is A, 1 April 1936. Orissa was separated from the Bihar and Orissa Province and made a province in its own right on 1 April 1936, and the day is kept every year as Utkal Divas. It is often described as the first province in British India carved out on a linguistic basis, and the campaign for it is linked above all with Madhusudan Das and Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das. Option B is wrong because 1 November 1956 is the day the States Reorganisation Act came into force and redrew many state boundaries, but Odisha was already a separate unit by then. Option C is wrong because 15 August 1947 is the date of independence, not of the formation of the province. Option D is wrong because 1 November 2000 is the day Chhattisgarh was created out of Madhya Pradesh. Keep the two first of November dates apart, since both appear as distractors in state papers.

The correct answer is B, Chilika Lake. Chilika, spread along the coast of the Puri, Khordha and Ganjam districts, is the largest brackish water lagoon in India, cut off from the Bay of Bengal by a long sandbar. It was one of the first two Indian wetlands listed under the Ramsar Convention, in 1981, it holds the Nalabana Bird Sanctuary on an island of reeds, and the waters near Satapada are known for Irrawaddy dolphins. Option A is wrong because Kolleru, in Andhra Pradesh between the Krishna and the Godavari, is a freshwater lake. Option C is wrong because Pulicat, on the Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu coast, is a brackish lagoon but the second largest, not the largest. Option D is wrong because Anshupa, an oxbow lake near the Mahanadi in Cuttack district, is the largest freshwater lake of Odisha and a much smaller water body.

The correct answer is C, Ashoka. The Mauryan emperor Ashoka invaded Kalinga in about the eighth year of his reign, around 261 BCE, and the slaughter it caused turned him to Buddhism and to the policy of dhamma. His own Rock Edict XIII records his remorse, and his edicts survive in Odisha at Dhauli near Bhubaneswar and at Jaugada, including the two Separate Kalinga Edicts addressed to his officers there. Option A is wrong because Chandragupta Maurya founded the dynasty and campaigned in the north west, not in Kalinga. Option B is wrong because Bindusara, Ashoka father, left Kalinga outside the empire, which is why Ashoka had to conquer it. Option D is wrong because Harshavardhana ruled from Kanauj in the seventh century CE, nearly nine hundred years later. A linked fact worth holding is the Shanti Stupa at Dhauli, built in the twentieth century with Japanese collaboration on the hill above the battlefield.

The correct answer is A, Kharavela. The Hathigumpha or elephant cave inscription, cut into the Udayagiri hill near Bhubaneswar, is the record of Kharavela, the Jain king of the Mahameghavahana line of Kalinga. It is written in the Prakrit language and the Brahmi script, and it lists his conquests, his public works and his patronage of Jainism year by year, which makes it the single most important source for early Odishan history. Option B is wrong because Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva of the Eastern Ganga dynasty began the Jagannath temple at Puri in the twelfth century. Option C is wrong because Narasimhadeva I, of the same dynasty, built the Sun Temple at Konark in the thirteenth century. Option D is wrong because Mahendravarman I was a Pallava ruler of Kanchi in the south. The twin hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri, with their rock cut Jain cells, go with this question.

The correct answer is B, the Eastern Ganga dynasty. The Sun Temple at Konark was raised in the thirteenth century by Narasimhadeva I of the Eastern Ganga dynasty, conceived as the chariot of the sun god with twenty four carved wheels drawn by seven horses. It is the only UNESCO World Heritage Site in Odisha, inscribed in 1984, and European sailors called it the Black Pagoda. Option A is wrong because the Somavamshi rulers belong to an earlier phase and are remembered for the Lingaraja temple at Bhubaneswar. Option C is wrong because the Gajapatis came later, in the fifteenth century, after the Eastern Gangas. Option D is wrong because the Chalukyas ruled in the Deccan from Badami and Kalyani and built nothing in Odisha. Remember the pair that papers set together: Chodaganga Deva and the Jagannath temple at Puri, Narasimhadeva I and the Sun Temple at Konark.

The correct answer is C, the Mahanadi. Hirakud was built across the Mahanadi above Sambalpur, work beginning in 1947 and the project being dedicated in 1957, and it stands as independent India first major multipurpose river valley project. Counting its long earthen dykes it stretches about twenty six kilometres, which makes it one of the longest earthen dams in the world, and it serves irrigation, flood control in the Mahanadi delta and hydroelectricity together. Option A is wrong because the Brahmani, formed where the Sankh and the South Koel meet, carries the Rengali project, not Hirakud. Option B is wrong because the Baitarani is a smaller river of northern Odisha. Option D is wrong because the Subarnarekha rises in Jharkhand and only clips the north eastern corner of the state. The Mahanadi is the longest river of Odisha and the one on which the Satkosia gorge and its tiger reserve also lie.

The correct answer is B, Deomali. Deomali, in the Koraput district of southern Odisha, rises to about one thousand six hundred and seventy two metres and is the highest point in the state. It stands in the Chandragiri and Pottangi stretch of the Eastern Ghats, where the hills are at their broadest and highest in Odisha. Option A is wrong because Mahendragiri, in the Gajapati district, is a well known and sacred peak of the Eastern Ghats but lower than Deomali. Option C is wrong because Malayagiri, in the Angul district, is another notable hill of the state and again lower. Option D is wrong because the Gandhamardan hills, on the Bargarh and Balangir border, are famous for their medicinal plants and their Buddhist associations, not for their height. The Eastern Ghats in Odisha are broken by the gorges of the Mahanadi and the Brahmani, which is why no single long range runs through the state.

The correct answer is C, West Germany. Rourkela, in the Sundargarh district, was built with West German collaboration under the Second Five Year Plan and was the first integrated steel plant set up in the public sector in India. Option A is wrong because Soviet collaboration gave India the Bhilai plant in Madhya Pradesh, now Chhattisgarh, and later Bokaro in what is now Jharkhand. Option B is wrong because British collaboration built Durgapur in West Bengal. Option D is wrong because Japanese help came much later and is tied to modernisation work rather than to any of the first three plants. The three Second Plan plants form a standard matching question, so fix them as a set: Rourkela with West Germany, Bhilai with the Soviet Union and Durgapur with the United Kingdom. Rourkela draws its iron ore from the Joda and Barbil belt of Keonjhar and its coal from the Jharia and Talcher fields.

The correct answer is B, the Olive Ridley turtle. The Gahirmatha coast of the Kendrapara district, a marine sanctuary adjoining Bhitarkanika, holds the largest known nesting ground of the Olive Ridley sea turtle, where lakhs of females come ashore together in the mass nesting called arribada. Rushikulya at the mouth of the Rushikulya river is the state second great nesting beach. Option A is wrong because the gharial is a freshwater, fish eating crocodilian of rivers such as the Chambal, and it is the saltwater crocodile, not the gharial, that Bhitarkanika is known for. Option C is wrong because the Irrawaddy dolphin belongs to the brackish waters of Chilika, especially near Satapada. Option D is wrong because the horseshoe crab does occur on the Odisha and West Bengal coast but is not what Gahirmatha is famous for. Bhitarkanika, the mangrove next door, is both a national park and a Ramsar site.

The correct answer is B, chromite. The Sukinda valley in the Jajpur district holds the bulk of India chromite, the ore of chromium used in stainless steel and in chrome plating, and the belt is the reason India figures at all in world chromite output. Option A is wrong because Odisha bauxite comes from the Panchpatmali plateau in the Koraput district, which feeds the alumina refinery at Damanjodi and the smelter at Angul. Option C is wrong because manganese is mined in Odisha too, in the Keonjhar and Sundargarh districts, but Sukinda is not a manganese field. Option D is wrong because mica is associated with the Koderma belt of Jharkhand and with Nellore and Rajasthan, not with Odisha. Hold the mineral map of the state as a short list: chromite at Sukinda, bauxite at Panchpatmali, iron ore around Joda and Barbil in Keonjhar, and coal in the Talcher and Ib valley fields.

The correct answer is B, Odissi. Odissi grew out of the temple dance of Odisha, from the Mahari tradition of women dancers in the Jagannath temple and the Gotipua tradition of boys dressed as girls dancing outside it, and its sculptural poses echo the carvings of Konark and Bhubaneswar. Kelucharan Mohapatra and Sanjukta Panigrahi are the names most often set beside it. Option A is wrong because Kuchipudi comes from a village of that name in Andhra Pradesh. Option C is wrong because Mohiniyattam is the solo dance of Kerala. Option D is wrong because Sattriya grew in the Vaishnava monasteries, the sattras, of Assam. A second Odishan form worth remembering, though not counted among the classical dances, is the Mayurbhanj style of Chhau, a masked and martial dance; Chhau as a whole was placed on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage in 2010.

The correct answer is B, 1 November 2011. Two laws of 2011 did the work together: the Orissa (Alteration of Name) Act changed the name of the state to Odisha, and the Constitution (113th Amendment) Act changed Oriya to Odia in the Eighth Schedule, which lists the languages of India. Both took effect from 1 November 2011. Option A is wrong because 1 April is Utkal Divas, the anniversary of the formation of the province in 1936, and no renaming took place on it. Option C is wrong because 1 January 2012 is simply not the appointed date. Option D is wrong because 15 August 2011 marks nothing in this story. Two linked facts complete the picture: the High Court of the state still carries the older spelling as the Orissa High Court and sits at Cuttack, and Odia was recognised as a classical language of India in 2014, the sixth language and the first Indo-Aryan one to be given that status.