Famous Personalities and Their Nicknames: Exam List

The correct answer is B, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Patel was the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister of India, and he persuaded or pressed more than five hundred princely states into joining the Indian Union after 1947. That firmness earned him the name Iron Man of India, and for the same work he is also called the Bismarck of India. The title Sardar came earlier, from the peasant women of Bardoli after he led the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928.

Option A, Lala Lajpat Rai, is Punjab Kesari or Sher-e-Punjab. Option C, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, is Lokmanya, and Valentine Chirol called him the Father of Indian Unrest. Option D, Subhas Chandra Bose, is Netaji. All three are correct sobriquets, but for different people, which is exactly how this question is built.

The correct answer is C, Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose addressed Gandhi as the Father of the Nation in a radio broadcast made while he was leading the Azad Hind movement during the Second World War, and the phrase has stayed with Gandhi ever since. It is worth noting that the expression is a mark of respect and not a constitutional or official title, because the Constitution confers no such designation.

Option A, Jawaharlal Nehru, gave the nation the phrase about the light having gone out of our lives on the evening of Gandhi's assassination, which candidates often confuse with this question. Option B, Rabindranath Tagore, is credited with the other great title, Mahatma. Option D, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, worked closely with Gandhi but coined no title for him. The pairing to remember is Tagore for Mahatma and Bose for Father of the Nation.

The correct answer is B, Sarojini Naidu. Naidu was a poet in English whose collections include The Golden Threshold and The Bird of Time, and the lyrical quality of her verse earned her the name Nightingale of India, or Bharat Kokila. She was the first Indian woman to preside over the Indian National Congress and later became the Governor of the United Provinces.

Option A, Lata Mangeshkar, is the closest trap, because she is called Swar Kokila and the Queen of Melody, and some popular writing also calls her a nightingale; in exams the Nightingale of India is Sarojini Naidu. Option C, Annie Besant, was the first woman President of the Congress overall and the founder of the Home Rule League. Option D, Kamala Nehru, took part in the civil disobedience movement but carries no such title.

The correct answer is A, Dadabhai Naoroji. Naoroji was a founder of the Indian National Congress, its President three times, and the first Indian to be elected to the British House of Commons. His book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India set out the drain theory, which argued that British rule was transferring India's wealth to Britain, and his long service to the national cause earned him the name Grand Old Man of India.

Option B, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, is remembered as the political guru of Gandhi and the founder of the Servants of India Society. Option C, Surendranath Banerjee, is called the Indian Burke and founded the Indian Association. Option D, Pherozeshah Mehta, was called the Lion of Bombay. All four are moderate leaders of the same generation, which is what makes this question a genuine test of recall.

The correct answer is C, Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Valentine Chirol, a British journalist, used the phrase Father of Indian Unrest for Tilak in his writing on Indian politics, and Tilak sued him for libel in England. Tilak ran the newspapers Kesari in Marathi and The Mahratta in English, gave the country the slogan that Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it, and is called Lokmanya, meaning accepted by the people.

Option A, Aurobindo Ghosh, was tried in the Alipore bomb case and later turned to spiritual work at Pondicherry. Option B, Bipin Chandra Pal, formed the Lal Bal Pal trio with Tilak and Lajpat Rai. Option D, Lala Lajpat Rai, is Punjab Kesari and died after the lathi charge in Lahore in 1928. The three extremists are offered together on purpose, but Chirol's phrase belongs to Tilak.

The correct answer is A, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. He organised the Khudai Khidmatgar, the servants of God, also known as the Red Shirts, in the North West Frontier Province, and he held to non-violence so completely that he became known as the Frontier Gandhi, or Sarhadi Gandhi. His own people called him Badshah Khan, and he was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1987, the first non-Indian citizen to receive it.

Option B, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, was the youngest President of the Indian National Congress and the first Education Minister of independent India, remembered on National Education Day. Option C, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, led the Muslim League and was called Quaid-e-Azam. Option D, Hakim Ajmal Khan, was a founder of Jamia Millia Islamia. Only Ghaffar Khan carries the Frontier Gandhi name.

The correct answer is B, Samudragupta. The historian V. A. Smith first described Samudragupta as the Napoleon of India, because of the long list of kings and republics he subdued, recorded in the Allahabad pillar inscription, or Prayag Prashasti, composed by his court poet Harisena. His coins show him as a lyre player and as a performer of the ashvamedha sacrifice.

Option A, Chandragupta Maurya, founded the Mauryan empire with the help of Chanakya and is not given this title. Option C, Harshavardhana, ruled from Thanesar and Kannauj and is the subject of Banabhatta's Harshacharita. Option D, Ashoka, is called Devanampiya Piyadasi in his own edicts and is remembered for giving up war after Kalinga, which is the opposite of a Napoleonic reputation. So B alone is correct.

The correct answer is C, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. Kalam worked on the SLV-3 launch vehicle and then led the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, out of which the Agni, Prithvi, Trishul, Akash and Nag missiles came, and that work gave him the name Missile Man of India. He served as the eleventh President of India and is also remembered as the People's President; his birthday, 15 October, is observed as World Students' Day.

Option A, Homi Jehangir Bhabha, is called the father of the Indian nuclear programme and founded the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Option B, Satish Dhawan, headed ISRO and gave his name to the space centre at Sriharikota. Option D, Raja Ramanna, led the Pokhran test of 1974. All four are Indian scientists, so the sobriquet, not the field, decides the answer.

The correct answer is A, Vikram Sarabhai. Sarabhai set up the Physical Research Laboratory at Ahmedabad, persuaded the government that a developing country needed space technology for communication and weather, and built the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station in Kerala, so he is called the father of the Indian space programme. The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thiruvananthapuram carries his name.

Option B, C. V. Raman, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for the scattering of light, and National Science Day marks the day of his discovery. Option C, Meghnad Saha, gave the ionisation equation used in the study of stellar spectra. Option D, Jagadish Chandra Bose, worked on radio waves and on plant response. Each is a great Indian scientist, but only Sarabhai is tied to the space programme.

The correct answer is B, Verghese Kurien. Kurien built the cooperative dairy at Anand in Gujarat, gave the country the Amul brand and headed the National Dairy Development Board, whose Operation Flood turned India into a large milk producer. That work is the White Revolution, and it earned him the name Milkman of India; National Milk Day is observed on his birthday, 26 November.

Option A, M. S. Swaminathan, is called the father of the Green Revolution in India for the high yielding wheat and rice varieties of the nineteen sixties. Option C, Norman Borlaug, was the American agronomist behind the dwarf wheat varieties and is called the father of the Green Revolution worldwide. Option D, Hiralal Chaudhuri, worked on induced breeding of fish and is linked with the Blue Revolution. Each revolution has its own name, which is the test here.

The correct answer is A, Milkha Singh. Milkha Singh was a sprinter who won the four hundred metres gold at the Commonwealth Games of 1958 and at the Asian Games, and who finished fourth in the four hundred metres final at the Rome Olympics of 1960. The name Flying Sikh is said to have been given to him in Pakistan after he won a race there, and it has stayed with him.

Option B, Gurbachan Singh Randhawa, was a decathlete and hurdler who also reached an Olympic final for India. Option C, Balbir Singh Senior, was the hockey centre forward of three Olympic gold medal teams. Option D, Ajit Pal Singh, captained the Indian hockey team that won the World Cup in 1975. Three of the four are hockey players, so the clue is that the Flying Sikh was an athlete on the track.

The correct answer is B, Chittaranjan Das. C. R. Das was the Calcutta barrister who defended Aurobindo Ghosh in the Alipore bomb case, gave up a large practice for the non-cooperation movement, and founded the Swaraj Party with Motilal Nehru to contest the legislative councils. Bengal called him Deshbandhu, the friend of the nation, and Kolkata's Deshbandhu Park and college keep the name.

Option A, Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India, is Deshratna, the jewel of the nation, which is the neatest trap in this set. Option C, Jayaprakash Narayan, is Loknayak, the leader of the people. Option D, Madan Mohan Malaviya, the founder of Banaras Hindu University, is Mahamana. All four titles are genuine, so this question is decided by the exact pairing.