India celebrated the golden jubilee of its independence in which year?

The correct answer is B, Silver jubilee. Twenty-five completed years are marked as a silver jubilee, called the Rajat Jayanti in Hindi, rajat being the word for silver, and the name comes from the old custom of giving silver on the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Option A is wrong because the golden jubilee, or Swarna Jayanti, marks fifty years, twice as long; India kept the golden jubilee of its independence in 1997. Option C is wrong because the diamond jubilee, the Hirak Jayanti, marks sixty years in the usage now standard in India. Option D is wrong because the platinum jubilee marks seventy-five years in Indian official usage. The four names in ascending order, silver at twenty-five, golden at fifty, diamond at sixty and platinum at seventy-five, cover almost every question set from this chapter.

The correct answer is C, 50 years. The golden jubilee marks fifty completed years and is called the Swarna Jayanti in Hindi, the name taken from the gift of gold traditionally made on a fiftieth wedding anniversary. Option A is wrong because twenty-five years is the silver jubilee, or Rajat Jayanti, which is exactly half the span. Option B is wrong because forty years is the ruby jubilee, one of the intermediate names that appears in the full table but is rarely set on its own. Option D is wrong because sixty years is the diamond jubilee, the Hirak Jayanti, and it is the option most often chosen by a candidate who remembers that gold and diamond are both precious but cannot place the numbers. The simplest check is that the two best known names, silver and golden, stand at twenty-five and fifty, a gap of twenty-five years.

The correct answer is B, 60 years. The diamond jubilee, the Hirak Jayanti, marks sixty completed years in the usage now standard in India, and the figure is natural because sixty years completes a full cycle in the traditional Indian calendar. Option A is wrong because fifty years is the golden jubilee. Option C is wrong because seventy years was the span marked by the platinum jubilee in British royal usage, as with Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, whose diamond jubilee of sixty years had fallen in 2012. Option D is wrong because one hundred years is the centenary, called the Shatabdi. It is worth knowing that the diamond jubilee was once used for seventy-five years and that some older institutions still describe their seventy-fifth year that way, but when both sixty and seventy-five appear in the options the intended answer is sixty.

The correct answer is B, Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav. The seventy-fifth year of independence was observed from 2021 as the Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, and in the scheme of anniversary names seventy-five completed years are a platinum jubilee in Indian official usage. Option A is wrong because the Swarna Jayanti is the golden jubilee of fifty years, which in the case of independence fell in 1997. Option C is wrong because the Hirak Jayanti is the diamond jubilee of sixty years, which for independence fell in 2007. Option D is wrong because the Rajat Jayanti is the silver jubilee of twenty-five years, which fell in 1972. Arranging the four milestones of independence in this way, 1972, 1997, 2007 and 2021, makes the whole scheme easy to recall from a single chain.

The correct answer is B, Sesquicentennial. One hundred and fifty years is a sesquicentennial, the prefix sesqui meaning one and a half, so the word reads as one and a half centuries. Option A is wrong because a centenary, also called a centennial and known in Hindi as the Shatabdi, marks one hundred years. Option C is wrong because a bicentenary marks two hundred years, the prefix bi standing for two. Option D is wrong because a tercentenary marks three hundred years. The larger words all follow their ordinary number prefixes, so once sesqui is understood as one and a half the series falls into place: centenary at one hundred, sesquicentennial at one hundred and fifty, bicentenary at two hundred, tercentenary at three hundred and a millennium at one thousand.