The 37th National Games, held in 2023, were hosted by which state?

The correct answer is A, Lahore. The first edition was staged in 1924 at Lahore, then the chief city of undivided Punjab, under the name the All India Olympic Games, and its purpose was to create a national meet from which an Indian team could be picked for the Olympic Games. For the next decade and a half the competition moved every two years between the large cities of British India. Option B, Bombay, is the strongest distractor because the 1940 edition was held there, and that is the edition at which the name was changed to the National Games; the city is right for the renaming and wrong for the founding. Option C, Calcutta, hosted an edition in the late nineteen thirties and was then the largest city in the country, which makes it plausible but incorrect. Option D, Madras, also hosted editions in the early decades but was not the venue of the first. Fix the pair as Lahore for 1924 and Bombay for 1940.

The correct answer is B, 1940. The competition had been held since 1924 under the name the All India Olympic Games, and at the Bombay edition of 1940 it was renamed the National Games, which it has remained ever since. Option A, 1924, is the year of the first edition at Lahore, when the older name was still in use, so it marks the founding and not the renaming. Option C, 1947, is the year of independence and is offered because a change of national name seems natural at that moment, but the renaming had already taken place seven years earlier. Option D, 1985, is a real milestone for a different reason: the New Delhi edition of that year reorganised the Games on the pattern of the Olympic Games, bringing in a host state, a torch relay, a mascot and a far wider list of disciplines, but it did not change the name. Keep the three dates in order: 1924 founded, 1940 renamed, 1985 restructured.

The correct answer is B, Indian Olympic Association. The Indian Olympic Association is the national Olympic committee of the country, and it conducts the National Games in partnership with the Olympic association of the host state, deciding the list of disciplines, approving the venues and ratifying the results, with support from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. Option A, the Sports Authority of India, is a government body that runs training centres, coaching schemes and sports science support for athletes, so it assists the Games without organising them. Option C, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, governs only cricket and has no role in a multi-sport event; cricket has not been a regular National Games discipline. Option D, the National Sports Development Fund, is a financing mechanism through which money is channelled to athletes and federations, not an organising body. The simple rule is that the national Olympic committee runs the domestic Olympic-style Games.

The correct answer is B, Gujarat. The 36th National Games were held in Gujarat in 2022, spread across Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot and Bhavnagar, with the mascot Savaj, an Asiatic lion cub chosen because the Asiatic lion survives in the wild only in that state. Option A, Goa, hosted the next edition, the 37th, in 2023, with the mascot Moga the gaur, so it is the closest wrong answer. Option C, Kerala, hosted the 35th edition in 2015, with Ammu the great hornbill as mascot, and had also hosted in 1987. Option D, Uttarakhand, hosted the 38th edition in 2025, with Mauli the Himalayan monal. The sequence worth memorising is Kerala for the 35th, Gujarat for the 36th, Goa for the 37th and Uttarakhand for the 38th, since questions on this topic almost always come from these four.

The correct answer is A, Asiatic lion. Savaj was a cub of the Asiatic lion, and it was chosen as the mascot of the Gujarat edition of 2022 because the Gir forest of Gujarat is the only place in the world where that subspecies survives in the wild, making the lion the obvious emblem of the host state. Option B, the Indian bison or gaur, was the basis of Moga, the mascot of the Goa edition of 2023, since the gaur is the state animal of Goa. Option C, the great hornbill, was the basis of Ammu, the mascot of the Kerala edition of 2015, the great hornbill being the state bird of Kerala. Option D, the snow leopard, is a Himalayan animal and has not been a National Games mascot; at Uttarakhand in 2025 the mascot was Mauli, a Himalayan monal, which is the state bird. The general rule that answers all such questions is that the mascot comes from the wildlife of the host state.