The national motto of India, "Satyameva Jayate", has been taken from which text?
- A.Rigveda
- B.Mundaka Upanishad
- C.Bhagavad Gita
- D.Manusmriti
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, the Mundaka Upanishad. The full line is Satyameva Jayate Nanritam, meaning truth alone triumphs, not falsehood, and the first two words were inscribed in Devanagari below the Lion Capital of Ashoka when the State Emblem was adopted in 1950. Option A, the Rigveda, is the oldest of the four Vedas and the source of the Gayatri Mantra, but not of this line; candidates pick it simply because it is the most famous ancient text they know. Option C, the Bhagavad Gita, is the source of the Indian Air Force motto Nabhah Sparsham Diptam, which is why it is placed here as a near miss. Option D, the Manusmriti, is a law book of a quite different kind. Learn the pair together: national motto from the Mundaka Upanishad, Air Force motto from the Gita.
Read the full article: Famous Slogans and Quotes and Their Authors
Practice Questions
View all"Sanitation is more important than independence" — Who said this?
- A.C Rajagopalachari
- B.Mahatma Gandhi
- C.Jawaharlal Nehru
- D.Subhash Chandra Bose
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Cleanliness was a lifelong concern for him; he cleaned latrines himself at Sabarmati and Sevagram, insisted that every satyagrahi do the same, and declared on more than one occasion that sanitation mattered more than political freedom, because a nation that could not keep itself clean would not know what to…
Read the full explanation →Who among the following gave the slogan "Freedom is my birthright and I will have it"?
- A.Mahatma Gandhi
- B.Bal Gangadhar Tilak
- C.Bipin Chandra Pal
- D.Lala Lajpat Rai
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The Maratha leader, called Lokmanya and described by the British as the father of Indian unrest, declared that swaraj was his birthright and that he would have it, and the sentence became the rallying cry of the extremist wing of the Congress in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Read the full explanation →The slogan "Jai Jawan Jai Kisan" was given by:
- A.Jawaharlal Nehru
- B.Lal Bahadur Shastri
- C.Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
- D.Indira Gandhi
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He raised the slogan in 1965, when the country was fighting a war on one side and facing a shortage of food grains on the other, and the two words placed the soldier and the farmer side by side as the twin defenders of the nation.
Read the full explanation →Who coined the slogans "Simon Go Back" and "Quit India"?
- A.Jawaharlal Nehru
- B.Yusuf Meherally
- C.Ram Manohar Lohia
- D.Achyut Patwardhan
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A socialist leader who later became Mayor of Bombay, he coined Simon Go Back for the protests that met the Simon Commission in 1928, and in 1942 he suggested the two words Quit India, which the Congress adopted as the name of its last great movement.
Read the full explanation →The slogan "Inquilab Zindabad" was first given by:
- A.Bhagat Singh
- B.Hasrat Mohani
- C.Chandrashekhar Azad
- D.Ashfaqullah Khan
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The Urdu poet and nationalist, who was also among the first to demand complete independence, coined the phrase in the early nineteen twenties, and it means long live the revolution.
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