Who was the Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India when the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilisation was announced in 1924?

The correct answer is B, 1861. The Survey was set up in that year, in the first years of Crown rule after the revolt of 1857, with Alexander Cunningham as its first Archaeological Surveyor, and it was reorganised as a full department with Cunningham as Director-General in 1871. Option A is wrong because 1784 is the year in which Sir William Jones founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal at Calcutta, the body that began the scholarly study of Indian antiquity but was a learned society, not a government survey. Option C is wrong because 1904 is the year of the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act passed in Lord Curzon's time. Option D is wrong because the Survey was nearly ninety years old by independence and simply passed to the new government, which later gave it the AMASR Act of 1958.

The correct answer is B, Alexander Cunningham. An engineer of the Bengal Engineers who had surveyed Sarnath and Sanchi long before the Survey existed, he was appointed its first Archaeological Surveyor in 1861 and its first Director-General in 1871, and he used the travel accounts of the Chinese pilgrims Faxian and Xuanzang to identify ancient cities with the villages of his own day. Option A is wrong because John Marshall was Director-General from 1902 and is remembered for Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and Taxila, not for founding the Survey. Option C is wrong because Mortimer Wheeler came as Director-General in 1944 and is remembered for stratigraphic method. Option D is wrong because James Prinsep was the scholar who deciphered the Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts, an achievement of epigraphy rather than of excavation.

The correct answer is C, the Ministry of Culture. The Survey is an attached office of that ministry, has its head office in New Delhi and divides the country into circles, each under a Superintending Archaeologist, which look after the monuments and sites declared to be of national importance. Option A is wrong because the Ministry of Education runs schools, universities and bodies such as the NCERT and the UGC. Option B is wrong because the Ministry of Tourism promotes travel and runs schemes for visitor facilities at monuments, which is why candidates confuse the two, but it does not own or protect the monuments. Option D is wrong because the Ministry of Home Affairs deals with internal security, the police and the census. The National Museum and the Sahitya Akademi also come under the Ministry of Culture.

The correct answer is B, Daya Ram Sahni, who dug at Harappa on the bank of the Ravi in 1921 while John Marshall was Director-General, and who ten years later became the first Indian to head the Survey. Option A is wrong because Rakhal Das Banerji excavated Mohenjo-daro on the Indus in 1922, the year after Harappa, and the pair Sahni with Harappa and Banerji with Mohenjo-daro is the most frequently asked match in this chapter. Option C is wrong because S. R. Rao worked at Lothal in Gujarat, where he found the dockyard, from the middle of the nineteen fifties. Option D is wrong because B. B. Lal excavated Kalibangan with B. K. Thapar and traced the Painted Grey Ware at Hastinapur and Atranjikhera, work of a later generation.

The correct answer is C, Lord Curzon. He found the Survey starved of money and nearly wound up, restored its budget, appointed John Marshall as Director-General in 1902 and carried the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act of 1904, the first law in India that let the government protect a monument and stop its owner from damaging or exporting it. Option A is wrong because Lord Ripon is remembered for local self-government and the first Factory Act. Option B is wrong because Lord Lytton is remembered for the Vernacular Press Act and the Delhi Durbar of 1877. Option D is wrong because Lord Mountbatten was the last Viceroy, concerned with the transfer of power in 1947. Curzon's work on monuments, including the repair of the Taj Mahal, is the standard example of his interest in antiquity.