Who was the first sportsperson to be awarded the Bharat Ratna?

The correct answer is B, Republic Day. The list of Bharat Ratna and Padma awardees is released on 25 January, the eve of Republic Day, and the honours are conferred by the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan later in the year. Option A is wrong because Independence Day is associated with the announcement of gallantry awards and of the Prime Minister's address from the Red Fort, not with the Padma list. Option C is wrong because Gandhi Jayanti on 2 October is observed as the International Day of Non-Violence and carries no award announcement of this kind. Option D is wrong because Constitution Day on 26 November marks the adoption of the Constitution in 1949 and again has no award list attached to it. Both the Bharat Ratna and the Padma awards were instituted in 1954, and the Bharat Ratna carries no cash award.

The correct answer is B, Ashoka Chakra. India's gallantry awards come in two families. For valour in the presence of the enemy the order is Param Vir Chakra, Maha Vir Chakra and Vir Chakra; for valour otherwise than in the face of the enemy the order is Ashoka Chakra, Kirti Chakra and Shaurya Chakra, so the Ashoka Chakra stands highest in peacetime. Option A is wrong because the Param Vir Chakra is the highest wartime award, first given to Major Somnath Sharma. Option C is wrong because the Kirti Chakra is second in the peacetime order, corresponding to the Maha Vir Chakra. Option D is wrong because the Shaurya Chakra is third, corresponding to the Vir Chakra. Learn the two ladders side by side, since the commonest question asks for one rank of one ladder while offering ranks of the other as distractors.

The correct answer is B, Major Dhyan Chand. The country's highest sporting honour was renamed the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award in 2021, after the hockey player whose birth anniversary on 29 August is observed as National Sports Day. Option A is wrong because Milkha Singh, the athlete known as the Flying Sikh, has no national award named after him. Option C is wrong because Kapil Dev captained the cricket team that won the World Cup in 1983 but has no award in his name. Option D is wrong because Dhanraj Pillay is a former hockey captain who received the Khel Ratna himself. Keep the family of sports awards clear: Khel Ratna as the highest, the Arjuna Award for consistently outstanding players, the Dronacharya Award for coaches and the Dhyan Chand Award for lifetime achievement.

The correct answer is B, G. Sankara Kurup. The Jnanpith Award was instituted by the Bharatiya Jnanpith in 1961 and given for the first time in 1965 to the Malayalam poet G. Sankara Kurup for his collection Odakkuzhal. Option A is wrong because Sumitranandan Pant received the award in 1968 and was the first Hindi writer to do so, which makes him the commonest wrong answer here. Option C is wrong because Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay received it in 1966, in the second year, for Bengali. Option D is wrong because Umashankar Joshi received it in 1967 for Gujarati. The Jnanpith is the highest literary honour for an Indian writer and is given for work in a language listed in the Eighth Schedule, along with English. Note also that the Jnanpith is awarded by a private trust and not by the Government of India, which is a point papers like to test.

The correct answer is B, 10 December. The Nobel ceremonies are held on 10 December every year, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel in 1896; the prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and economic sciences are presented at Stockholm, while the peace prize is presented at Oslo. Option A is wrong because 21 October is the birth anniversary of Alfred Nobel and no ceremony falls on it. Option C is wrong because 1 January has no connection with the prizes; the winners are announced in the first half of October. Option D is wrong because 24 October is United Nations Day, which is often confused with the Nobel calendar because of the peace prize. Remember that the economics prize was not in Nobel's will and was added in 1968 by the central bank of Sweden.