Railway GK Questions 2026

The Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the highest honour in Indian cinema, was instituted in 1969 to mark the birth centenary of Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, who made Raja Harishchandra in 1913, and the first award went to the actress Devika Rani, who was also a founder of Bombay Talkies.

She won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design in 1983, for the film Gandhi released in 1982, sharing it with John Mollo, and she was the first Indian to win an Oscar in any category.

He commanded a company of the 4th Battalion of the Kumaon Regiment at Badgam near Srinagar in November 1947 and held off a far larger force of raiders until he was killed; the Param Vir Chakra, instituted on 26 January 1950 with effect from 15 August 1947, was conferred on…

Known as the Frontier Gandhi and as Badshah Khan, he led the Khudai Khidmatgar movement in the North-West Frontier Province and became a citizen of Pakistan after partition; India honoured him with the Bharat Ratna in 1987, the first time the award went to someone who was not an Indian…

He died at Tashkent in January 1966 after signing the agreement that ended the war of 1965, and the Bharat Ratna was conferred on him that same year, the first time the honour was given after the recipient's death.

She received the Bharat Ratna in 1971, while she was Prime Minister, and she remains the first woman on the list.

The Bharat Ratna was instituted in 1954 and in that first year it went to three men: C. Rajagopalachari, the last Governor-General of India, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, then Vice-President and later President, and the physicist C. V. Raman.

He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for his work on the scattering of light, the phenomenon known as the Raman effect, which he announced on 28 February 1928; that date is kept as National Science Day.

He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for Gitanjali, becoming not only the first Indian but the first Asian of any country to receive a Nobel Prize.

The pena is a single-stringed instrument with a bamboo rod, a coconut shell resonator and a bow, and the pena khongba, the singer who plays it, performs at the Lai Haraoba festival and narrates the legends of the Meitei people.

The Kalbelia are a community of Rajasthan traditionally associated with snake catching, and their women dance in black swirling skirts while the men play the been and the khanjari; the tradition was inscribed by UNESCO in 2010.

In Burrakatha a main narrator holding a tambura tells a story in song, verse and prose, while two companions play the burra, a small drum shaped like a skull, and interrupt him with questions and jokes; the form was widely used to spread social and political messages in the twentieth…

The Mando is a slow song in Konkani, sung by couples at weddings and gatherings, whose melody carries the mark of three centuries of Portuguese presence; the quick Dulpod usually follows it, and Dekhni is the third well known Goan form.

In Villu Pattu a large bow is set over an earthen pot and struck as a percussion instrument while the lead singer narrates a story from mythology or local history and a chorus answers him; the form is strongest in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu and in the neighbouring…

Kajri is sung in the month of Shravan, when the clouds gather, and its verses speak of dark skies, the separation of lovers and the longing of a woman for a husband who is away; Mirzapur and Banaras are its best known homes.

Bihu songs are sung at Rongali or Bohag Bihu, the spring festival that marks the Assamese new year in April, and they are accompanied by the dhol, the pepa made from a buffalo horn and the jaw harp called gogona.

The name means one string, and the instrument is a single string stretched over a gourd with a bamboo neck that the player presses to change the pitch; the Baul holds it in one hand while singing and dancing, often with a small drum called duggi tied at the waist.

In Pandwani a single performer tells the story of the Pandavas in song and speech, holding a tambura and acting out the scenes, and Teejan Bai, who received the Padma Vibhushan, carried the form from her village to audiences across the world.

A powada is sung in a loud, declamatory style by a shahir, who narrates a battle or an act of courage, and the deeds of Chhatrapati Shivaji are its favourite subject; Lavani, Bharud, Gondhal and the devotional abhang also belong to Maharashtra.

The Bauls are wandering singers of Bengal who reject caste and ritual and sing of the man of the heart, accompanying themselves on the one-stringed ektara and the small drum called duggi; their songs were inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.