Railway GK Questions 2026

She was the flight purser on a hijacked aircraft at Karachi in 1986 and was killed while shielding passengers as she helped them escape.

The three peacetime gallantry awards were instituted in 1952 as the Ashoka Chakra of the first, second and third class, and in January 1967 the second and third were renamed the Kirti Chakra and the Shaurya Chakra, while the first kept the name Ashoka Chakra.

The Shaurya Chakra is the third of the peacetime gallantry awards and therefore corresponds to the third of the wartime awards, the Vir Chakra, both being given for acts of gallantry that rank below the first two grades.

The three wartime awards have three peacetime counterparts in the same order: Param Vir Chakra with Ashoka Chakra, Maha Vir Chakra with Kirti Chakra and Vir Chakra with Shaurya Chakra.

The three wartime awards were instituted on that date but were given effect from 15 August 1947, so that acts of bravery in the fighting in Kashmir could be recognised.

Born in Switzerland to a Swiss father and a Hungarian mother, she married an officer of the Indian Army, took Indian citizenship and made a deep study of Indian languages and tradition, which she drew on for the design of the medal and its vajra motif.

His company held off a much larger body of raiders and kept them from reaching the airfield, which allowed reinforcements to continue arriving in Kashmir.

It is awarded for the most conspicuous bravery or an act of daring or self-sacrifice of the highest order away from the field of battle, and it may be given to civilians as well as to members of the armed forces.

It is given for the most conspicuous act of bravery or self-sacrifice in the presence of the enemy, on land, at sea or in the air, and its name means the wheel of the ultimate brave.

During a long famine in Magadha, Bhadrabahu led a body of monks south to Shravanabelagola in Karnataka while Sthulabhadra stayed in the north and convened a council at Pataliputra.

Because early sculptors at Sanchi and Bharhut did not show the Buddha in human form, they used signs, and the wheel stands for the first sermon at Sarnath, which is itself called the turning of the wheel of law.

He presided over the First Buddhist Council, held at Rajgriha soon after the Mahaparinirvana in the reign of Ajatashatru, whose purpose was to settle the teaching before it could be distorted.

Mahavira preached in the spoken tongue of Magadha, and the twelve Angas that preserve his teaching are in Ardhamagadhi. They were finally written down at the second Jain council held at Vallabhi in Gujarat under Devardhi Kshamashramana.

It is the Jain teaching that every object has countless aspects and that no single judgement can capture the whole truth.

The Buddha attained enlightenment seated under a peepal tree at Bodh Gaya, and the tree is therefore called the Bodhi tree; in early Buddhist art, where the Buddha was never shown in human form, the tree itself stands for the enlightenment.

After twelve years of severe austerity Mahavira attained kaivalya at the age of forty-two under a sal tree at Jrimbhikagrama, on the bank of the river Rijupalika, and from that moment was known as Jina and Kevalin.

Held in the reign of Ashoka under the presidency of Moggaliputta Tissa, it purged the order of dissenters, added the Abhidhamma Pitaka, the philosophical third basket, to the canon, and decided to send missionaries to Sri Lanka and other lands.

Parshvanatha had prescribed four restraints, and Mahavira added celibacy to them, so Jain monastic discipline rests on five great vows: ahimsa, satya, asteya, aparigraha and brahmacharya.

He was the twenty-third Tirthankara, a prince of Varanasi and son of King Ashvasena, whose emblem is the serpent. He is placed about two hundred and fifty years before Mahavira and gave his followers four vows: non-violence, truth, non-stealing and non-possession.

The Fourth Buddhist Council met at Kundalvana in Kashmir in the first century CE under the Kushana king Kanishka, with Vasumitra presiding and Ashvaghosha assisting him.