SSC CHSL GK Questions 2026

The Param Vir Chakra, instituted on 26 January 1950 with effect from 15 August 1947, is India's highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy and so takes the place the Victoria Cross held before independence; it was designed by Savitri Khanolkar and its first recipient was Major…

Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India at the Delhi Durbar of 1877, and the Order of the Indian Empire was created the following year to honour a wider and more junior group of officials than the Star of India covered; its motto, Imperatricis auspiciis, means under the auspices of…

Instituted by the East India Company in 1837, the Indian Order of Merit was the oldest gallantry decoration in India and, until 1911, the only such award open to Indian soldiers, who could not then receive the Victoria Cross.

Queen Victoria instituted the Victoria Cross in 1856, and it bears the words For Valour; the award was then backdated so that acts of gallantry from 1854 onwards, during the Crimean War, could be recognised.

A sepoy of the 129th Baluchis, Khudadad Khan won the Victoria Cross for holding his machine gun position in Belgium in October 1914, becoming the first Indian to receive the decoration after Indian soldiers were made eligible for it in 1911.

After troops under General Dyer fired on a gathering at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on 13 April 1919, Tagore wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, on 31 May 1919, renouncing the knighthood conferred on him in 1915.

Gandhi had been awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind in 1915 for raising an ambulance corps in South Africa, and in 1920 he returned it in a letter to the Viceroy, giving up two South African war medals at the same time, as part of the surrender of titles and honours that the…

Queen Victoria instituted the Kaiser-i-Hind Medal in 1900 for distinguished public service in India, and unlike the orders of chivalry it was open to any person of any rank, Indian or European, man or woman, in gold, silver and bronze classes.

The Order of the Star of India was created in 1861, four years after the Revolt of 1857, to tie the princely rulers and senior officials of India to the British Crown, and its motto was Heaven's light our guide; it was given three classes in 1866, the Knight Grand…

Saikhom Mirabai Chanu of Manipur won the silver medal in the women's 49 kilogram weightlifting category on the opening day of competition at the Tokyo Games, held in 2021, and it was India's first weightlifting medal since Karnam Malleswari's bronze at Sydney in 2000.

India's tally at Paris in 2024 was six medals, one silver and five bronze: Neeraj Chopra's silver in the javelin throw, Manu Bhaker's bronze in the women's 10 metre air pistol, the bronze she won with Sarabjot Singh in the mixed team event, Swapnil Kusale's bronze in shooting, Aman Sehrawat's…

At the Paris Games of 2024 she won bronze in the women's 10 metre air pistol and a second bronze in the 10 metre air pistol mixed team event with Sarabjot Singh, the first time an Indian had won two medals at one edition of the Games.

She won the silver medal in women's singles badminton at Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and the bronze at Tokyo in 2020, becoming the first Indian woman to win medals at two Olympic Games.

Hockey has brought India thirteen Olympic medals, made up of eight golds between 1928 and 1980, the silver of Rome in 1960 and bronze medals at Mexico City in 1968, Munich in 1972, Tokyo in 2020 and Paris in 2024, which is more than any other sport and also accounts…

Neeraj Chopra won the gold in the men's javelin throw at the Tokyo Games, held in 2021 after a year's postponement, giving India its first Olympic gold in track and field and only its second individual gold of any kind.

The Moscow Games gave India its eighth and most recent hockey gold, and it was also the last gold of any kind for India until Abhinav Bindra's shooting gold at Beijing in 2008.

India won the hockey gold at six consecutive Games, from Amsterdam in 1928 through Los Angeles, Berlin, London and Helsinki to Melbourne in 1956, and then again at Tokyo in 1964 and Moscow in 1980, which gives eight golds in all.

Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav won a bronze medal in freestyle wrestling in the bantamweight category at the Helsinki Games of 1952, the first individual Olympic medal won by an Indian for independent India; until then every Indian medal except Pritchard's two had come from the hockey team.

He won the gold medal in the men's 10 metre air rifle at Beijing in 2008, India's first individual gold in any sport and the first gold of any kind since the hockey team's win at Moscow in 1980.

She won the bronze medal in weightlifting in the 69 kilogram category at the Sydney Games of 2000, becoming the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal of any colour.