SSC GK Questions 2026

The epidemic of the 1840s destroyed the potato crop of Ireland and brought on the famine, and the study of that outbreak by Anton de Bary established plant pathology as a science.

Rammat is the open-air folk theatre of Bikaner and Jaisalmer, performed around Holi on a raised platform with the nagara and the dholak, and its akharas are a part of the towns' Holi calendar.

Panihari takes its name from pani, water, and the songs belong to the daily walk to the well or the stepwell and back with pots on the head; their images are of the rope, the pulley, the pot and the long road, and they often carry a woman's complaint or…

The folklorist Komal Kothari and the Rajasthani writer Vijaydan Detha founded Rupayan Sansthan at Borunda in Jodhpur district as an institute of folklore, and for half a century it recorded the songs, epics and instruments of the Manganiyars, Langas and Bhopas; Kothari also brought these musicians to audiences outside India.

Ghan instruments are solid bodies that sound when struck or shaken, without a stretched skin or a vibrating string, and the khartal, a pair of wooden blocks clapped together by Manganiyar performers, is the classic Rajasthani example, as are the manjira, the jhanjh, the thali, the chimta, the ghungroo and…

The Terah Taali is performed by women of the Kamad community, devotees of the folk deity Ramdevji of Ramdevra, who tie thirteen manjiras to their wrists, elbows, waist and ankles and strike them in rhythm while seated, often balancing pots or holding a sword in the mouth; the men accompany…

The bhapang is a small drum of a hollowed gourd with a skin head, through which a gut string runs; the player plucks the string and tightens or loosens it to slide the pitch, producing the talking tone of the Mewati folk songs.

The algoza is a double flute: the player holds two pipes at once, blowing a drone on one while playing the melody on the other, and a shepherd or a Langa musician can keep this up for long stretches using circular breathing.

The Kalbelia folk songs and dances of Rajasthan were inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010.

Maand is the most refined style of Rajasthani singing, close enough to classical music to be treated as a raga in its own right, and Kesariya Balam Aavo Hamare Desh, made famous by Allah Jilai Bai of Bikaner, is its best known composition and effectively the state's signature song.

A Bhopa of Pabuji unrolls the painted scroll called the phad and sings the epic of Pabuji through the night, accompanying himself on the ravanhatta, a bowed instrument of a half coconut or gourd with a bamboo neck, a skin face and a row of jingling bells.

The kamayacha is the signature instrument of the Manganiyar musicians of Jaisalmer and Barmer: a large bowl of mango wood covered with goat skin, with gut and steel strings played with a horsehair bow, giving the deep drone that accompanies Manganiyar singing.

Entry 5 of List III of the Seventh Schedule covers marriage and divorce, infants and minors, adoption, wills, intestacy and succession, joint family and partition, and all matters in respect of which parties in judicial proceedings were immediately before the commencement of the Constitution subject to their personal law.

The Uttarakhand Assembly passed a Uniform Civil Code Bill in February 2024, the Bill received the President's assent, and the law was brought into force in January 2025, making Uttarakhand the first state of independent India to legislate a common code on marriage, divorce, live-in relationships and succession for its…

It provides a civil form of marriage open to all Indian citizens irrespective of religion, with registration before a marriage officer after a notice period, and succession in such marriages is governed by the Indian Succession Act rather than any religious law.

Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum. In this 1985 judgment the Supreme Court allowed a divorced Muslim woman maintenance under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code, a secular provision open to women of every faith, and the Court remarked that Article 44 had remained a dead letter.

The Portuguese Civil Code of 1867 was extended to Goa and continued in force after its liberation in 1961, so Goans of every religion are governed by largely the same rules on marriage, divorce and succession, with only a few community-specific usages surviving.

Part IV of the Constitution contains the Directive Principles of State Policy in Articles 36 to 51, and Article 44 on the uniform civil code is one of them.

Article 47 directs the State to regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties, and it adds that the State shall endeavour to bring about the prohibition of intoxicating drinks and…

Article 39(c), a directive in Part IV, requires the State to direct its policy towards ensuring that the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment, and Article 39(b) asks that the ownership and control of material…