State Exams GK Questions 2026

Noverre was the French dancer and choreographer who argued that ballet should tell a story through expressive movement rather than remain a display of steps, and the International Theatre Institute chose his birthday, 29 April, for International Dance Day.

World Theatre Day was instituted in 1961 by the International Theatre Institute, and every year a figure from world theatre delivers an international message that is read out in theatres across many countries.

UNESCO fixed this date because it carries unusual literary weight: Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, died on 23 April 1616, and the same date is traditionally given for the death of William Shakespeare.

Samskara is his best known novel, set in a Brahmin village thrown into crisis by the question of who may perform the last rites of a man who had broken every rule of the community, and it is read as a central text of modern Kannada fiction; its author received…

Allasani Peddana was the foremost of the eight poets of the court of Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara, a group known as the Ashtadiggajas, and he wrote Manucharitra, which earned him the title Andhra Kavita Pitamaha, the grandfather of Telugu poetry; the reign is remembered as the golden age of Telugu, and…

Kanyasulkam, meaning bride price, was written against the custom of selling young girls in marriage to much older men, and it broke new ground by using spoken Telugu rather than the literary dialect, which is why it is counted as the first modern play in the language.

Chemmeen, whose title means prawn, is set among the fishing people of the Kerala coast and turns on the belief that the sea will not spare a fisherman whose wife has been unfaithful; it is the best known Malayalam novel outside the language.

Indulekha, published in the late nineteenth century, is treated as the first major Malayalam novel and tells the story of an educated young woman of a Nair household who refuses an arranged match, which made it a social argument as much as a story.

His Adhyatma Ramayanam, written in the kilippattu or parrot-song form in which a bird narrates the story, settled the vocabulary, script and metre of literary Malayalam and put the Ramayana within reach of ordinary readers, which is why he carries this title.

The vachanas are short, direct compositions in the rhythmic Kannada of ordinary speech, carrying devotion to Shiva together with a sharp attack on caste and empty ritual, and they belong to the Veerashaiva or Lingayat movement of the twelfth century, of which Basavanna was the central figure; the woman saint…

He was awarded the Jnanpith in 1970 for Ramayana Kalpavrukshamu, a retelling of the Ramayana in Telugu verse, and he was the first Telugu writer to receive the prize.

Nannaya, Tikkana and Errana are called the Kavitrayam, the trinity of poets, because between them they rendered the Mahabharata into Telugu over the course of several centuries; Nannaya, the Adikavi of Telugu, began the work and also wrote the grammar Andhra Shabda Chintamani, while Errana continued and Tikkana completed it.

Kuvempu, whose full name was K. V. Puttappa, was awarded the Jnanpith in 1967 for this long poem, a retelling of the Ramayana in modern Kannada, and he was the first Kannada writer to receive the prize; he also wrote the state song of Karnataka.

Pampa wrote in the tenth century and is called the Adikavi of Kannada on the strength of two works, Vikramarjuna Vijaya, also known as Pampa Bharata, which retells the Mahabharata with his patron in the place of Arjuna, and Adipurana, on the life of the first Jain Tirthankara.

The first Jnanpith Award was conferred for the year 1965 on the Malayalam poet G. Sankara Kurup for his collection Odakkuzhal, which means the reed flute; the prize itself had been instituted in 1961 by the Bharatiya Jnanpith.

Savitri Khanolkar, who designed the decoration, placed the state emblem of India at the centre of the circular bronze medal and set four replicas of the Vajra, the thunderbolt of Indra, around it, so that the medal carries a sense of irresistible force; the reverse bears the words Param Vir…

Fighting with 17 Poona Horse in the Shakargarh sector in December 1971, Khetarpal refused to abandon his burning tank and continued to engage advancing armour until he was killed, holding the bridgehead across the Basantar river; the award was posthumous, and Major Hoshiar Singh of 3 Grenadiers received the Param…

Batra, of 13 Jammu and Kashmir Rifles, led the recapture of heights in the Dras sector during the Kargil operations of 1999 and was killed while rescuing an injured soldier; the award was posthumous.

In June 1987 Naib Subedar Bana Singh of the 8th battalion of the Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry led a small party up a sheer ice wall to take the highest post on the Siachen Glacier, held by the enemy and known as Quaid Post, and the position was renamed…

In November 1962 Major Shaitan Singh commanded a company of 13 Kumaon at Rezang La in the Chushul sector of Ladakh, which fought on against overwhelming numbers until almost the whole company had fallen; he moved from post to post under fire to steady his men and was killed, and…