State Exams GK Questions 2026

The Bharat Ratna is a medallion shaped like a peepal leaf, about an inch and three-eighths wide, bearing a sun on the front with the words Bharat Ratna below it in Devanagari, and the State Emblem with the motto Satyameva Jayate on the reverse.

The Carnatic vocalist M. S. Subbulakshmi received the Bharat Ratna in 1998 and was the first musician in the list.

Article 18 abolishes titles and forbids the State from conferring any title except a military or academic distinction. The civilian awards survive because they are treated as decorations and not as titles, and for the same reason a recipient may not write Bharat Ratna before or after a name.

Until December 2011 the Bharat Ratna could be given only for art, literature, science and public service. The rules were then widened to cover any field of human endeavour, and in 2014 Sachin Tendulkar became the first sportsperson to receive the award, along with the scientist C. N. R. Rao.

The Pashtun leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, called the Frontier Gandhi and the founder of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, received the Bharat Ratna in 1987 and was the first recipient who was not an Indian citizen.

Indira Gandhi received the Bharat Ratna in 1971, while she was Prime Minister, and she is the first woman in the list.

The original rules of 1954 did not allow a posthumous award; the provision was added in 1955, and the first person honoured after his death was Lal Bahadur Shastri, the second Prime Minister of India, in 1966, the year he died at Tashkent.

The first three recipients of the Bharat Ratna, all in 1954, were C. Rajagopalachari, the last Governor-General of India, the physicist C. V. Raman and the philosopher S. Radhakrishnan, who later became President.

The Bharat Ratna was instituted on 2 January 1954 by President Dr Rajendra Prasad, on the same day as the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri, and the first awards were conferred later the same year on C. Rajagopalachari, C. V. Raman and S. Radhakrishnan.

Bhand Pather is the traditional folk theatre of Kashmir, performed by hereditary players called bhands.

Srimanta Sankardeva, the fifteenth and sixteenth century Vaishnava saint and reformer of Assam, wrote the one-act plays called Ankiya Naat, and their performance in the namghar or the satra is called Bhaona.

Bidesia is the Bhojpuri folk theatre of Bihar created by Bhikhari Thakur in the early twentieth century.

Bhavai is the folk theatre of Gujarat, also seen in parts of Rajasthan. It is played in open ground before a standing audience, its accompanying instrument is the bhungal, a long copper pipe, and its sketches, called veshas, are short and satirical, often aimed at caste and social custom.

Yakshagana is the folk theatre of coastal Karnataka, performed through the night in the open with towering head-dresses, heavy make-up and loud percussion, and its episodes are drawn from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Puranas; the singer who narrates and controls the performance is the Bhagavata.

Pavakathakali, also known as Pavakoothu, is the glove puppet tradition of Kerala, and it borrows its costume, make-up and gesture from Kathakali, so the puppet heads carry the same towering head-dress and painted faces.

Yampuri is the rod puppet tradition of Bihar. Its puppets are carved from wood in one piece, without the joints that rod puppets elsewhere have, which makes them harder to handle and demands greater skill of the puppeteer.

Ravanachhaya is the shadow puppet theatre of Odisha, and it is the most austere of the Indian shadow traditions: the figures are cut from deer skin, have no joints and are left uncoloured, so only a plain black shadow falls on the screen, and they are smaller than the puppets…

Tholu Bommalata is the leather shadow puppet theatre of Andhra Pradesh, and its figures are the largest of all Indian shadow puppets, made of translucent coloured hide so that the colours show on the screen; the stories come from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Kathputli is the string puppet, or marionette, tradition of Rajasthan. The figures are carved from wood, painted in bright colours and dressed in long trailing skirts, and they are made without legs; the puppeteer works them from above with strings while a dholak keeps time and a sharp whistling sound…

Amanta is formed from ama, the new moon, and anta, the end, so the month closes on the new moon day and the next month opens with the bright fortnight; Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat follow it.