State Exams GK Questions 2026

The Sena Medal, the Nao Sena Medal and the Vayu Sena Medal were instituted in 1960 for individual acts of gallantry or exceptional devotion to duty, one for each service, and the word Nao in the name marks the Navy just as Vayu marks the Air Force.

He was awarded the Param Vir Chakra posthumously for the action at Badgam in Kashmir in November 1947, during the first conflict after independence, and the medal itself was instituted on 26 January 1950 with effect from 15 August 1947.

It is the highest peacetime gallantry award and is given for the most conspicuous bravery or self-sacrifice away from the field of battle, to members of the armed forces and to civilians alike.

The three grades of the series are worded exactly this way and questions are set on the wording alone: the most exceptional order for the Param Vishisht Seva Medal, an exceptional order for the Ati Vishisht Seva Medal and a high order for the Vishisht Seva Medal.

The three medals were instituted in 1980 and follow the same three steps as the Vishisht Seva medals, but the word Yudh in the name shows that they belong to wartime service rather than peacetime service.

The medal was instituted in that year in three classes, and in 1967 the classes were given the separate names Param Vishisht Seva Medal, Ati Vishisht Seva Medal and Vishisht Seva Medal.

It is given for distinguished service of the most exceptional order, and the word Param marks the top step of every Indian series of decorations.

Mrichchhakatika, the little clay cart, tells the story of the merchant Charudatta and the courtesan Vasantasena and is valued for its picture of ordinary city life rather than of kings.

Tholu Bommalata uses large leather puppets held against a lit screen, and the shadows tell episodes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata through the night.

Yakshagana is performed through the night in coastal Karnataka on episodes from the epics, with tall headgear, painted faces, a singer who carries the story and drums that mark the dance.

The Natya Shastra describes the playhouse, the actor's gestures, music, dance and the theory of rasa, the sentiment a performance raises in the spectator, and it is the foundation of every classical form of Indian theatre and dance.

Alam Ara carried recorded dialogue and songs and opened in Bombay in 1931; Irani also produced Kisan Kanya in 1937, the first Indian colour film, which is why his name answers two questions in this chapter.

Dadasaheb Phalke made it in 1913 as a silent film on the legend of the truthful king, and it is counted as the first Indian feature film.

In Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmaavat he played the Delhi Sultan Alauddin Khalji, whose siege of Chittor in 1303 is the historical background of the story, which is drawn from the Padmavat of Malik Muhammad Jayasi.

She won the Academy Award for costume design in 1983 for Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, sharing it with John Mollo, and was the first Indian to win an Oscar in any category.

The Dadasaheb Phalke Award was instituted in 1969 for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema and is named after Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, who made the first Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra, in 1913 and is called the father of Indian cinema; the first recipient was the actress Devika Rani.

Ankiya Nat is the one-act devotional play written by Srimanta Sankardeva, the saint of the Vaishnava movement in Assam, and its performance is called a Bhaona, staged in the prayer hall of a satra or naamghar with a narrator, songs and masks.

FIFA was founded in 1904 and has long had its headquarters at Zurich in Switzerland, from where it organises the World Cup and governs the national federations.

The Beighton Cup has been played at Kolkata since the closing years of the nineteenth century and is among the oldest field hockey tournaments anywhere, older than most international competitions in the game, and the great teams and players of Indian hockey have all passed through it.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India was formed in 1928 and India played its first Test match four years later, in 1932.