UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Bodh Gaya in Bihar is where Siddhartha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, and the Mahabodhi Temple complex that grew around the spot, with the Vajrasana or diamond throne beside the tree, was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2002.

The fifth Guru compiled the Adi Granth and installed it in the Harmandir Sahib at Amritsar in 1604, Baba Buddha being appointed its first Granthi.

Its third corridor, lined with more than a thousand carved pillars, is the longest temple corridor in India, and the temple is doubly important for examinations because it is both a Jyotirlinga and the southern member of the Char Dham.

The Gommateshwara statue at Shravanabelagola is a monolithic image of Bahubali, son of the first Tirthankara, and it was raised by Chavundaraya, a minister of the Western Ganga kingdom; the Mahamastakabhisheka, in which the statue is anointed, is held once in twelve years.

The Dilwara group of five Jain temples stands at Mount Abu in the Sirohi district of Rajasthan and was built in the Solanki period, Vimal Vasahi being dedicated to Adinath and Luna Vasahi to Neminath; the ceilings and pillars are the finest marble work of Jain architecture in India.

The Konark Sun Temple in Odisha, conceived as the chariot of the sun god with carved wheels and horses, was raised in the thirteenth century by Narasimhadeva I of the Eastern Ganga dynasty, and it was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1984.

The Kamakhya Temple rises on the Nilachal or Nilachala hill in Guwahati, Assam, overlooking the Brahmaputra, and its annual Ambubachi Mela draws pilgrims from across eastern India.

The four Char Dham placed in the four directions are Badrinath in the north, Dwarka in the west, Puri in the east and Rameswaram in the south, so Kedarnath does not belong to this set.

The Brihadisvara or Rajarajesvaram temple at Thanjavur was completed about 1010 CE by the Chola king Rajaraja I, and it is the oldest of the three shrines inscribed by UNESCO as the Great Living Chola Temples.

The Jagannath Temple stands at Puri on the Odisha coast and was built in the twelfth century by Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva of the Eastern Ganga dynasty.

The Mannerheim Line was built by Finland across the Karelian Isthmus and is named after Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim; it was the main Finnish defensive position against the Soviet Union in the Winter War of 1939 and 1940.

After the war of 1971 India and Pakistan signed the Simla Agreement, which provided that the line resulting from the ceasefire of December 1971 would be respected by both sides, and from then on that line was called the Line of Control.

India's land border with Bangladesh is about 4,096 kilometres long, the longest it has with any neighbour, and it touches five states: West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram.

The Oder and Neisse Line follows the courses of the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse rivers and was settled as the western boundary of Poland after the Second World War, which moved Poland's frontier a long way west.

The Maginot Line was a chain of concrete forts and obstacles built by France along its eastern frontier between the two world wars, facing Germany, and named after the French minister of war Andre Maginot.

A long stretch of the border between the United States and Canada, from the Lake of the Woods to the Strait of Georgia, follows the 49th parallel of north latitude, which is why that part of the frontier appears as a perfectly straight line on any map; a boundary drawn…

The Korean peninsula was divided along the 38th parallel of north latitude after the Second World War, and although the armistice line of 1953 does not follow the parallel exactly, the Demilitarized Zone runs close to it and the parallel remains the name used for the division.

The Simla Convention brought together representatives of British India, Tibet and China, and the line drawn there by Sir Henry McMahon runs along the crest of the eastern Himalaya; India treats it as the boundary with China in the eastern sector, while China rejects it and claims Arunachal Pradesh.

The Radcliffe Line was the award of the boundary commissions for Punjab and Bengal, headed by the British lawyer Sir Cyril Radcliffe, and it was published in August 1947 at the time of Partition.

The Durand Line was agreed in 1893 between British India and the Amir of Afghanistan and is named after Sir Mortimer Durand, the foreign secretary of the Government of India who negotiated it; after 1947 it became the boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan.