Static general knowledge is six of the seven lines of the General Studies Paper-I syllabus in the UPSC CSE notice: History of India and the Indian National Movement; Indian and World Geography; Indian Polity and Governance; Economic and Social Development; Environmental Ecology, Bio-diversity and Climate Change; and General Science. The Commission tests understanding rather than recall, through statements to be judged correct or incorrect, pairs to be matched and assertion-reason items, and it likes the edges of a topic: a lesser-known provision of the Constitution, a river's tributary, a species' conservation status, the mandate of a statutory body. This page holds GK24's topic-wise GK notes for UPSC, written as short facts and tables, in English and Hindi, with each note linked to the current affairs and previous-year questions on the same topic. Start with Polity and Modern History, which carry the most questions, then Geography, the Economy, Environment, Ancient and Medieval culture and Science. Read a note, solve its PYQs, take its quiz, and come back to it in your monthly revision. A candidate who knows these notes and reads the daily current affairs has covered the syllabus the notice prescribes for Paper-I.
Yama, the work for which its author received the Jnanpith Award in 1982, belongs to which writer?
Yama, a collection that brings together her earlier volumes of verse, won her the Jnanpith Award in 1982.
Read the full explanation →Stri Purush Tulana, published in 1882 and counted among the earliest feminist texts in an Indian language, was written by:
Stri Purush Tulana, a Marathi tract published in 1882, argued that the standards society applied to women were far harsher than those applied to men, and it is studied as one of the earliest feminist writings in any Indian language.
Read the full explanation →Amrita Pritam, who received the Jnanpith Award in 1981, wrote mainly in which language?
Amrita Pritam is the best known woman writer of modern Punjabi, and the Jnanpith Award of 1981 was given to her for the Punjabi poetry collection Kagaz Te Canvas.
Read the full explanation →The first book originally written in Hindi to win the International Booker Prize was:
Geetanjali Shree's novel Ret Samadhi, translated into English by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand, won the International Booker Prize in 2022 and became the first book written in Hindi, and the first from any Indian language, to take that prize.
Read the full explanation →Interpreter of Maladies, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000, was written by whom?
Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of nine short stories about Indian and Indian-American lives, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000, making Lahiri the first writer of Indian origin to win that prize for fiction.
Read the full explanation →Which novel won Arundhati Roy the Booker Prize in 1997?
Arundhati Roy's first novel, set in Ayemenem in Kerala and built around the twins Rahel and Estha, won the Booker Prize in 1997, the fiftieth year of Indian independence.
Read the full explanation →The poetry collection The Golden Threshold was written by which Indian writer?
The Golden Threshold, published in 1905, was her first collection of poems in English, and it was followed by The Bird of Time in 1912 and The Broken Wing in 1917.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first woman to be awarded the Jnanpith Award?
She received the Jnanpith Award in 1976 for the Bengali novel Pratham Pratishruti, the first part of a trilogy that follows three generations of women in a Bengali household, and she was the first woman to receive the award in its history.
Read the full explanation →Nelson Mandela was conferred the Bharat Ratna in which year?
Nelson Mandela, the leader of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and later its President, received the Bharat Ratna in 1990, the same year in which Dr B. R. Ambedkar was honoured posthumously.
Read the full explanation →The Bharat Ratna medallion is in the shape of which leaf?
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.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first musician to be awarded the Bharat Ratna?
The Carnatic vocalist M. S. Subbulakshmi received the Bharat Ratna in 1998 and was the first musician in the list.
Read the full explanation →The Bharat Ratna cannot be used as a prefix or suffix to the recipient's name because of which Article of the Constitution?
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.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first sportsperson to be awarded the Bharat Ratna?
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.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first person who was not an Indian citizen to be awarded the Bharat Ratna?
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.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first woman to receive the Bharat Ratna?
Indira Gandhi received the Bharat Ratna in 1971, while she was Prime Minister, and she is the first woman in the list.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first person to be awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously?
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.
Read the full explanation →Who among the following was NOT one of the first three recipients of the Bharat Ratna in 1954?
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.
Read the full explanation →In which year was the Bharat Ratna instituted?
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.
Read the full explanation →Bhand Pather, a folk theatre form that mixes satire and mime and is accompanied by the surnai, belongs to:
Bhand Pather is the traditional folk theatre of Kashmir, performed by hereditary players called bhands.
Read the full explanation →Bhaona, the traditional theatre of Assam, is performed on plays called Ankiya Naat written by:
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.
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