UPSC GK Questions 2026

The date was chosen because the Swadeshi Movement was launched at the Calcutta Town Hall on 7 August 1905, calling on Indians to use cloth made in their own country, and the first National Handloom Day was observed at Chennai in 2015 to honour handloom weavers.

Kota Doria is woven at Kaithoon and the villages near Kota in Rajasthan, where cotton and silk yarns are alternated to make the small square checks called khat, giving a cloth so light and open that it suits the desert summer.

Phulkari, meaning flower work, is the embroidery of Punjab, in which bright untwisted silk thread is worked in darn stitch from the reverse of a coarse handspun khaddar cloth, so the pattern fills the surface with flowers.

Kalamkari is cloth decorated with vegetable dyes, and it has two schools, both in Andhra Pradesh. At Srikalahasti the work is drawn freehand with a pen like kalam and the subjects are taken from temple mythology, while at Machilipatnam the designs are printed with carved wooden blocks.

Bhoodan Pochampally in the Yadadri Bhuvanagiri district of Telangana weaves the ikat saree known as Pochampally, in which the yarn is tied and dyed to produce geometric diamonds and squares with softly blurred edges.

Chikankari is the hand embroidery of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, worked in white untwisted thread on light cloth, with stitches that show the motif as a shadow through the fabric.

In Bandhani the cloth is pinched and tied with thread in thousands of tiny knots before it is dipped in dye, so the tied points resist the colour and appear as white or light dots in patterns of squares, waves and flowers.

The saree is named after the temple town of Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu, where it is woven from thick mulberry silk.

Muga is reared from the Assam silkworm in the Brahmaputra valley and is the only naturally golden silk in the world, used for the mekhela chador and for sarees woven at Sualkuchi near Guwahati.

Baluchari weaving takes its name from the village of Baluchar in Murshidabad and moved to Bishnupur in the Bankura district, which is its centre today.

Patola sarees are woven at Patan in Gujarat, where both the warp and the weft yarns are tied and dyed before weaving.

Raja Harishchandra, written, produced and directed by Dadasaheb Phalke, was released in 1913 and is recognised as the first full-length Indian feature film; the Dadasaheb Phalke Award takes its name from its maker.

Asha Bhosle, the playback singer with one of the longest careers in Indian film music, received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2000.

Amitabh Bachchan was named for the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2018, and the honour was presented at the National Film Awards ceremony that followed.

Lata Mangeshkar received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1989, and she was later awarded the Bharat Ratna in 2001.

Satyajit Ray, the Bengali director of Pather Panchali and the rest of the Apu trilogy, received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1984.

Prithviraj Kapoor, the actor of both stage and screen and the founder of Prithvi Theatres, received the award in 1971 and was its first posthumous recipient.

The recipient is given the Swarna Kamal or Golden Lotus medallion, along with a shawl and a cash prize, at the National Film Awards ceremony.

The award is conferred by the Government of India through the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and is presented at the annual National Film Awards ceremony, the recipient being chosen by a committee of eminent persons from the film industry.

Dadasaheb Phalke wrote, produced and directed Raja Harishchandra, released in 1913, which is recognised as the first full-length Indian feature film, and it is for this that he is called the father of Indian cinema.