UPSC GK Questions 2026

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…

The pena is a single-stringed instrument with a bamboo rod, a coconut shell resonator and a bow, and the pena khongba, the singer who plays it, performs at the Lai Haraoba festival and narrates the legends of the Meitei people.

The Kalbelia are a community of Rajasthan traditionally associated with snake catching, and their women dance in black swirling skirts while the men play the been and the khanjari; the tradition was inscribed by UNESCO in 2010.

In Burrakatha a main narrator holding a tambura tells a story in song, verse and prose, while two companions play the burra, a small drum shaped like a skull, and interrupt him with questions and jokes; the form was widely used to spread social and political messages in the twentieth…

The Mando is a slow song in Konkani, sung by couples at weddings and gatherings, whose melody carries the mark of three centuries of Portuguese presence; the quick Dulpod usually follows it, and Dekhni is the third well known Goan form.

In Villu Pattu a large bow is set over an earthen pot and struck as a percussion instrument while the lead singer narrates a story from mythology or local history and a chorus answers him; the form is strongest in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu and in the neighbouring…

Kajri is sung in the month of Shravan, when the clouds gather, and its verses speak of dark skies, the separation of lovers and the longing of a woman for a husband who is away; Mirzapur and Banaras are its best known homes.

Bihu songs are sung at Rongali or Bohag Bihu, the spring festival that marks the Assamese new year in April, and they are accompanied by the dhol, the pepa made from a buffalo horn and the jaw harp called gogona.

The name means one string, and the instrument is a single string stretched over a gourd with a bamboo neck that the player presses to change the pitch; the Baul holds it in one hand while singing and dancing, often with a small drum called duggi tied at the waist.

In Pandwani a single performer tells the story of the Pandavas in song and speech, holding a tambura and acting out the scenes, and Teejan Bai, who received the Padma Vibhushan, carried the form from her village to audiences across the world.

A powada is sung in a loud, declamatory style by a shahir, who narrates a battle or an act of courage, and the deeds of Chhatrapati Shivaji are its favourite subject; Lavani, Bharud, Gondhal and the devotional abhang also belong to Maharashtra.

The Bauls are wandering singers of Bengal who reject caste and ritual and sing of the man of the heart, accompanying themselves on the one-stringed ektara and the small drum called duggi; their songs were inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.

Lotia takes its name from the lota, the small metal water pot that women carry on the head in the procession with which it is performed, and it belongs to the folk tradition of Rajasthan, alongside Maand, Panihari and the Banna-Banni wedding songs.

Abundant rainfall, warm temperatures and thick vegetation together supply the water, the heat and the organic acids that speed up solution, hydrolysis, hydration, carbonation and oxidation, so minerals are decomposed deeply.

A valley glacier reaching the coast scoops its floor below present sea level; when the ice melts and the sea rises, water floods the trough and leaves a long, narrow, steep-sided inlet with great depth.

The term comes from the Kras or Karst plateau of the Dinaric region, which lies largely in present-day Slovenia and extends into the neighbouring coastal belt.

A moraine is the ridge of unsorted rock debris that a glacier carries and dumps; it is named by position as lateral, medial, ground or terminal moraine, and the terminal moraine marks the farthest point the ice reached.

Loess is a depositional landform of wind: very fine silt lifted from desert and glacial margins is carried far away and settles as a yellow, porous, loosely packed sheet.