Welcome to Quiz No: 7 of India Quiz

For each question, click "Show" to reveal the correct answer.
Questions having hints have two frames, the top one reveals the hints, while the bottom one reveals the answer.

More quizzes: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

Quiz Questions

QUESTION 1: It is not uncommon for the Indian government to recognise foreign nationals (who
build partnerships with India in their country or work in India) with civilian awards. However, the bestowal of a Padma award has been objected to by some Indian organisations with sizeable following. Name the person, nationality, the Padma award and how such organisations would be classified by the media.

ANSWER 1: Gladys Staines, Australia, Padma Shri, right-wing.

QUESTION 2: Name the ancient Indian text which dealt with the science of aeroplanes.

ANSWER 2: Vimaana Tantra by Maharshi Bharadwaaja

QUESTION 3: Connect Agra and Sasaram.

ANSWER 3: Grand Trunk Road. Sher Shah's adopted hometown was Sasaram and his capital was in Agra, so his first stretch of Grand Trunk Road was between the two cities.

QUESTION 4: Which Indian connects Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the 52nd Oscar(R) awards
ceremony (1979)?

ANSWER 4: Persis Khambatta. She presented an oscar during the ceremony, and is the only Indian to do so.

QUESTION 5: Protima Bedi dropped the suffix "Bedi" from her name and instead chose the suffix
"Gauri." Why?

ANSWER 5: "Bedi" means "loose-motion" in Kannada.

QUESTION 6: Link Chandigarh to the planning of the cities of Washington, D.C., Chicago, Cleveland,
Montreal, Denver, and Madison, Wisconsin.

ANSWER 6: City Beautiful movement. This movement was a primarily social control strategy in the late 19th century to beautify cities in order to control behaviour; all of the cities listed were beautified in the name of the movement.

QUESTION 7: Arun Shourie found fault with Rajiv Gandhi the first time he did this. The second time
Rajiv Gandhi did this, Shourie's column became more stringent and much of the media debated joined the issue debating the pros and cons. Rajiv gandhi never did this after the second time as long as he was the PM. However, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee did this, there was no protest by Shourie probably because he was in Vajpayee's cabinet. Unlike in Rajiv Gandhi's time where media entered into debates, this time round, it just covered "Vajpayee doing this" as a news item. What was the "this" the two prime ministers did?

ANSWER 7: Went on an annual holiday.

QUESTION 8: Which suburb of Mumbai had its own Municipal Committee before it was absorbed
by the Bombay Municipal Corporation?

ANSWER 8: Bandra Municipal Committee

QUESTION 9: This company owns the studio that produced King Kong recently. What was the first
major contribution/project of this company in India. When?

ANSWER 9: The studio is Universal Studios, a subsidiary of NBC Universal, a 80% subsidiary of GE. GE's first project in India was in 1902, when it installed India's first hydro power plant.

QUESTION 10: His name can be abbreviated to two alphabets (Mr. X. Y.). Mr. X. Y. is a popular
movie actor but he started off his career in another language. He wanted his screen name to be X. Y. Rama Rao in his first movie, to show his respect for N. T. Rama Rao. However, the director of the movie dissuaded him from doing so and his name appeared in the credits as his true name itself, i.e. the expanded form of X. Y. Who is this person and who is the director of his first film??

HINT
XY's first movie as a hero was in Telugu but he later became a hero and popular actor in another language. The director of this Telugu film has a screen name which is the nickname of a cricketer and honorific of an important national leader.

ANSWER 10

The answers are Anil Kapoor and Bapu. Bapu directed Vamsa Vriksham (lineage tree) in which Anil Kapoor was the hero. He persuaded Anil to go with his real name rather than the name of A. K. Rama Rao. Anil later acted in a Kannada movie, Pallavi Anu Pallavi (Mani Ratnam's debut) before getting his first big break in Bollywood through Woh Saat Din.

QUESTION 11: Name 3 Beatles songs that use the sitar.

ANSWER 11: Norwegian Wood is the first use of the sitar in the Beatles catalogue. Love You To, Within You Without You and The Inner Light are other George Harrison compositions that also feature the sitar.

QUESTION 12: This piece of architecture located in the Himalayas is the 'X'-est 'Y' in the world. Its
name is derived from the general name for such 'Y's. Name X and Y and the name of the piece of architecture.

ANSWER 12: X is "Highest", Y is Bailey Bridge. Name of the architecture is Baily Bridge.

QUESTION 13: A is a strange B phenomenon that has had a big socio-political impact in the past;
so much so that in anticipation of its recurrence, C, a very important organisation, has been pressed into service in that region to perform an unusual task. Find A, B, and C.

ANSWER 13: A is "Bamboo flowering"; B is "ecological"; C is "Indian Army"

QUESTION 14: This 2-time Member of Parliament exposed a scam in insurance companies that
led to the resignation of a finance minister in one of Jawaharlal Nehru's cabinets. Identify this MP.

ANSWER 14: Feroze Gandhi

QUESTION 15: Town 1 (North India): contains erstwhile homes to Lord Kitchener and
Maharaja of Patiala. Town 2 (South India): Has been host to following personalities: Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth, Sardar Patel. Connect both.

ANSWER 15: Bollaram and Mashobra, a town in Shimla district. The connection is the presence of "Presidential Retreat" or Rashtrapathi Nilayam in both places.

QUESTION 16: Connect Aparna Sen and Indian Tobacco Company.

ANSWER 16: 36 Chowringhee Lane was directed by Aparna Sen; 37 Chowringhee Lane/ Road is the address of ITC.

QUESTION 17: Connect the best performance of Dhyan Chand with the worst performance of
Indian football team.

ANSWER 17: Playing barefoot. Indian football team did not have the experience of playing in shoes and it is possible that some of the players couldn't afford them as well. They were not allowed to participate in the world cup ('50) for this reason. Dhyan Chand's performance in the 1936 Olympics final was better in the second half, after he removed his shoes and played.

QUESTION 18: Name the first newspaper in India, and the year. Raja Rammohan Roy started 3
papers for spreading the cause of social reform. Name them and the languages they were published in. Which famous leader (male) edited which paper, which was the first political paper started in 1851?

ANSWER 18: Bengal Gazette is the oldest newspaper. Newspapers by Ram Mohan Roy:Brahminical Magazine in English (edited by himself); Bengal Gazette in Bangla - Ganga Kishore Bhattacharya; Sambad Kaumudi - a Bengali newspaper 1821, - Tarachand Dutta and Bhabani Charan Bandopadhyay; Mirat-ul-Akbar - Persian journal 1822, edited by himself. 1st political paper by Dadabhai Naoroji - Rast Goftar in 1851

QUESTION 19: This organisation developed a software named after the game that arguably
originated in India. Besides Indians, name at least two other nationalities that work/can work for the organisation.

HINT
It is a software game.

ANSWER 19

Chess and the organization is Indian Army, which has developed a special version of this game for training its officers in the nuances of war. The only 2 nationalities who can work in Indian Army , apart from Indians, are - Nepalese and Bhutanese.

QUESTION 20: Being called the best by the best is probably more important than the the Filmfare
awards. Lata Mangeshkar calls her the face she could sing for. Dev Anand identified her as the actress you could carry out an intelligent conversation with. Sadhana called her as her idol. She has incidentally won a large number of those Filmfare awards as well. Daughter of a director father and an actress mother, acting was always her destiny. She started her career as actress as a 14 year old in a movie which also was the debut movie of her sister (who is also a famous actress of the yesteryears). Her facial expressions were her greatest assets. She can be called Audrey Hepburn of Indian Cinema. Her son is also an actor. She died of cancer at the age of 54 in the early 1990s. Name her.

ANSWER 20: Nutan

QUESTION 21: When Parikshit, the son of Abhimanyu, died after being bitten by a snake, his son
Janamejaya conducted a sarpasatra - a yagna intended to kill all the snakes in the world. But before he could complete it, he had to stop it at the request of a sage. What is common between the father of this sage and Navjot Sidhu.

ANSWER 21: The sage (Jaratkaru) married Jaratkaru, and Navjot Sidhu married Navjot Sidhu.

QUESTION 22: Add:

The number of states that share a border with Sikkim
The number of sons of Kuntidevi that fought in the Mahabharata
The number of consecutive months that Kumbhakarna would sleep before waking
The number of members in Akbar's navaratana at any given time
and the number of CCA A-1 cities in India

ANSWER 22: 26 (1+4+6+9+6)

QUESTION 23: Vande Mataram was made the National Song rather than the National Anthem to
accommodate the feelings of the Muslim community. What were the two major objections from that community for making this the national anthem?

ANSWER 23: The two objections are, (a)Muslims are not supposed to bow to anyone except Allah - Vande Mataram means "Mother, I bow to thee" - this objection was brought to the fore by the media when some BJP-ruled state governments wanted to make "Saraswati Vandana" compulsory in government schools; (b)In the original context of the novel, the song is sung by a group of people against the atrocities of a Nawab (i.e. a Muslim ruler).

QUESTION 24: Add the years of the Battle of Panipats, the birth year of the creator of the quadratic
formula, and number of letters in the name of the largest slum in India.

ANSWER 24: 4843 (1526+1556+1761); 650 A.D.;7; adds up to 5500.

QUESTION 25: This is claimed to be the oldest of its kind in Asia. It is highly unlikely that it is, but it
certainly is the oldest in South Asia. What is it, where is it, and how old?

HINT
Hint 1: It's a structure.
Hint 2:One of its more famous international cousins was destroyed in an earthquake.
Hint 3: height >> width
Hint 4: The structure was built by a European colonial power. The structure has "cousins" in many countries in the world.

ANSWER 25

The lighthouse at Aguada fort (started in 1604).