Prelims of the India Quiz hosted as a part of Literary Events in Chaos 2016 at IIM Ahmedabad. The Quizmasters for the event were Dhanraj B and Tauseef Warsi. Hosted on 26th January, 2016

1. India Quiz Prelims
Answers
Dhanraj B.
Tauseef Warsi

3. 1. The supposed origin of which word
• According to legend, the name of this place is
derived from a word that means land or three
lingas, or simply from a word that meant three
lingas.
• It is believed that Lord Shiva descended on the
three mountains – Kaleshwaram, Srisailam, and
Draksharama – in the linga form. The land
between the three temples where these lingas
were became known as the land of three lingas,
from which the modern name follows.
• Give the modern name.

4. Answer
• Telangana

5. 2. Who is the person
• He was originally called "Namgyal Wangdi", but as a
child his name was changed on the advice of the head
lama of the Rongbuk Monastery to X translated as
"wealthy-fortunate-follower-of-religion.
• But religion was probably the last thing that interested
him. Having run away from home twice, he left
the Tengboche Monastery where he was sent to be a
monk and then went on to create history.
• Easy one. Identify

6. Answer
• Tenzing Norgay

7. 3. Just the name of the book
• Mirza Hadi Ruswa is credited with having written
this book which was first published in 1899, often
considered the first novel in Urdu.
• The story is of a real-life poetess and courtesan
who the author happened to meet in Lucknow
and moved by her story, convinced her to share it
with the rest of the world.
• The book has been adapted by Bollywood twice,
with the female protagonists being associated
with a father-son duo from Bollywood itself.

8. Answer
• Umrao Jaan
• The title of the book is Umrao Jaan Ada

9. 4. A very specific term
• The X was a political reform movement in the
early 20th century, favoring replacement of
the absolute monarchy of the Ottoman
Empire with a constitutional monarchy.
• How can you connect X with the likes of
Chandra Shekhar, Krishan Kant, Mohan Dharia
and Ram Dhan ?

10. Answer
• Young Turks of Congress

11. 5. The sportsman
• Often thought to be one of the best in the
country in his sport, he was an eight-time
national champion.
• His career was cut short after he was shot
dead in Lucknow. Murder charges were filed
against his wife Ameeta and her future
husband Raja Sanjay Singh of Amethi, who
was also a politician.

12. Answer
• Syed Modi

13. 6. The event
• An Antonov AN 26 Latvian Aircraft carrying Peter
Bleach, Kim Peter Davy, a five-member Latvian crew
and a still-at-large South African - Daya M. Anand alias
Deepak, flies into India from Karachi . The plane lands
at Varanasi airport and refuels and stays parked at
Varanasi Airport for over seven hours. The plane
digresses from an approved flight path on the early
hours of December 18, 1995. The Plane then rejoins
the approved flight path and lands for refueling at
Calcutta Airport. The flight goes on to Phuket in
Thailand. What happened during this flight? Full marks
if you can give the name of the organization founded
by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar that is supposedly involved.

14. Answer
• Purulia Arms Drop
• Anand Marg

15. 7. Who is X? Blanks are not the same.
• “_____ _____ was by far the most calamitous exercise
undertaken during the Emergency. The IMF and World Bank
had periodically shared their fears with New Delhi about
the uncontrolled rise in _____ _____. India’s democracy
was a hurdle: no government could possibly enact laws
limiting the number of _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
without incurring punishment at the ballot box. But with
democracy suspended, the IMF and World Bank
encouraged Indira to pursue the programme with renewed
vigour. Indira and X, the self-styled socialists, inflicting on
Indians the humiliation of _____ _____ in order to appease
western loan sharks: the irony was lost on them. Socialism,
like much else, had been reduced to a slogan.”
• David Frum, reviewing The X Story by Vinod Mehta

16. Answer
• Sanjay Gandhi

17. 8. Just name the person
• One of the few public figures to be known by a
mononym (he dropped his surname), he was governor of
Jammu & Kashmir between 1984 and 1989 and again in
1990. He was the governor of Delhi between 1980-1981
and also the Implementation Commissioner and later
Vice Chairman, Delhi Development Authority He was
also Union minister in the Vajpayee government.
Rebuilding Shahjahanabad, the Walled City of Delhi,
Island of Truth (1978) and My frozen turbulence in
Kashmir are his books
• In the news now, who am I talking about?

19. Answer
• Jagmohan

20. 9. Who?
• A very famous painter, this is her self-portrait.
Identify.

22. Answer
• Amrita Sher Gil

23. 10. Identify
• An IAS Officer of 1980 batch (Kerala Cadre)
• Force behind Kerala’s God’s Own Country, and
Incredible India campaigns
• Author of “Branding India – An Incredible Story”
• Currently the CEO of _____ _____
• Give me the person and the blank

25. Answer
• Amitabh Kant

26. 11. Name the organisation
• In 1992, the editor of the Times of India telephoned
one of Mumbai’s most prominent businessmen, Y X.
The editor asked X, “as a Muslim leader” his opinion on
communal riots that were taking place in the city. X
replied: “Why aren’t you asking me as an Indian Jew?
Because my name is X? My mother was Jewish!” His
maternal grandparents had perished in the Holocaust.
Y X was born to Luba Derczanska and Khwaja Abdul X.
• Y X is the chairman of _____ that was founded by his
father in 1935 in Mumbai.

27. Answer
• Yusuf Hamied of Cipla

28. 12. What is being fought over?
• West Bengal and Odisha been fighting over this for
some time. The bone of contention has been to get GI
tags for this.
• The Bengal Science and Technology Department earlier
started the process to approach its central counterpart
for a GI authentication. Odisha responded by setting up
3 panels with 3 distinct goals for this.
• The first panel will look into evidence regarding its
origin in Odisha, the second will study the grounds for
West Bengal staking claim to it, the third will collect
necessary documents to validate Odisha’s stand.

29. Answer
• Rasgulla

30. 13. What is being talked about here?
• Dr. S. Radhakrishnan provides two translations
for this:
• “We meditate on the effulgent glory of the
divine Light; may he inspire our
understanding.”
• “We meditate on the adorable glory of the
radiant sun; may he inspire our intelligence.”

31. Answer
• Gayatri Mantra

32. 14. Give full funda
• The M48 _____ is a main battle tank (MBT) that
was designed in the United States. It was the
third tank to be officially named after General
George S. _____, commander of the U.S. Third
Army during World War II and one of the earliest
American advocates for the use of tanks in battle.
• What connects Khem Karan, a nagar panchayat in
Tarn Taran district of Punjab?
• I need the blank and story for full marks

33. Answer
• Patton, Patton Nagar

34. 15. Identify the person
• Also known as the Mother of Orphans, X is a social activist
from Maharashtra. At the early age of 10, she was married
off and had 3 children by the time she was 20. She
protested against the district collector for his corrupt
practices, as a consequence of which she was abandoned
by her husband when she was 9 months pregnant.
• She gave birth to a baby girl on 14 October 1973 in a cow
shelter outside their house that night, all by herself and
walked few kilometers away to her mother's place, who
refused to shelter her.
• She started working for the orphans and has nurtured over
1000 orphan children. Anant Mahadevan made a movie on
her life by the name of “Mee X” in Marathi in 2010.

36. Answer
• Sindhutai Sapkal

37. 16. Name.
Inexhaustive list (In alphabetic order)
• Gayatri Devi
• K. M. Munshi
• Mariadas Ruthnaswamy
• Minoo Masani
• N. G. Ranga
• Piloo Mody
• S. V. Raju
• V. P. Menon

38. Answer
• Swatantra Party

39. 17. Identify
• Identify the name of the book. The picture on your right
should give it away

40. Answer
• Baroda Dynamite Conspiracy

41. 18. What is written on the steps?
• Picture of the Public Grand Staircase, Art
Institute of Chicago.

43. Answer
• Swami Vivekananda’s speech at the World
Parliament of Religions 1893, Chicago

44. 19. Something happening now.
• The immediate reason given was the protest movements that
were taking place. The role of CIA in the movements is depicted
in the work of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, United States'
ambassador to India (1973–75) in his 1978 book: "A Dangerous
Place". His statements are corroborated by Howard Schaffer, the
biographer of Ellsworth Bunker, who was the US ambassador
during 1956–61. According to Bunker, the American involvement
was to prevent “additional ______s”
• The event that happened on 31 July 1959 was the first instance
of what happening in India?
• Interestingly, Indira Gandhi was the Congress president then and
her future reign saw multiple instances happen.

45. Answer
• Dissolution of Kerala Assembly

46. 20. Give X and Y
• In Pakistan’s Lahore the renaming of Fawara Chowk or
Shadman Chowk after X in 2012 resulted in extremist
groups, including the Jamaat-ud-Dawah led by 26/11
mastermind Hafiz Saeed calling it a heretical move and
filed a case in Lahore High Court to prevent it
• Recently Manohar Lal Khattar suggested to the Centre
that Y be christened after late Dr Mangal Sein, a former
Haryana deputy chief minister and a leader of the RSS
which led to protests from Punjab who wanted it to be
named after X.
• Give me X and Y.

47. Answer
• X – Bhagat Singh
• Y – Chandigarh International Airport

48. 21. The author.
• Pinjar received the Nargis Dutt National Award
for Best Feature Film on National integration.
Directed by Chandraprakash Dwivedi, the movie
had Urmila Matondkar and Manoj Bajpai in lead
roles and featured issues like violence against
women.
• The story is on a book by the same name whose
writer was a popular partition author and was
also involved in a romantic relationship with Sahir
Ludhiyanvi.
• The author.

49. Answer
• Amrita Pritam

50. 22. Who is X?
• Akbar Khan, while making his magnum opus,
Taj Mahal, said that he had considered only
two people for the music director’s role. The
movie turned out to be a dud and the music
did not make much waves.
• One of the people who eventually gave the
music was the legendary Naushad. Who was
the other, perhaps a bigger legend.

51. Answer
• Tansen

52. 23. We will consider Funda is no one
gets the answer right
• Divehi language is an Indo-Aryan language
spoken in Maldives by 350,000 people. The
Mahl dialect of Divehi is spoken by around
10,000 people in a certain part of India where
it is the first language. Where? Be specific

53. Answer
• Minicoy

54. 24. The singer.
• This female playback singer from Kerala has the
distinction of being the awarded the most
national awards for female playback singing – 6 in
all, which is more than Lata Mangeshkar’s.
• She has won state awards of all 4 South Indian
states and has sung in a variety of languages -
Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil , Odia, Hindi,
Assamese, Bengali, Badaga, Sanskrit, Tulu, Urdu,
Latin, Arabic, Sinhalese and Punjabi.

55. Answer
• K S Chithra

56. 25. Give me X.
• Ashvin Kumar made the documentary “Inshallah,
Kashmir” that released in 2012. The documentary
captured the story of contemporary Kashmir. It
captured the torture stories of many ex-militants
as well as the stories of Kunan Poshpora rape
victims.
• He had earlier made the documentary “Inshallah,
X” that released in 2010. It also was based in
Kashmir and told the story of a young sportsman
who was denied Visa to travel abroad and play
because his father was an ex-militant.

57. Answer
• Inshallah Football

58. 26.
The Sameeksha Trust is a charitable trust registered
under the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950 and its
members have been academics and public
personalities of eminence. The board of the
trustees includes globally renowned academics like
JNU Professor Deepak Nayyar, Jean Dreze, historian
Romila Thapar, sociologist Andre Beteille among
others. The trust was in news for a resignation of
the editor C Rammanohar Reddy from their
publication. Which publication?

59. Answer
• Economic and Political Weekly (EPW)