Art and Culture Mixed Practice — MCQs with Answers (Set 22)

Joshi received the Bharat Ratna in 2008. His other honours came in different years — Padma Bhushan (1985), Padma Vibhushan (1999), Maharashtra Bhushan (2002), and Karnataka Ratna (2005).

Joshi trained under Sawai Gandharva starting in 1936. Abdul Karim Khan founded the Kirana gharana and inspired Joshi as a child; Mushtaq Husain Khan was one of several teachers he briefly studied under earlier; Gangubai Hangal was his senior fellow student under the same guru, not a teacher herself.

The festival, founded on his guru Sawai Gandharva’s first death anniversary, is still held every December in Pune — renamed the Sawai Gandharva Bhimsen Festival after Joshi’s own death in 2011.

Joshi belonged to the Kirana gharana, known for its emphasis on melody, breath control, and sustained notes.

Khan received the National Heritage Fellowship from the US National Endowment for the Arts in 1997, alongside five Grammy nominations across his career.

Khan did not personally teach George Harrison. Their documented connection is performing at the same 1971 Concert for Bangladesh — Harrison’s own sitar training came from Ravi Shankar.

Khan founded the most famous branch of the Ali Akbar College of Music in California, in 1967 (an earlier branch had opened in Calcutta, in 1956).

Khan performed at the Concert for Bangladesh, at Madison Square Garden in August 1971, alongside Ravi Shankar, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton.

Annapurna Devi married Ravi Shankar in 1941, making Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar brothers-in-law.

The event featured handcrafted and handwoven products from 48 artisans and weavers, plus 12 design-led craft brands.

The National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) curated Indie Haat 2026, linking it to Bharat Tex 2026.

Despite recording songs in roughly 20 languages across more than 48,000 songs total, S. Janaki sang the highest number of songs in Kannada.

S. Janaki refused the 2013 Padma Bhushan, stating the recognition had come far too late in her career, and expressing disappointment over the lack of representation for South Indian artists in national awards.

S. Janaki debuted with the Tamil film “Vidhiyin Vilayattu” in 1957, at age 19, and went on to record songs in six languages that same year.

Amrita Sher-Gil died suddenly in Lahore on 5 December 1941, aged 28, days before her first major solo exhibition was due to open.

Sher-Gil’s 1937 painting The Story Teller sold for ₹61.8 crore (about $7.45 million) at auction in September 2023, a record price for an Indian artist’s work.

After a tour of South India in 1937, Sher-Gil painted her celebrated trilogy: Bride’s Toilet, Brahmacharis, and South Indian Villagers Going to Market.

Amrita Sher-Gil became the youngest-ever, and only Asian, Associate of the Grand Salon in Paris in 1933, after her painting Young Girls won a gold medal.

Amrita Sher-Gil is regarded as a pioneer of Indian modernism, credited with bringing European painting technique to Indian subjects.

In 1977, PM Morarji Desai twice offered to nominate Rukmini Devi for President of India; she declined both times, choosing to continue her cultural and animal-welfare work.

In April 1952, Rukmini Devi became the first Indian woman nominated to the Rajya Sabha.

Rukmini Devi met Anna Pavlova in Bombay in 1928; the ballerina encouraged her to revive Indian dance forms that had “fallen to disrepute.”