25 questions · about 30 minutes. Press End Mock any time to see your score and the correct answers.
Assertion (A): India has a dozen or more major languages and literatures, largely regional. Reason (R): The Aryans brought Sanskrit, Muslim rule produced Urdu as the expression of a composite culture, and British rule made Indo-Anglian literature possible.
Correct answer: A. Both A and R are correct and R is the correct explanation of A
Per the key (after K. R. S. Iyengar, Indian Writing in English): successive cultural waves explain India's many literatures.
Which statements about Mulk Raj Anand are correct?
Correct answer: C. A, C, and E only
Anand took his PhD at University College London (1929). He returned to India in 1945. The barber of 'The Barbers' Trade Union' is Chandu; Munoo is the hero of Coolie (1936).
Match List I with List II:
Correct answer: D. A-IV, B-I, C-II, D-III
Chandran (1937); Raju (1958); Sriram and Gandhi (1955); Srinivas (1949).
Which book records the 'adventures of a brown man in search of civilization'?
Correct answer: A. A Passage to England
Nirad C. Chaudhuri's A Passage to England (1959), on his first visit to Britain at 57.
Correct answer: C. A-III, B-IV, C-I, D-II
Per the key. Ramanujan came from a Srivaishnava Brahmin family of Mysore, and Ezekiel from Bombay's Bene Israel community.
Note: The communities of Sharat Chandra and 'Jimmy Avissa' are as given by the key and could not be independently confirmed.
In which Anita Desai novel does the heroine, pregnant for the fifth time, leave her husband for the island of Manori?
Correct answer: C. Where Shall We Go This Summer?
Sita, in Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975), hopes the island's 'magic' will keep her child from being born into a violent world.
Which is NOT one of Sharankumar Limbale's reformulations in his Dalit aesthetics?
Correct answer: D. The equality, liberty, justice and fraternity of human beings are satyam and sundaram.
Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature (Marathi 1996; English 2004) recasts satyam, shivam and sundaram. Equality, liberty, justice and fraternity are his criteria, not a definition of satyam and sundaram.
Arrange the following institutions in the order in which they began teaching Indian Writing in English:
Correct answer: C. B, D, C, E, A
Per the key: Mysore (C. D. Narasimhaiah), Andhra (K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar), Karnatak (Armando Menezes), Osmania, then CIE.
Note: Source option 2 printed 'C, D, B, B, A', corrected to 'C, D, B, E, A'. The order follows the courses, not the founding dates of the institutions.
Karnad's Hayavadana and Thomas Mann's The Transposed Heads are based on a tale from:
Correct answer: D. the Kathasaritsagara
The Vetala tale of the transposed heads in Somadeva's Kathasaritsagara (11th century). Karnad (1971) drew on Mann (1940).
Whose poetry is steeped in the Orissa scene, with the Jagannatha temple at Puri recurring?
Correct answer: A. Jayanta Mahapatra
Mahapatra (1928–2023) was the first Indian English poet to win the Sahitya Akademi Award (Relationship, 1981).
Who prepared the first blueprint on English education in India in 1792?
Correct answer: B. Charles Grant
Charles Grant, an East India Company official, wrote 'Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain' in 1792. It argued for teaching English and Western knowledge in India and is treated as the earliest plan for English education, decades before Macaulay's Minute (1835). Its ideas fed into the Charter Act of 1813.
Who wrote to the Committee of Public Instruction on introducing English as official language of the Government and that of education?
Correct answer: C. William Bentinck
As Governor-General (1828–35), Lord William Bentinck directed the General Committee of Public Instruction towards English. His Resolution of 7 March 1835, issued after Macaulay's Minute, made English the medium of higher education; English replaced Persian in courts and administration from 1837. Clive and Hastings predate the debate, and Zachary Macaulay was T. B. Macaulay's father, an abolitionist in England.
Note: Accepted key. Bentinck acted on Macaulay's Minute; the question's wording simplifies the history.
Lord Curzon used the report of the Indian Universities Commission of 1902 to:
Correct answer: D. centralize school education under a Director-General of Education
Curzon's reforms tightened government control over education. He created the post of Director-General of Education (1901–02) and, acting on the 1902 Commission's report, passed the Indian Universities Act of 1904, which increased official control over senates and college affiliation. He enacted that Act rather than withdrawing it, and Indian representation was reduced, not increased.
According to the 1991 Census, ________ languages are considered scheduled languages.
Correct answer: B. 18
The Eighth Schedule began with 14 languages; Sindhi was added in 1967, and Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali in 1992 (71st Amendment), giving 18. The 1991 Census data were published reporting 18 scheduled languages. The present figure of 22 dates from the 92nd Amendment (2003), which added Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali.
Who described Raja Rammohun Roy as 'the inauguration of the modern age in India'?
Correct answer: A. Rabindranath Tagore
Tagore paid this tribute to Rammohun Roy (1772–1833), founder of the Brahmo Samaj, campaigner against sati and advocate of Western science and English education. Tagore saw him as the figure who opened India to modern rational and humanist thought — hence 'Father of the Indian Renaissance'.
Identify the pairs which are matched correctly:
Correct answer: B. A, C and E only
Barbara Christian's 'The Race for Theory' (1987) and Macaulay's Minute (1835) are correct, and the key accepts C. Ecological Imperialism (1986) is by Alfred W. Crosby, not Huggan, so B and D are wrongly paired.
Which of the following texts was written by Rabindranath Tagore?
Correct answer: B. Chandalika
Chandalika (1938) is Tagore's dance-drama about Prakriti, an 'untouchable' girl, and the Buddhist monk Ananda. Tiger-Claw is Lakhan Deb's; A Touch of Brightness is Pratap Sharma's.
Arrange the following novels of Mulk Raj Anand in chronological order:
Correct answer: D. A, D, C, B, E
Coolie (1936) → Two Leaves and a Bud (1937) → The Village (1939) → The Big Heart (1945) → Seven Summers (1951).
Correct answer: C. A-IV, B-I, C-II, D-III
Chaudhuri's autobiography (1951); Dom Moraes's memoir My Son's Father (1968); A. S. Iyengar's journalistic memoir All Through the Gandhian Era (1950); Sasthi Brata's confessional My God Died Young (1967).
Who wrote The Life Divine?
Correct answer: C. Sri Aurobindo
The Life Divine (serialised in Arya 1914–19; book 1939–40) is Sri Aurobindo's chief philosophical work, setting out his idea of the evolution of consciousness towards a 'supramental' life.
In which year was Raja Rao's Kanthapura published?
Correct answer: A. 1938
Kanthapura (1938) tells the Gandhian movement's arrival in a South Indian village through the voice of an old woman, Achakka. Its foreword famously calls for writing in an English that conveys 'a spirit that is one's own'.
Correct answer: B. A-II, B-IV, C-I, D-III
Early verse plays in Indian English drama: Vasudeva Rao's Nala and Damayanti; Harindranath Chattopadhyay's Jayadeva; Sri Aurobindo's Arabian-Nights comedy The Viziers of Bassora; P. A. Krishnaswamy's The Flute of Krishna.
Correct answer: A. A-III, B-I, C-IV, D-II
Malgonkar's Rumble-Tumble; Chaman Nahal's The Weird Dance and Other Stories (1965); Ruskin Bond's Neighbour's Wife and Other Stories (1967); Arun Joshi's The Survivor (1975).
Aurobindo's mystical lyric 'The Golden Light'; Toru Dutt's sonnet 'The Lotus'; Sarojini Naidu's 'Indian Dancers' (The Golden Threshold, 1905); Derozio's sonnet 'The Harp of India' lamenting India's silent past.
Which of the following works of R. K. Narayan were published after Independence?
Correct answer: C. C and E only
Swami and Friends (1935), The Dark Room (1938) and The English Teacher (1945) came before 1947. The Financial Expert (1952) and The Guide (1958, Sahitya Akademi Award) came after.
