25 questions · about 30 minutes. Press End Mock any time to see your score and the correct answers.
What is the title of Gaiutra Bahadur's book about her great-grandmother's indenture?
Correct answer: C. Coolie Woman
Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (2013) follows her great-grandmother Sujaria from Bihar to British Guiana (1903). An Era of Darkness is Tharoor's and Dauka Puran Subramani's.
Note: The source calls it an 'autobiographical novel'; it is a work of history and memoir.
Which of the following belong to science fiction or speculative fiction?
Correct answer: B. A, D and E only
Vandana Singh's SF stories (2008), Chabria's clone dystopia Generation 14 (2008) and Bhatia's The Wall (2020) are speculative fiction. Blasphemy is realist, and The Satanic Verses is magic realism.
Which concepts are associated with Bhartrhari's theory of sphota?
Correct answer: A. C and E only
In the Vakyapadiya, the sphota (indivisible meaning-bearer) is revealed by dhvani (uttered sound) and grounded in Shabda-Brahman, the Word as ultimate reality. Rasa, alankara and vakrokti belong to other schools of poetics.
In which language is the Tolkappiyam written?
Correct answer: B. Tamil
The Tolkappiyam, the oldest extant Tamil grammar and poetics, sets out the akam/puram landscapes of Sangam poetry.
Who wrote 'Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism' (1985)?
Correct answer: A. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Spivak (Critical Inquiry, 1985) reads Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea and Frankenstein, arguing that Jane's feminist individualism is built on Bertha Mason's colonial erasure.
Who wrote of the productive capacities of the 'Third Space' as having a colonial or postcolonial provenance?
Correct answer: A. Homi K. Bhabha
Bhabha, The Location of Culture (1994), ch. 1–2: hybridity opens a 'Third Space of enunciation'.
Which critic appropriates Marx's statement 'They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented'?
Correct answer: A. Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Per the key, Mohanty ('Under Western Eyes', Feminism Without Borders) on the Western feminist representation of 'Third World Women'. The line, from The Eighteenth Brumaire, is also Said's epigraph to Orientalism and central to Spivak's 'Can the Subaltern Speak?'.
Which of the following graphic narratives depict a political crisis?
Correct answer: A. B and C only
Maus (1980–91) narrates the Holocaust, and Footnotes in Gaza (2009) investigates the 1956 Khan Younis and Rafah killings. The others are urban or coming-of-age stories.
Arrange the following characters in the chronological order of the works in which they appear:
Correct answer: D. B, D, C, A
Shakuni (Mahabharata) → Gobar (Premchand's Godaan, 1936) → Rusty (Bond's The Room on the Roof, 1956) → Praneshacharya (Ananthamurthy's Samskara, 1965).
Which departments did Wood's Despatch (1854) recommend in the universities?
Correct answer: B. A, B and D only
The Despatch proposed London-model universities with chairs in law, civil engineering, and the vernacular and classical languages (Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian), besides English.
Arrange the following in chronological order:
Correct answer: D. D, B, A, C
Fort William (1696–1702) → Grant's arrival (1767) → English replaces Persian (1835–37) → the three universities (1857).
Match List I with List II:
Correct answer: D. A-II, B-III, C-IV, D-I
Connemara Library (1896); C. D. Narasimhaiah's Dhvanyaloka centre (Mysore); BORI (1917), home of the critical edition of the Mahabharata; Sir William Jones's Asiatic Society (1784).
Which of the following songwriters have received the Nobel Prize in Literature?
Correct answer: B. B and C only
Tagore (1913), whose Gitanjali songs he set to music himself, and Bob Dylan (2016).
Arrange the following novels in chronological order:
Correct answer: C. C, A, D, B
That Long Silence (1988) → The God of Small Things (1997) → The Namesake (2003) → The Inheritance of Loss (2006).
Which theme best sums up most of Vijay Tendulkar's plays?
Correct answer: C. The workings of power
Silence! The Court Is in Session, Ghashiram Kotwal, Sakharam Binder and Kamala anatomise power — patriarchal, political and caste.
What does Urvashi Butalia aim at in The Other Side of Silence?
Correct answer: A. A and B only
Butalia (1998) begins with her own family's Partition story and collects oral histories of women, children and Dalits, beyond the high-political narrative.
Correct answer: A. A-IV, B-II, C-III, D-I
Chatterjee (1988); Desai (1984); Mistry (1991); Selvadurai (1994).
Who wrote The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story?
Correct answer: A. A. Revathi
A. Revathi's autobiography, translated from Tamil by V. Geetha (2010).
Who wrote The Otherness of English: India's Auntie Tongue Syndrome?
Correct answer: A. Probal Dasgupta
Probal Dasgupta (1993): English in India is an 'auntie tongue' — respected, useful, but not intimate like a mother tongue.
Correct answer: A. A-II, B-III, C-IV, D-I
Sunder Rajan (ed., 1992); Viswanathan (1989); Joshi (ed., 1991); Mukherjee (2009).
Note: The source's List II is garbled; restored from its explanation.
In which book of Paradise Lost does 'Agra and Lahor of Great Mogul' appear?
Correct answer: D. Book XI
Book XI (l. 391): from the hill of vision Michael shows Adam the future empires of the world.
Which were among the earliest colonial publishing initiatives for India?
Correct answer: C. B and C only
John Murray's Colonial and Home Library (1843) and Macmillan's Colonial Library (1886), 'intended for circulation only in India and the British Colonies' (Priya Joshi, In Another Country).
Which of the following aims did Wood's Despatch (1854) seek to promote?
Correct answer: D. A and D only
The Despatch aimed to spread 'European knowledge' through a graded system and to train Indians for public employment. Training officers in Oriental languages was the work of Fort William College (1800).
What did the UGC Working Group of 1978 on the medium of instruction in higher education recommend?
Correct answer: A. A quicker switchover from English to Indian languages
The 1978 group urged a faster change to Indian languages as media of higher education.
Correct answer: A. A-II, B-I, C-IV, D-III
Rajmohan's Wife (1864); Untouchable (1935); The Revelations of an Orderly (1849), an early satire; Stories from Indian Christian Life (1898, with Samuel Satthianadhan).
