Consider the following statements : 1. Erok Sim is a festival mainly celebrated by the Santhal community. 2. Sangken is a Buddhist festival celebrated in Arunachal Pradesh. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Q: What is the answer to CDS (II) 2025 GK Q17?

C. Correct — C, Both 1 and 2. Erok Sim belongs to the Santal (Santhal) ritual year. It is the sowing festival: held in the month of Asar, that is June and July, just before the winter paddy goes into the ground, with the village priest sacrificing fowls to the village deities so that the earth will bear. It sits early in a cycle that runs on the farming calendar — Erok Sim at sowing, Hariar Sim in Bhadra when the seedlings are transplanted, Iri-Gundhi Nawai when the millets ripen, Janthar at the first harvest, and Sohrae in Poush as the great harvest festival that outranks them all. Statement 2 is equally sound. Sangken is the new-year water festival of the Theravada Buddhists of the north-east, kept from 14 to 16 April, when images of the Buddha are taken from the shrine and bathed and people pour water over one another as a rite of cleansing. In Arunachal Pradesh it is the festival of the Khamti, Singpho, Khamyang and Tangsa, centred on Namsai district, and the same festival is kept by the Tai Phake, Tai Aiton and Tai Turung of Assam and across the border in the Kachin and Sagaing regions of Myanmar. Since both statements are correct, the answer is both. (Provisional — pending the official UPSC key.)

(a)1 only
(b)2 only
(c)Both 1 and 2
(d)Neither 1 nor 2

Answer

Why

Correct — C, Both 1 and 2. Erok Sim belongs to the Santal (Santhal) ritual year. It is the sowing festival: held in the month of Asar, that is June and July, just before the winter paddy goes into the ground, with the village priest sacrificing fowls to the village deities so that the earth will bear. It sits early in a cycle that runs on the farming calendar — Erok Sim at sowing, Hariar Sim in Bhadra when the seedlings are transplanted, Iri-Gundhi Nawai when the millets ripen, Janthar at the first harvest, and Sohrae in Poush as the great harvest festival that outranks them all. Statement 2 is equally sound. Sangken is the new-year water festival of the Theravada Buddhists of the north-east, kept from 14 to 16 April, when images of the Buddha are taken from the shrine and bathed and people pour water over one another as a rite of cleansing. In Arunachal Pradesh it is the festival of the Khamti, Singpho, Khamyang and Tangsa, centred on Namsai district, and the same festival is kept by the Tai Phake, Tai Aiton and Tai Turung of Assam and across the border in the Kachin and Sagaing regions of Myanmar. Since both statements are correct, the answer is both.

Why the others are wrong

(a)1 only — Rejects the Sangken statement, which is straightforwardly true — it is a Theravada Buddhist new-year festival kept in Arunachal Pradesh every April.
(b)2 only — The likeliest wrong pick, because Erok Sim is the obscure half. It is nonetheless a genuine Santal festival, recorded in the ethnographic literature as their paddy-sowing rite in Asar.
(d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Both statements are accurate, so rejecting both loses the mark twice over.

Concept

Two very different religious calendars meet in this question. The Santals are the largest tribal community of eastern India, spread over Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar and Assam, and their Sarna religion ties every major festival to a stage of the agricultural year. The Tai-speaking Buddhists of the eastern Himalayan foothills — Khamti, Singpho, Khamyang, Phake — follow Theravada Buddhism of the same family practised in Myanmar and Thailand, and their year turns on the April water festival that the Thai call Songkran and the Burmese Thingyan.

The item is a two-part true-or-false, and each half is tested differently. Sangken is the checkable one: an April water festival, Buddhist, Arunachal — this appears often enough in question papers that most candidates will accept it. Erok Sim is the half that decides the question, and it is deliberately unfamiliar. The reasoning route is the name itself. 'Sim' recurs across the Santal festival list — Magh Sim, Hariar Sim, Erok Sim — which is a strong hint that the word belongs to that vocabulary rather than to any other community's. Guessing from unfamiliarity is what the item punishes; a candidate who assumes an unheard-of name must be wrong will mark (b) and lose the mark. One caution for anyone verifying this later: the standard online article on the Santhal people lists Sohrai, Baha, Karam, Sakrat and others but omits Erok Sim, so a quick lookup can wrongly suggest statement 1 is false. The ethnographic literature on Santal festivals carries it plainly.

Key facts

Erok Sim is the Santal sowing festival, held in Asar (June-July), immediately before the winter paddy is sown.
The Santal ritual year runs on farming: Erok Sim at sowing, Hariar Sim in Bhadra before transplanting, Janthar at first harvest, and Sohrae in Poush as the chief festival.
Sangken is the Theravada Buddhist new-year water festival, kept from 14 to 16 April.
In Arunachal Pradesh it is celebrated by the Khamti, Singpho, Khamyang and Tangsa, chiefly in Namsai district; in Assam by the Tai Phake, Tai Aiton and Tai Turung.
It falls in Nuean Ha, the fifth month of the Tai lunisolar calendar, and belongs to the same April water-festival family as Thailand's Songkran and Myanmar's Thingyan.

Study next

The Santal festival cycle and Sarna religious practice in Jharkhand, West Bengal and OdishaTheravada Buddhist communities of the north-east — Khamti, Singpho, Tai Phake, Tai AitonApril new-year water festivals across mainland South-East Asia: Sangken, Songkran, Thingyan, Bohag BihuMajor tribal festivals that recur in question papers — Sohrai, Baha, Karam, Sarhul, Wangala, Hornbill, Chapchar KutThe Eighth Schedule status of Santali and the Ol Chiki script

Common traps

Marking an unfamiliar festival name false purely because you have not met it — this item is built to punish exactly that.
Placing Sangken in Assam alone; it is kept in both Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, and the statement names Arunachal, which is correct.
Confusing Sohrai, the Santal harvest festival, with Sarhul, which belongs to the Oraon and Munda of the same region.

Either as a two-statement true-or-false like this one, or as a festival-to-state or festival-to-community match with one pair deliberately displaced.

Related PYQs

UPSC_2017_GS1_Q702017Open & attempt →

Consider the following pairs: Traditions — Communities 1. Chaliha Sahib Festival — Sindhis 2. Nanda Raj Jaat Yatra — Gonds 3. Wari-Warkari — Santhals Which of the pairs given above is/are correctly matched?

(a) 1 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) None of the above

Answer(a) 1 only

The same test, with the Santhals in it again. There the Wari-Warkari pilgrimage is wrongly attached to the Santhals — it belongs to the Marathi Warkari sect — and Nanda Raj Jaat is Garhwali, not Gond. Festival-to-community pairing is a standing habit of both papers.

CDS_GK_2023_II_Q1112023Open & attempt →

Match List I with List II and select the correct answer using the code given below the Lists : List I (Festivals of North East India) A. Hornbill Festival B. Chapchar Kut C. Nongkrem Dance Festival D. Saga Dawa List II (State) 1. Meghalaya 2. Sikkim 3. Nagaland 4. Mizoram Code:

(a) 2, 4, 1, 3
(b) 3, 1, 4, 2
(c) 3, 4, 1, 2
(d) 2, 1, 4, 3

Answer(c) 3, 4, 1, 2

North-eastern festivals matched to their states, including Saga Dawa, the Buddhist festival of Sikkim. Sangken plays the same role for Arunachal that Saga Dawa plays for Sikkim — the Buddhist entry in a region-wide festival list.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Sangken festival, celebrated in mid-April in Arunachal Pradesh, belongs to which one of the following religious traditions?
- (a)Theravada Buddhism
- (b)Vajrayana Buddhism
- (c)Donyi-Polo
- (d)Vaishnavism
Answer(a) Theravada Buddhism — Sangken is the new-year water festival of the Tai-speaking Theravada communities such as the Khamti and Singpho, centred on Namsai district.
practice — not a real PYQ
Sohrae (Sohrai), celebrated in the month of Poush, is the chief festival of which one of the following communities?
- (a)Bhil
- (b)Santal
- (c)Toda
- (d)Bodo
Answer(b) Santal — Sohrae is the Santal harvest festival, kept after the main rice crop is in, and the largest festival of their year.