MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 91 of 100

Correct — option (2), 'Only A and B are correct'. Sammed Shikharji, also written Shikharji or Sammed Shikhar, is the foremost pilgrimage site of the Jains, and it stands on Parasnath hill, the highest mountain in Jharkhand, in the district the paper spells 'Girdhi' and which is usually written Giridih. That settles statements A and B together. Jain tradition holds that twenty of the twenty-four Tirthankaras attained moksha on this hill, which is what gives the site its standing; the hill itself takes its name from Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara. Statement C fails on geography: the Aravalli range lies in Rajasthan and Gujarat, hundreds of kilometres to the west, and Parasnath hill belongs to the Chota Nagpur plateau in eastern India. Statement D fails on religion: Sammed Shikharji is a Jain site, not a Hindu one, and statements A and D are direct alternatives to each other so that at most one of them can stand. The reason the question says the shrine 'has been in news for the past few days' is the controversy of the winter of 2022-23. In December 2022 the Jain community protested across the country against the Jharkhand government's decision to develop the site as a tourist destination rather than treat it as a place of worship, holding demonstrations and a day-long nationwide strike; a seventy-two-year-old Jain monk died while fasting in protest. In January 2023 the central government halted tourism development activities on Parasnath hill. That sequence is why an examination written in June 2023 could describe a pilgrimage site as recent news. With A and B correct and C and D false, option (2) is the answer.

• (1)Only A and C are correct — 'Only A and C are correct' gets the religion right and the place wrong. Statement A is correct — Sammed Shikharji is a Jain pilgrimage site — but statement C places it on the Aravalli range in Rajasthan, and it is not there. The reason this option is tempting is that Rajasthan genuinely is a great centre of Jain pilgrimage and architecture, with the Dilwara temples at Mount Abu, which stands in the Aravallis, and the Ranakpur temple among the most celebrated Jain monuments in India. A candidate who associates Jainism with Rajasthan and knows that Mount Abu is in the Aravallis will find statement C reading like something already known. Sammed Shikharji is a different site altogether, on Parasnath hill in the Giridih district of Jharkhand, in eastern India. Note also that this option admits both A and C while the question's own construction pairs each true statement against a false alternative — A against D on religion, B against C on place.
• (3)Only B and C are correct — 'Only B and C are correct' admits two statements that contradict each other, which is enough to strike it out without knowing where the shrine is. Statement B places the site at Girdhi in Jharkhand and statement C places it on the Aravalli range in Rajasthan; a single pilgrimage site cannot be in both, so at most one of the two can stand. On the facts it is statement B that stands. This option additionally rejects statement A, which is the most securely true statement in the set, since Sammed Shikharji's identity as the principal Jain tirtha is the reason the site was in the news at all — the protests of December 2022 were Jain protests about a Jain place of worship. Reading a set of statements against one another before reading them against memory would have eliminated this option in a few seconds.
• (4)Only C is correct — 'Only C is correct' is the weakest option available, since statement C is the one geographical claim in the set that is definitely false. It puts Sammed Shikharji on the Aravalli range in Rajasthan, when the shrine stands on Parasnath hill in the Giridih district of Jharkhand, part of the Chota Nagpur plateau. Choosing this option also means rejecting statement A, the plain and correct statement that the site belongs to the Jain community. A candidate arrives here only by knowing nothing of the site and reaching for the shortest option in the hope that it is the least exposed. It is worth saying plainly that a narrow option is not a cautious one: 'Only C' asserts positively that A and B are both wrong, and in a question where both are demonstrably right it is a worse answer than any of the combinations.

Sammed Shikharji is the most important pilgrimage site in Jainism, and its importance is doctrinal rather than architectural. Jain tradition counts twenty-four Tirthankaras, the ford-makers who show the way across the ocean of rebirth, and holds that twenty of them attained moksha, or liberation, on this hill; pilgrims walk a circuit of the summit visiting the shrines associated with each. The hill is named Parasnath after Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara, and is the highest mountain in Jharkhand, in the Giridih district on the Chota Nagpur plateau. The dispute that put it in the news turns on a distinction that recurs wherever a sacred place is also an attraction: a State government sees revenue, employment and infrastructure in designating a site for tourism, while the community that worships there sees the character of the place altered by visitors who come to look rather than to observe its disciplines — in this instance including restrictions on what may be eaten and carried on a hill the Jains regard as consecrated ground. The protests of December 2022 and the central government's suspension of tourism activity in January 2023 are the immediate context, and the same tension recurs at other pilgrimage sites across India.

Questions built on a news controversy are among the most answerable in the current affairs block, because the controversy itself supplies the facts. Anyone who followed the Sammed Shikharji story in the winter of 2022-23 knew from the coverage that the protesters were Jains and that the hill is in Jharkhand, which is precisely what the two true statements assert. The examiner has then built the false statements as mirror images of the true ones — a different religion against statement A, a different range and State against statement B — which produces a set where the statements can be tested against one another. That structure is the reliable route through this question type: where a list contains two statements that cannot both be true, the answer contains exactly one of them, and identifying such pairs eliminates options faster than recalling facts does. Two smaller points about the printing. The English column asks for 'the correct statements' in the plural where the Marathi column asks for a single correct statement, so the two columns are not quite parallel; and the district is printed 'Girdhi', which is the paper's rendering of Giridih. Neither affects the answer, and neither should be treated as a hint.

• Sammed Shikharji is the foremost pilgrimage site of the Jains, and Jain tradition holds that twenty of the twenty-four Tirthankaras attained moksha there.
• It stands on Parasnath hill, the highest mountain in Jharkhand, in the Giridih district — the district the paper spells 'Girdhi' — on the Chota Nagpur plateau in eastern India.
• The hill takes its name from Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara; the site is not connected with the Aravalli range, which lies in Rajasthan and Gujarat.
• In December 2022 the Jain community protested nationally, including a day-long strike, against the Jharkhand government's decision to develop the site as a tourist destination rather than treat it as a place of worship; a seventy-two-year-old Jain monk died while fasting in protest.
• In January 2023 the central government halted tourism development activities on Parasnath hill, which is why a pilgrimage site was current news for a paper written in June 2023.

• Associating Jain pilgrimage with Rajasthan and the Aravallis because of Mount Abu and Ranakpur, and placing Sammed Shikharji there
• Admitting two statements that place the same site in two different States, which cannot both be true — comparing the statements with one another before comparing them with memory eliminates such options at no cost
• Treating a narrow option such as 'Only C is correct' as the cautious choice, when it positively asserts that the other statements are false
• Missing that the question's true and false statements are constructed as mirrored pairs, which is the structure that makes the set solvable by comparison

News-driven questions about religious and heritage sites reach MPSC papers in three shapes: where the site is, which community it belongs to, and why it was in the news. This question asks all three at once by turning them into statements. The examiner's usual method is to mirror each true statement with a false alternative — the right religion against a wrong one, the right State against a wrong one — which makes the set internally testable and is worth exploiting. Preparation should attach to each site in the year's news a short record of its State and district, the community that worships or maintains it, its protection status if any, and the reason it was reported. Sites that generate protest, litigation or a policy reversal are the likeliest to be examined, because the story keeps the facts in the public record for months and gives the Commission a dated, checkable event to build on.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Jain pilgrimage site of Sammed Shikharji is situated on which hill, and in which State ?

  • (a)Parasnath hill in Jharkhand
  • (b)Mount Abu in Rajasthan
  • (c)Girnar hill in Gujarat
  • (d)Chandragiri hill in Karnataka

  Answer(a) Parasnath hill in Jharkhand — the hill stands in the Giridih district on the Chota Nagpur plateau and is the highest mountain in the State, taking its name from Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara. Mount Abu, Girnar and Chandragiri are all genuine Jain sites, at Dilwara, in Junagadh and at Shravanabelagola respectively, which is why they make convincing distractors in a question of this kind.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Sammed Shikharji site was in the news in December 2022 and January 2023 for which reason ?

  • (a)A proposal to develop it as a tourist destination, which the Jain community opposed
  • (b)Its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List
  • (c)A dispute between two States over which one the hill falls in
  • (d)The discovery of new rock inscriptions on the summit

  Answer(a) A proposal to develop it as a tourist destination, which the Jain community opposed — the Jharkhand government's decision drew nationwide protests and a day-long strike, a Jain monk died while fasting in protest, and in January 2023 the central government halted tourism development activities on Parasnath hill. The underlying question, of whether a consecrated place can also be marketed as an attraction, recurs at pilgrimage sites across the country.