MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 87 of 100

Correct — option (4), Georgia. The Governor of the US State of Georgia, Brian P. Kemp, signed a proclamation on 14 October 2021 recognising 1 November 2021 as Kannada Language and Rajyotsava Day in his State, and the proclamation was formally presented at a ceremony on 27 October 2021 on the northern steps of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta, at which the Governor and Marty Kemp were present. It was sought by the Kannada-speaking community in Georgia organised under the banner of Nrupatunga Kannada Koota and was reported as the first proclamation of its kind for the Kannada language anywhere in the United States. The date was not chosen at random. Karnataka Rajyotsava, the formation day of the State, falls on 1 November, and it marks the day in 1956 when the Kannada-speaking areas of southern India that had been scattered across several administrative units were brought together into a single State under the States Reorganisation Act, 1956 — first as the enlarged Mysore State, renamed Karnataka on 1 November 1973. The diaspora observance therefore reproduces the home State's own civic anniversary on the same date. Two things are worth noticing about how this question is built. The first is that it belongs to a class of current-affairs items in which a foreign government or sub-national government makes a gesture towards an Indian language, community or festival, and the fact to be recalled is simply which one; there is no reasoning route to the answer, only recall of the news item. The second is the stem's spelling. The paper prints 'Rajyothsava' with a 'th', a transliteration variant of the same word that is usually written Rajyotsava, and it is reproduced here exactly as printed. A candidate should not read anything into a spelling of that kind — Indian names travel through several transliteration conventions in official documents, and the Commission prints them as it received them. The State is Georgia, so option (4) is the answer.

• (1)California — California is the answer a candidate reaches by demographic reasoning, and it is the wrong one. The State holds the largest Indian-American population in the United States, its technology industry has drawn a very large number of engineers from Bengaluru in particular, and a proclamation about the Kannada language would seem to belong there more naturally than anywhere else. But the proclamation of 1 November 2021 as Kannada Language and Rajyotsava Day was made by the Governor of Georgia, and the news reports treated it as the first of its kind in the country precisely because no other State had done it. This is the standing hazard of current-affairs questions about the diaspora: the State with the biggest community is not necessarily the State that made the announcement, and the question is about the announcement.
• (2)Texas — Texas has a large and growing Indian-American population concentrated around the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston areas, and its cities host many Indian cultural associations, so it carries the same superficial plausibility as California and fails for the same reason. Nothing in the news of October and November 2021 connects Texas with the Kannada proclamation. When an option set consists of four American States and only one of them did the thing described, there is no substitute for having read the item; the useful discipline in preparation is to record such news with the actor named — which Governor, which State, which date — because the question is always built on the actor and never on the plausibility of the setting.
• (3)South Carolina — South Carolina is included because it has a well-known Indian-American political association: Nikki Haley, born Nimrata Randhawa in Bamberg in that State, served as its Governor from 2011 to 2017 before becoming the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. A candidate who is looking for the State with the strongest Indian connection in his memory may land on it for that reason. But the association is with a person and a political career, not with a language proclamation, and the Kannada Language and Rajyotsava Day proclamation of 2021 was signed in Georgia by Governor Brian Kemp. Georgia and South Carolina are neighbouring States in the American south-east, which makes the confusion easy for anybody working from a hazy mental map.

Karnataka Rajyotsava is the formation day of the State of Karnataka and falls on 1 November. The Kannada-speaking country had been divided for most of the colonial period among the princely State of Mysore, the Bombay and Madras Presidencies, the Nizam's dominions and the small province of Coorg, and the movement for its unification — the Ekikarana movement — ran through the first half of the twentieth century. Unification came with the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, which redrew India's internal boundaries on linguistic lines with effect from 1 November 1956 and brought the Kannada-speaking areas together in the enlarged Mysore State; the State was renamed Karnataka on 1 November 1973. The same 1 November date is the formation day of several States for the same reason, since the 1956 reorganisation took effect for all of them at once, and later reorganisations reused the date — Punjab and Haryana in 1966 and Chhattisgarh in 2000 among them. Rajyotsava is marked in Karnataka with the hoisting of the red and yellow Kannada flag, the singing of the State anthem and the announcement of the Rajyotsava Awards, and the day travels with the Kannada diaspora, which is why Kannada associations abroad petition local governments to recognise it. Georgia's proclamation of 2021 is an instance of that pattern rather than an isolated event.

MPSC's current-affairs section regularly includes items about India's cultural presence abroad — a language recognised, a festival proclaimed, a statue unveiled, a street renamed, an honour conferred on a person of Indian origin. They are asked because they are unambiguous and dated, and because the Commission takes the view that an administrator should read the newspaper rather than only the syllabus. They cannot be reasoned out, so the return comes entirely from the way a candidate reads the news: an item is worth recording only with its actor, its date and its place attached, because those are the three things the question will turn on. Note also the shape of the option set here. All four choices are American States, so the candidate cannot narrow the field by eliminating an implausible country; the Commission has removed every route except recall. That is a deliberate construction and it appears throughout this paper's current-affairs block, where option sets are drawn from a single homogeneous category — four States, four novels, four actors, four years. The corresponding lesson for revision is that a half-remembered fact is worth very little in this section, and that a quarter-mark penalty makes a guess between four equally plausible members of one category a poor bet.

• The Governor of Georgia, Brian P. Kemp, signed a proclamation on 14 October 2021 recognising 1 November 2021 as Kannada Language and Rajyotsava Day in the State of Georgia; it was presented at a ceremony on 27 October 2021 on the northern steps of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta.
• The proclamation was sought by the Kannada-speaking community in Georgia under the banner of Nrupatunga Kannada Koota, and was reported as the first proclamation of its kind for the Kannada language in the United States.
• Karnataka Rajyotsava, the State's formation day, is observed on 1 November and marks the unification of the Kannada-speaking areas in 1956 under the States Reorganisation Act; the State was then the enlarged Mysore State and was renamed Karnataka on 1 November 1973.
• The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 took effect on 1 November 1956, which is why several Indian States share that formation day; later reorganisations reused the date, including the creation of Punjab and Haryana in 1966 and of Chhattisgarh in 2000.
• The paper prints the word as 'Rajyothsava'. It is a transliteration variant of the same term, reproduced here as printed, and carries no separate meaning.

• Choosing the State with the largest Indian-American population rather than the State that actually issued the proclamation. Demographic plausibility is not evidence, and here it points to California while the answer is Georgia
• Picking South Carolina because of its Indian-American political association with Nikki Haley. That connection is to a person and a career, not to a language proclamation
• Reading significance into the spelling 'Rajyothsava' in the stem. It is a transliteration variant of Rajyotsava and the paper prints Indian names as it received them
• Assuming 1 November belongs only to Karnataka. It is the formation day of several States, because the States Reorganisation Act, 1956 took effect for all of them on the same day

Diaspora and soft-power items appear in every MPSC current-affairs block, and they follow a narrow set of templates: a foreign legislature or governor recognises an Indian language or day, a city names a street or square after an Indian figure, a person of Indian origin is appointed to high office abroad, or an Indian site or practice receives an international designation. The question always asks for the actor — which country, which State, which city, which person — because that is the only element that cannot be guessed. Two derived forms are worth expecting as well. The first pairs the foreign recognition with the Indian anniversary behind it, so that a candidate must also know what 1 November commemorates. The second asks about the Indian anniversary alone, which is where the States Reorganisation Act and the formation days of the States enter the paper. Preparing the second automatically prepares half of the first.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Karnataka Rajyotsava, observed on 1 November, commemorates which of the following ?

  • (a)The renaming of Mysore State as Karnataka in 1973 alone
  • (b)The unification of the Kannada-speaking areas into a single State in 1956
  • (c)The formation of the princely State of Mysore
  • (d)The birth anniversary of the Kannada poet Kuvempu

  Answer(b) The unification of the Kannada-speaking areas into a single State in 1956. The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 took effect on 1 November 1956 and brought together Kannada-speaking territory previously divided among the princely State of Mysore, the Bombay and Madras Presidencies, the Nizam's dominions and Coorg; the enlarged State was called Mysore and was renamed Karnataka on 1 November 1973, so the renaming shares the date but is not what the day originally marked.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following pairs of State and formation day is correctly matched ?

  • (a)Maharashtra — 1 November
  • (b)Karnataka — 1 May
  • (c)Karnataka — 1 November
  • (d)Maharashtra — 1 January

  Answer(c) Karnataka — 1 November. Karnataka observes Rajyotsava on 1 November, the date on which the States Reorganisation Act, 1956 came into effect and the Kannada-speaking areas were unified. Maharashtra's formation day is 1 May, the date in 1960 on which the bilingual State of Bombay was divided into Maharashtra and Gujarat under the Bombay Reorganisation Act, 1960; the two dates are frequently exchanged in questions of this shape, so they are worth fixing as a pair.