MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 74 of 100

Correct — option (2), Archaeology. Ramachandran Nagaswamy died at Chennai on 23 January 2022 at the age of ninety-one, and he was an archaeologist, art historian and epigraphist — a specialist in inscriptions and in the art history of Tamil Nadu. His career is easy to state and worth stating, because the details are themselves examinable. He began as Curator for Art and Archaeology at the Government Museum, Chennai, from 1959 to 1963, became assistant special officer for archaeology in Tamil Nadu in 1963, and in 1966 was made the first Director of the newly created Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, an office he held until 1988. In twenty-two years in that post he built the discipline in the State from almost nothing: he read and published inscriptions, excavated and conserved monuments including Chola palace sites and the Thirumalai Nayak palace at Madurai, and he made an unusual effort to carry archaeology to a general readership through pocket guides and newspaper writing rather than confining it to academic journals. He was recognised internationally as an authority on Chola bronzes, and that expertise had a practical consequence that is the best-remembered episode of his career: he appeared as an expert witness in the London Nataraja case, the litigation through which a smuggled bronze image was recovered and returned. He founded the annual Natyanjali dance festival at Chidambaram in 1980 and composed dance dramas on Chola rulers and classical Tamil poets. His honours included the Kalaimamani award for his work on classical Tamil texts and the Padma Bhushan in 2018, the third highest civilian honour of the Republic. The reasoning a candidate can use when the name is unfamiliar is worth setting out, because obituary questions are common and cannot all be prepared. Ask what the four fields have in common with the little the stem gives you — a death in January 2022, a person notable enough for a state commission to ask about, an Indian name of the older generation — and then look for corroboration elsewhere in your reading. Here the surname is one that recurs in writing on South Indian temple art and epigraphy, and none of the other three fields carries the same association. The answer to be marked is option (2).

• (1)Environment — Environment is the field with the least connection of the four to R. Nagaswamy's life and work. His subject was the material past — inscriptions, temple architecture, sculpture in stone and bronze, and the excavation and conservation of monuments — and nothing in his career touched ecology, conservation of forests or wildlife, or environmental policy. The option is present because environment is one of the fields from which obituary questions are most often drawn in Indian current affairs papers, so it reads as plausible to a candidate who is guessing. There is one point of genuine overlap worth naming, and naming it precisely is what keeps it from becoming a confusion: heritage conservation and environmental conservation are both called conservation and both involve protecting something from destruction, but the first is the protection of monuments, sites and artefacts and belongs to archaeology, while the second is the protection of natural systems. Nagaswamy's conservation work — on Chola palace sites and on the Thirumalai Nayak palace — was of the first kind.
• (3)Painting — Painting is the closest of the three wrong options and therefore the most instructive. R. Nagaswamy was an art historian as well as an archaeologist, so a candidate who knows only that he wrote about art might reasonably take this option. What he was an authority on, however, was sculpture and metalwork rather than painting, and specifically the bronze images of the Chola period, whose iconography, dating and provenance he established through inscriptions. That expertise is what made him the expert witness in the London Nataraja case, the proceedings by which a smuggled bronze was identified and recovered. The distinction between the study of an art form and the practice of it is a second thing this option tests: even where the field is right, a scholar of an art is not a practitioner of it, and an examination question that names a field expects the field the person actually worked in. Nagaswamy's discipline is properly described as archaeology, art history and epigraphy, and of those three the word printed among the options is archaeology.
• (4)Acting — Acting is wrong, and it is placed here because obituaries of film and stage performers are among the most commonly set current affairs items, so a candidate guessing among unfamiliar names will find it a natural choice. There is nonetheless a real connection between Nagaswamy and the performing arts, and it is worth knowing both because it is interesting and because it explains why the option is not absurd: he founded the annual Natyanjali dance festival at Chidambaram in 1980, and he composed dance dramas on the Chola rulers and on classical Tamil poets. That is the work of a scholar and a patron who understood the temple as a setting for dance as well as for sculpture, and it grew directly out of his archaeological study of Tamil temples rather than out of any career on stage or screen. Patronage of an art, scholarship about an art and performance of an art are three different things, and a question asking which field a person belonged to is asking about the work he did, which in his case was archaeology.

R. Nagaswamy, who died on 23 January 2022 aged ninety-one, belongs to the generation of Indian scholars who built the state archaeology departments after independence. He was Curator for Art and Archaeology at the Government Museum, Chennai from 1959 to 1963, was appointed assistant special officer for archaeology in Tamil Nadu in 1963, and in 1966 became the first Director of the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, holding that office until 1988. His scholarly work lay in epigraphy — the reading and interpretation of inscriptions — and in the art history of the Tamil country, above all the bronzes of the Chola period, of which he was regarded as the leading authority; that authority was tested in public when he served as an expert witness in the London Nataraja case and helped secure the return of a smuggled image. He excavated and conserved monuments including Chola palace sites and the Thirumalai Nayak palace, wrote extensively for a general audience through pocket guides and newspaper articles, founded the Natyanjali dance festival at Chidambaram in 1980, and composed dance dramas on Chola rulers and Tamil poets. He received the Kalaimamani award and, in 2018, the Padma Bhushan. His life illustrates how closely the disciplines of archaeology, epigraphy and art history are joined in the Indian context: a Chola bronze is dated and attributed from the inscription on its pedestal and from the temple records that mention its consecration, so the historian of the object and the reader of the inscription are usually the same person.

Obituary questions are a permanent feature of the current affairs section, and MPSC sets several in every paper. The form here is the commonest: a name, a month of death, and four fields of activity, with the candidate asked to place the person. The material is unbounded — no candidate can prepare every notable death of a year — so the practical question is how to prepare it economically and how to guess intelligently when preparation fails. Economically, the approach that works is to maintain a running list of notable deaths through the year with a single word for the field and a single phrase for what the person was best known for, updated monthly; four or five entries a month covers most of what an examiner will draw on, because commissions favour figures who were the subject of national obituary coverage. When that fails, three heuristics help. The first is to use the name itself: naming conventions and regional associations often point to a part of the country, and a field that is strongly associated with that region is a better guess than one that is not. The second is to check whether the person's name has been encountered in any other reading, since an archaeologist who wrote for newspapers for fifty years will have been met somewhere. The third is to prefer the least glamorous option, because famous performers and politicians are usually recognised on sight, and a name that means nothing to a well-read candidate is more likely to belong to a scholar or an administrator than to a film actor.

• R. Nagaswamy, an Indian archaeologist, art historian and epigraphist, died at Chennai on 23 January 2022 at the age of ninety-one.
• He was the first Director of the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, holding the office from 1966 to 1988, after serving as Curator for Art and Archaeology at the Government Museum, Chennai from 1959 to 1963.
• He was recognised as an authority on Chola bronzes and appeared as an expert witness in the London Nataraja case, which led to the recovery of a smuggled bronze image.
• He founded the annual Natyanjali dance festival at Chidambaram in 1980 and composed dance dramas on Chola rulers and classical Tamil poets, and he wrote pocket guides and newspaper articles to bring archaeology to a general readership.
• His honours included the Kalaimamani award for his work on classical Tamil texts and the Padma Bhushan in 2018, the third highest civilian honour of the Republic.

• Reading art historian as painter; Nagaswamy studied sculpture, bronzes and inscriptions, and the field named among the options is archaeology
• Treating a scholar's patronage of an art form as practice of it; he founded a dance festival and composed dance dramas but was never a performer
• Guessing the most glamorous field in an obituary question, when an unfamiliar name is more likely to belong to a scholar or an administrator than to a performer
• Confusing heritage conservation, which is the protection of monuments and artefacts and belongs to archaeology, with environmental conservation, which is the protection of natural systems

Notable deaths are asked in every MPSC current affairs section, almost always in one of two forms: name the field of a person who died in a stated month, as here, or name the person who held a stated position and died recently. Because the pool of possible names is unbounded, this is the part of current affairs where a candidate is most likely to be guessing, and it is therefore worth deciding in advance how much preparation it deserves — a monthly list of four or five names with a one-word field is proportionate, and anything more is not. Two refinements raise the return on that small investment. First, note the person's single most distinctive achievement, because a follow-up question often asks for it rather than for the field. Second, note the highest honour the person received, since Padma awards and Nobel Prizes are themselves examinable and the same name will serve two questions. Beyond that, the general reading habit that helps most is to notice the field of anyone whose name appears repeatedly in newspaper writing about culture, science or public administration, because those are the names an examiner will reach for.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  R. Nagaswamy, who died in January 2022, is best known for his authority on which of the following ?

  • (a)Mughal miniature painting
  • (b)Chola bronzes and Tamil inscriptions
  • (c)Indus Valley town planning
  • (d)Ajanta cave murals

  Answer(b) Chola bronzes and Tamil inscriptions. Nagaswamy was an archaeologist, art historian and epigraphist who served as the first Director of the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology from 1966 to 1988, and his international reputation rested on the dating and attribution of Chola bronze images through the inscriptions associated with them. That expertise made him the expert witness in the London Nataraja case, in which a smuggled bronze was identified and recovered.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which civilian honour was conferred on the archaeologist R. Nagaswamy in 2018 ?

  • (a)Bharat Ratna
  • (b)Padma Vibhushan
  • (c)Padma Bhushan
  • (d)Padma Shri

  Answer(c) Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian honour of the Republic, conferred on him in 2018 for his work in archaeology, epigraphy and the art history of Tamil Nadu. He had earlier received the Kalaimamani award for his work on classical Tamil texts. The order of the civilian honours is Bharat Ratna, then Padma Vibhushan, then Padma Bhushan, then Padma Shri, and questions on this topic frequently turn on placing an award correctly within that order.