MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 83 of 100

Correct — option (3), all three statements are correct. Note first that this question prints only three statements, labelled (a), (b) and (c); there is no statement (d), and a candidate who reads the list expecting four will waste time looking for one. Statement (a) is correct: Milena Salvini was born on 23 April 1933 at Milan in Italy. Her father died when she was four and her mother took her to France, where she grew up, trained in music and modern dance, and eventually took French nationality — so she is properly described as an Italian-born French exponent of Indian classical dance, and the statement's claim about her birth is exact. Statement (b) is correct: she is known above all for Kathakali. In 1962 she obtained a two-year scholarship to train in Kathakali at the Kerala Kalamandalam, and after returning to France she spent the rest of her life performing, teaching, filming and writing about the form, including a full-length study of the history and technique of Kathakali. With Roger Filipuzzi she opened the Mandapa Centre in Paris in 1975 as a place to teach and stage Indian classical dance, and it is that institution the statement refers to as 'Centre Mandapa'. Statement (c) is correct: the Government of India conferred the Padma Shri on her in 2019, the fourth highest civilian award of the Republic, in recognition of her work in art. Since all three statements are accurate, the option that accepts all three is the answer, and that is option (3). One further fact explains why the Commission set this question in a 2022 paper at all: Milena Salvini died in Paris on 25 January 2022, at the age of eighty-eight, a few months before this examination was written, and an obituary is one of the commonest sources of a current-affairs item. Her larger significance is easy to state and worth remembering: she was among the principal channels through which Kerala's classical performing arts reached European audiences, arranging Kathakali and Kutiyattam tours under the auspices of UNESCO, and the Kutiyattam tour she organised in 1999 fed directly into the application that saw Kutiyattam inscribed on UNESCO's list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2001.

• (1)(a) and (b) are correct — This option accepts the two statements about her birth and her work but rejects statement (c), the year of the Padma Shri. Statement (c) is in fact correct: the award was conferred in 2019, and the Padma awards are announced each year on the eve of Republic Day and presented at Rashtrapati Bhavan later in the year, so 2019 is both the announcement year and the year the award is dated to. A candidate is likely to arrive at this option after remembering her death in January 2022 and confusing the date of the obituary with the date of the honour, which is a specific and avoidable error — the Padma Shri came three years before her death, not with it. In a three-statement question the whole of the reasoning lies in deciding each statement independently, and here there is no ground on which the third can be rejected.
• (2)Only (c) is correct — This option requires both statement (a) and statement (b) to be false, and neither is. She was born at Milan in Italy in 1933, which settles statement (a); and she trained in Kathakali at the Kerala Kalamandalam on a scholarship obtained in 1962 and opened the Mandapa Centre in Paris in 1975 with Roger Filipuzzi, which settles statement (b). The option is presumably meant to catch a candidate who assumes that a French institution and a French career imply French birth, or who doubts that a European woman could be a Kathakali exponent — Kathakali being a form performed traditionally by men and trained through a long apprenticeship at institutions such as the Kalamandalam. Her career is precisely the exception that makes her notable, and rejecting statement (b) on the strength of an expectation about who practises Kathakali is exactly the sort of assumption the format punishes.
• (4)(a) and (c) are correct — This option accepts her Italian birth and the 2019 Padma Shri but rejects statement (b), the statement about Kathakali and the Mandapa Centre, and that rejection cannot be sustained. The centre she and Roger Filipuzzi opened in Paris in 1975 was created for teaching and presenting Indian classical dance, and her identification with Kathakali is the reason the Indian State honoured her: she trained at the Kerala Kalamandalam from 1962, brought the Kalamandalam's Kathakali troupe to France under the auspices of UNESCO, took its Kutiyattam troupe to Europe in 1980 and again in 1999, produced films on both forms and published a history of Kathakali. If anything, statement (b) is the best documented of the three. A candidate who reaches this option has probably discounted the name 'Centre Mandapa' as unfamiliar, which is a poor reason to reject a statement whose other half — the Kathakali connection — is the very thing the question is built on.

Milena Salvini (23 April 1933 – 25 January 2022) was an Italian-born French dancer, teacher, film-maker and writer who devoted her life to the classical performing arts of Kerala. Born at Milan and raised in France after her father's death, she trained in music and modern dance before obtaining a two-year scholarship in 1962 to study Kathakali at the Kerala Kalamandalam, the institution founded at Cheruthuruthy by the poet Vallathol Narayana Menon to rescue Kerala's classical forms from decline. On returning to France she organised a European tour by the Kalamandalam's Kathakali troupe under the auspices of UNESCO, and in 1975, with Roger Filipuzzi, she opened the Mandapa Centre in Paris as a permanent home for the teaching and performance of Indian classical dance. She worked equally for Kutiyattam, the Sanskrit theatre of Kerala regarded as among the oldest living theatre traditions in the world, arranging its tours to Europe in 1980 and 1999; the second of these led UNESCO to encourage an application under its then new programme for intangible heritage, and Kutiyattam was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2001. She wrote two books on the history and technique of Kathakali and produced films on both Kathakali and Kutiyattam. In 2019 the Government of India conferred the Padma Shri on her; she died in Paris in January 2022.

MPSC's current-affairs block regularly examines the civilian honours, and it does so in two shapes: the plain question naming an award and asking for the recipient, and the statement-list question used here, in which a short biography is broken into claims that must each be judged true or false. The second shape is harder, but it is also more forgiving, because a candidate who knows only one solid fact about the person can often eliminate two options with it. The Padma awards are worth preparing as a system rather than as a list of names. They were instituted in 1954; the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri stand third, fourth and fifth in the order of civilian honours after the Bharat Ratna, announced on the eve of Republic Day each year and presented at Rashtrapati Bhavan; and they are given in fields such as art, social work, public affairs, science and engineering, trade and industry, medicine, literature and education, sport and civil service. Foreign nationals and persons of foreign origin are eligible, and a steady handful of awards each year go to scholars and performers abroad who have carried an Indian art form into another country — which is the category Milena Salvini belongs to, and a category worth watching in the year's announcement because it produces questions of exactly this kind.

• Milena Salvini was born on 23 April 1933 at Milan in Italy and was taken to France as a child after her father's death; she is described as an Italian-born French exponent and teacher of Indian classical dance, and she died in Paris on 25 January 2022 aged eighty-eight.
• In 1962 she obtained a two-year scholarship to train in Kathakali at the Kerala Kalamandalam, and afterwards organised a European tour by the Kalamandalam's Kathakali troupe under the auspices of UNESCO.
• She and Roger Filipuzzi opened the Mandapa Centre in Paris in 1975 to teach and present Indian classical dance; the paper refers to it as 'Centre Mandapa'.
• The Government of India conferred the Padma Shri on her in 2019, the fourth highest civilian award of the Republic, for her work in art; the Padma awards are announced each year on the eve of Republic Day.
• The Kutiyattam tour she organised in 1999 led UNESCO to encourage an application under its intangible heritage programme, and Kutiyattam — the Sanskrit theatre of Kerala — was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2001.

• Reading the list as though it contained four statements; this question prints only (a), (b) and (c), and seventeen questions in this paper have statement lists shorter than four items
• Confusing the year of the award with the year the person was in the news, here 2019 for the Padma Shri against January 2022 for her death
• Rejecting a statement because a detail in it is unfamiliar, such as the name of a dance centre in Paris, rather than because it is contradicted by something known
• Assuming a European performer could not be a Kathakali exponent, when the honour was given precisely for a lifetime spent on that form

Awards and honours are among the most reliably examined categories in MPSC current affairs, and the Padma awards more than any other because the annual announcement supplies a fresh set of names with a field and a State attached to each. The Commission asks them in three ways: name the field or State of a named awardee, name the awardee associated with a named art or institution, and the statement-list form used here where a short biography must be checked claim by claim. Obituaries of the preceding year are a second and less obvious source, since a death often brings a past honour back into the news, and this question sits at the junction of the two. The efficient preparation is to keep the year's Padma list grouped by field and to note, for each unfamiliar name, one sentence about what the person actually did; that single sentence is usually enough to decide every statement a commission can build.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Milena Salvini, who was awarded the Padma Shri in 2019, is associated with which classical art form and with which institution in Paris ?

  • (a)Bharatanatyam and the Alliance Francaise
  • (b)Kathakali and the Mandapa Centre
  • (c)Odissi and the Musee Guimet
  • (d)Kathak and the Theatre de la Ville

  Answer(b) Kathakali and the Mandapa Centre. Salvini trained in Kathakali at the Kerala Kalamandalam on a scholarship obtained in 1962, and with Roger Filipuzzi opened the Mandapa Centre in Paris in 1975 for the teaching and performance of Indian classical dance. She also worked extensively for Kutiyattam, the Sanskrit theatre of Kerala, arranging its European tours under the auspices of UNESCO; the tour of 1999 fed into the application that saw Kutiyattam inscribed on UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2001.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Kutiyattam, inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2001, belongs to which State and is best described as which of the following ?

  • (a)Karnataka; a form of shadow puppetry
  • (b)Tamil Nadu; a temple dance performed by devadasis
  • (c)Kerala; a form of Sanskrit theatre
  • (d)Andhra Pradesh; a dance-drama of the Kuchipudi village

  Answer(c) Kerala; a form of Sanskrit theatre. Kutiyattam is performed in Kerala and is regarded as among the oldest living theatre traditions in the world, staged traditionally in the koothambalam attached to temples. It was among the first Indian entries on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, inscribed in 2001, and the tours arranged in Europe by Milena Salvini in 1980 and 1999 were part of the sequence of events that led to that inscription.