Who among the following was one of the Navratnas of Akbar?

Correct — D. Tansen is the musician among Akbar's Navratnas, the nine celebrated men of his court. He came to Akbar from the court of Raja Ramchandra of Rewa and served as the emperor's leading singer.

His tomb stands at Gwalior beside that of his Sufi guide Muhammad Ghaus, and Madhya Pradesh still holds a festival there in his name → option (d).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Amir Khusro — Amir Khusrau belongs to the Delhi Sultanate, more than two centuries before Akbar. He was a disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya and wrote for Sultans, not for Mughal emperors.
• (b)
  Purandar Das — Purandara Dasa was a Kannada composer of the Vijayanagara period, honoured as a founding figure of Carnatic music. He worked in the south and never held a Mughal court post.
• (c)
  Swami Haridas — Swami Haridas is traditionally named as Tansen's own teacher, a Vaishnava saint-singer of Vrindavan. That makes him the sharpest distractor here, but a teacher of a courtier is not himself a courtier.

Navratna is a later tradition rather than a Mughal office, and lists of the nine differ at the edges. The men usually named in them were real figures of Akbar's court: Tansen the musician, Birbal, Abul Fazl and Faizi, Todar Mal in revenue, Raja Man Singh in the army, and Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan.

What SSC tests is the pairing of a name with a court and a role, so the useful preparation is person to emperor to function, not the count of nine.

Key facts

• Tansen was a singer at Akbar's court and came there from the court of Raja Ramchandra of Rewa.
• His tomb is at Gwalior, next to the tomb of Muhammad Ghaus.
• The Madhya Pradesh government organises the Tansen music festival held in his memory and instituted the Tansen Samman in 1980.
• Raja Todar Mal, Akbar's revenue minister, is another of the men named among the nine.

Common traps

• Choosing Swami Haridas because he taught Tansen.
• Placing Amir Khusrau in the Mughal period when he served the Delhi Sultans and died long before Akbar's reign.

No directly related past PYQ was found.