SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 11 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 4 of 95

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Bharatanatyam dance style is associated with which of the following states?

(a)Karnataka
(b)Tamil Nadu
(c)Bihar
(d)Manipur

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Bharatanatyam is the classical dance of Tamil Nadu. It grew out of the temple dance tradition of the Tamil country and was carried onto the modern concert stage in the twentieth century.

Rukmini Devi Arundale, who founded Kalakshetra at Madras in 1936, is the name most often attached to that revival → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Karnataka — No classical form on the standard list of eight belongs to Karnataka. Its best known stage tradition, Yakshagana, is folk theatre rather than one of the classical dances.
(c)
Bihar — Bihar's dance traditions are folk — Jat-Jatin, Bidesia and the like. No classical form is assigned to Bihar, so it cannot hold Bharatanatyam.
(d)
Manipur — Manipur's classical dance is Manipuri, built around the Raas Leela of Krishna. It is its own entry on the classical list, not another name for the Tamil form.

Concept

Eight dance forms are treated as classical, and each is tied to a region: Bharatanatyam to Tamil Nadu, Kathakali and Mohiniyattam to Kerala, Kuchipudi to Andhra Pradesh, Odissi to Odisha, Manipuri to Manipur, Sattriya to Assam, and Kathak to the courts and gharanas of north India.

That table is what a dance question draws on — form to state, dancer to form, or institution to place. Learn it in all three directions and this item collapses to recall.

Bharatanatyam's link to Tamil Nadu runs through the devadasi temple repertoire; the twentieth-century revival changed where it was performed, not where it came from.

Key facts

Bharatanatyam belongs to Tamil Nadu, Kathakali and Mohiniyattam to Kerala, and Kuchipudi to Andhra Pradesh.
Odissi belongs to Odisha, Manipuri to Manipur, Sattriya to Assam, and Kathak to north India.
Rukmini Devi Arundale founded Kalakshetra at Madras in 1936 and brought Bharatanatyam to the proscenium stage.

Study next

The eight classical dance forms and the state each belongs toKalakshetra, Rukmini Devi Arundale and the twentieth-century revival of BharatanatyamLasya and Tandava as the two expressive modes of Indian classical dance

Common traps

Answering with the state where a famous institution stands rather than where the form belongs — Nrityagram, an Odissi gurukul, is in Karnataka (09 Sep 2024, 16:00, General Awareness Q.20).
Treating the southern forms as interchangeable, when Kuchipudi is Andhra Pradesh's (24 Sep 2024, 16:00, General Awareness Q.20) and Kathakali is Kerala's (12 Sep 2024, 09:00, General Awareness Q.2).

SSC sets this family from either side — the form and its state, or a named dancer and the form. Yamini Krishnamurthy and Bharatanatyam is asked on 18 Sep 2024, 16:00, General Awareness Q.5, and Mohiniyattam's lasya character on 10 Sep 2024, 12:30, General Awareness Q.9.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.