SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 4 of 99

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 6 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.

Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, which was founded by Pandit Vinaya Chandra Maudgalya, is located at ________.

(a)New Delhi
(b)Kolkata
(c)Pune
(d)Mumbai

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The Gandharva Mahavidyalaya founded by Pandit Vinaya Chandra Maudgalya is in New Delhi, which is option (a).

The name is shared, and that is the whole difficulty. The original Gandharva Mahavidyalaya was started by Vishnu Digambar Paluskar at Lahore in 1901, to move Hindustani classical training out of hereditary households and into a school open to ordinary students.

Maudgalya carried that model into Delhi, and the stem names him precisely to fix which institution it means.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Kolkata — No institution of the Maudgalya line sits in Kolkata. The founder's name in the stem is the fixed point, and it points to New Delhi.
(c)
Pune — Pune is a strong Hindustani centre in Maharashtra, which makes it the tempting pick — but the school the stem names was founded in Delhi.
(d)
Mumbai — Mumbai is a major performance centre for Hindustani music. It is not the seat of the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya the stem describes.

Concept

Hindustani classical music was taught for centuries inside families and gharanas, by a guru to chosen disciples.

Vishnu Digambar Paluskar and Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande are the two figures credited with breaking that closure open — Paluskar by founding schools, Bhatkhande by building a notation and a classification of ragas that could be taught from a book.

The Gandharva Mahavidyalaya name belongs to that movement, which is why more than one institution carries it.

Because several institutions share the name, SSC pins the item down with a founder rather than asking about the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya on its own.

Key facts

Vishnu Digambar Paluskar founded the first Gandharva Mahavidyalaya at Lahore in 1901.
The Gandharva Mahavidyalaya in New Delhi was founded by Pandit Vinaya Chandra Maudgalya.
Paluskar and Bhatkhande are the two names credited with moving Hindustani music from hereditary teaching into schools and written notation.

Study next

Paluskar and Bhatkhande and the notation systems they builtMajor Indian music institutions and the cities they are inGharanas of Hindustani vocal music

Common traps

Treating Gandharva Mahavidyalaya as a single institution when the founder's name decides which one is meant.
Placing it in Maharashtra because Paluskar's tradition is strongest there.

SSC pairs an institution with its founder, or a founder with a city.

Paluskar himself appears on 19 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.17 as Pandit Omkar Nath Thakur's teacher, and on 25 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.17 as the author of Sangeet Bal Prakash.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.