The famous santoor player Pandit Shivkumar Sharma received the ________________________ in the year 1986.
- (a)Sanskriti Award
- (b)Kalidas Samman
- (c)Sangeet Natak Akademi Award
- (d)Maharashtra Gurav Puraskar
Answer
Why
Correct — C. Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, the santoor player who turned a Kashmiri folk instrument into a Hindustani classical solo voice, received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1986.
That is the honour the stem's date belongs to. His Padma Shri came in 1991 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2001, so neither fits 1986.
The Sangeet Natak Akademi is India's national academy of music, dance and drama, and its Award is the standing national recognition for a performing artist → option (c).
Why the others are wrong
- (a)Sanskriti Award — The Sanskriti Award is given by the Sanskriti Pratishthan, a private trust in Delhi, to young Indians working in literature, journalism, art, performance and social work. It is not the national academy's honour.
- (b)Kalidas Samman — The Kalidas Samman is a Government of Madhya Pradesh award, first given in 1980 and awarded in classical music, classical dance, theatre and the plastic arts. A state honour, not a national one.
- (d)Maharashtra Gurav Puraskar — The paper's Maharashtra Gurav Puraskar names a state honour of Maharashtra, where Sharma lived and worked. The award dated 1986 in the stem came from the national academy.
Concept
The Sangeet Natak Akademi Award is the national academy's annual honour for practising performing artists.
The Akademi itself was set up by the education ministry in 1952 and inaugurated in 1953, and it confers the Award each year on musicians, dancers, theatre practitioners and puppeteers. Its higher distinction is the Akademi Ratna, or Fellowship.
Shivkumar Sharma (1938-2022) matters to this question because he is the reason the santoor appears on such lists at all. Born in Jammu, he took the hundred-string struck instrument of the Kashmir valley and adapted it for Hindustani classical performance.
Sharma also wrote film music with the flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia as the duo Shiv-Hari, for Silsila, Chandni and Lamhe among others. SSC asks the classical honour here, not the film work.
Key facts
- Shivkumar Sharma received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1986.
- He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1991 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2001.
- The Sangeet Natak Akademi is India's national academy of music, dance and drama, with its registered office at Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi.
- The santoor is a struck-string instrument of the Kashmir valley that Sharma established as a Hindustani classical solo instrument.
Study next
Common traps
- Reaching for a Padma award because the name is more familiar. The Padma Shri came in 1991, five years after the date in the stem.
- Treating every classical-music honour as interchangeable. A state government award and a national academy award are given by different bodies.
- Attaching the santoor to Jammu and Kashmir state honours because Sharma was born in Jammu.
This stem pairs a performer with an award and leaves the year to do the work. Sharma returns as the santoor player in an award question at 25 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.6, and the Akademi's own registered office is asked at 25 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.23 (answer: New Delhi).
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.