SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 8 of 100

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.

In November 2021, the government declared November 15 as ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Divas’. It happens to be the birth anniversary of which of the following freedom fighters?

(a)Birsa Munda
(b)Kanhu Murmu
(c)Arjun Munda
(d)Veer Narayan Singh

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Birsa Munda was born on 15 November 1875, and that is the date the Union Cabinet chose in November 2021 for Janjatiya Gaurav Divas.

He led the Munda Ulgulan, the Great Tumult, against the loss of tribal land to landlords and contractors in the Chotanagpur region, and his followers called him Dharti Aaba, Father of the Earth.

He died in Ranchi jail in June 1900 at twenty-four, which is why option (a) is the freedom fighter the day honours.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Kanhu Murmu — Kanhu Murmu led the Santhal Hool of 1855-56 with his brother Sidhu, a generation before Birsa and in a different tract. The November date does not mark his birth.
(c)
Arjun Munda — Arjun Munda is a contemporary politician and a former Chief Minister of Jharkhand, not a freedom fighter at all. The shared surname is the whole trap.
(d)
Veer Narayan Singh — Veer Narayan Singh, the zamindar of Sonakhan in present-day Chhattisgarh, was executed in 1857 after opening grain stores to the famine-struck. His commemoration is not 15 November.

Concept

Colonial land settlement in Chotanagpur replaced the Munda khuntkatti system, under which clans held the land they had cleared, with outside landlords, moneylenders and contractors.

Birsa Munda built a movement that was religious and political at once: a reformed faith with himself as its prophet, and a demand that the land return to those who cleared it.

The Ulgulan of 1899-1900 was suppressed and Birsa died in custody, but the agitation forced a legislative response in the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act of 1908, which recognised khuntkatti rights.

Janjatiya Gaurav Divas is a current-affairs item resting on a history fact, and SSC likes that shape. The declaration is recent, in November 2021, but the date it fixes on is Birsa Munda's birth anniversary, so the question is really date-to-person recall.

Key facts

Birsa Munda was born on 15 November 1875 at Ulihatu, in present-day Khunti district, Jharkhand.
His movement is known as the Ulgulan, the Great Tumult.
He died in Ranchi jail in June 1900.
The Chotanagpur Tenancy Act of 1908 recognised khuntkatti tribal land rights after the revolt.

Study next

The Munda Ulgulan and the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908Tribal revolts of colonial India: Santhal, Kol, Bhil and RampaDays and divas declared by the Union government and the figures behind them

Common traps

Choosing Arjun Munda on the shared surname when he is a living politician.
Placing Birsa among the rebels of 1857, when the Ulgulan came at the very end of the nineteenth century.

The tribal-pride theme returns as current affairs: the first Janjatiya Khel Mahotsav and its overall champion state are asked at 18 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.17.

Freedom-fighter and social-reform recall is asked plainly elsewhere, as with Ambedkar's 1927 temple entry movement at 24 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.6.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.