SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 15 September 2025, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 2 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 11 September 2026.

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SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

What is the name of the festival celebrated simultaneously by unmarried tribal girls during the Karam celebrations in Jharkhand and eastern India?

(a)Jawa
(b)Sohrai
(c)Karma
(d)Madai

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The Jharkhand government's account of its tribal festivals says that at the same time as Karam, the unmarried tribal girls celebrate the Jawa festival, with songs and dances of its own.

The girls decorate a small basket with germinating seeds, for good fertility and a better household. That girls' rite running alongside Karam is Jawa → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Sohrai — Sohrai is a separate harvest festival, known as the cattle festival, held at Kartik Amavasya around Diwali. It is not the girls' rite that runs alongside Karam.
(c)
Karma — Karma is simply another name for Karam. The question asks for the festival the girls hold during Karam, so naming Karam itself answers nothing.
(d)
Madai — Madai is a Chhattisgarh festival of the Gond and other tribes, moving from place to place between December and March. It has no part in Karam.

Concept

Karam, also called Karma, is a festival of Karam Devta, the god of power, youth and youthfulness. It falls on the eleventh lunar day of Bhadra (Bhado), in August–September.

Groups of young villagers bring wood, fruit and flowers from the forest for the puja, and branches of the Karam tree are worshipped with song and dance.

Jawa runs alongside it: for 7–9 days, unmarried girls tend a basket of sprouting grain.

Tusu, another Jharkhand festival, is also held by unmarried girls, but it is a winter harvest festival on the last day of Poush. The question's word simultaneously is what points to Jawa.

Key facts

Karam is held on the eleventh lunar day of Bhadra (Bhado), which falls in August–September.
Unmarried tribal girls celebrate Jawa at the same time as Karam.
In Jawa the girls decorate a small basket of germinating seeds, for fertility and a good household.
Sohrai, the cattle festival, falls at Kartik Amavasya, around Diwali.

Study next

Sarhul, Jharkhand's spring festival of sal blossomsTusu Parab and the winter harvest festivals of ChotanagpurSohrai and Khovar painting of Jharkhand

Common traps

Choosing Karma, which is Karam's other name rather than a separate festival.
Taking any girls' festival for Jawa. Tusu is also for unmarried girls, but it falls in winter, on the last day of Poush.

Here a sub-festival is identified by who keeps it and when. Jharkhand's folk culture also appears at 18 Sep 2025, 12:30, GA Q.4, which keys Domkach as a folk song form of the state.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Culture — all 163 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.