SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 21 September 2025, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 7 of 99

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 13 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

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.

The first recorded origin of Bonalu festival is traced back to which disease outbreak in Hyderabad?

(a)Smallpox
(b)Cholera
(c)Plague
(d)Malaria

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The Telangana government's Hyderabad district account dates the festival's history to 1813, when plague broke out in Hyderabad and Secunderabad and killed thousands.

A military battalion from Hyderabad posted at Ujjain prayed to the goddess Mahankali there and vowed to install her idol if the epidemic ended. On its return it did so, offering Bonalu → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Smallpox — Smallpox does not appear in the Bonalu origin story. Neither the plague account nor the cholera version some sources give mentions it.
(b)
Cholera — Cholera is the near miss. Some published accounts call the 1813 epidemic cholera, but the Telangana government's Hyderabad district page calls it plague, and the key follows that.
(d)
Malaria — Malaria is not part of the story. The festival's origin is tied to a sudden epidemic in 1813 that killed thousands, and the account names plague.

Concept

Bonalu is a Telangana festival for the goddess Mahakali, held in the Hindu month of Ashada. Women carry a bonam, a decorated pot of cooked food, to the goddess as a thanksgiving offering.

The 1813 story explains why the festival is tied to Hyderabad and Secunderabad: it began as a vow of thanks for the end of an epidemic in the twin cities.

Accounts differ on the disease. Some give cholera for 1813, while the Hyderabad district page of the Telangana government says plague. The key follows the plague version, and so does this card.

Key facts

Bonalu is celebrated in Telangana, above all in Hyderabad and Secunderabad, in the month of Ashada.
The festival honours the goddess Mahakali, who is offered a bonam, a pot of cooked food.
The Hyderabad district account traces the festival to a plague outbreak in the twin cities in 1813.
Telangana declared Bonalu a state festival after the state was formed in 2014.

Study next

Bathukamma, Telangana's floral festivalThe Medaram Jatara of Sammakka and Saralamma

Common traps

Choosing cholera because some accounts give it: the key follows the account that names plague.

Here a festival is asked through its origin story rather than through its state or deity.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Culture — all 246 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.