Art & Culture Current Affairs MCQs

Notes:
Ransthamb is a memorial to the Bhima-Koregaon battle in Maharashtra. It is also known as Jaistambh or victory pillar. It is located in Bhima Koregaon village in Pune. It was visited by many in light of the 202^nd anniversary of the Bhima Koregaon battle that was fought in 1818.

Notes:
The leading Carnatic vocalist S.Sowmya was selected for the ‘Sangita Kalanithi’ award instituted by the Music Academy and recently received the award. Sowmya, a recipient of various awards and titles in her music career, is a visiting faculty at the Madras Advanced School of Carnatic Music, run by the Music Academy. She also serves as the member of the Academic Council of the Tamil Nadu Music and Fine Arts University.

Notes:
The birth anniversary of the social reformer and the first female teacher of India, Savitribai Phule was observed across the country on January 3. The Prime Minister of India and various other leaders paid tributes to her on her birth anniversary. Savitribai Phule along with her husband Jyotirao Phule founded the country’s first girls’ school in Pune in 1848. Born in Maharashtra, Phule worked hard to abolish discrimination against women and suppressed classes of people.

Notes:
The state government of Mizoram is to organise the cultural festival ‘Zo Kutpui’ in many states of India as well as in some countries including the USA, Bangladesh and Myanmar. The first edition of the festival will begin in Tripura and will be celebrated in other states, that are home to the people of Mizo tribe.
The festival will witness several cultural programmes and traditional events of the Mizo tribe thereby increasing their unity and fraternity. Chief Minister of Mizoram, Zoramthanga is to inaugurate the first edition of the festival.

Notes:
Lohri is a festival celebrated in North India, especially in Punjab ahead of the Makar Sankranti Festival. The festival marks the completion of Winter and the arrival of sunny weather in the region. It is also regarded that the festival commemorates the passing winter solstice.
According to the traditional calendar, this year the festival Lohri falls on January 13. People of North India celebrate the festival by lighting bonfires, with their friends and relatives. It is mainly celebrated in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi.
This festival is celebrated as Makara Sankranti (Pedda Pandaga) in Maharashtra, Goa, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal (also called Poush sôngkrānti), Karnataka and Telangana, Sukarat in central India, Magh Bihu by Assamese, and Thai Pongal by Tamils. Vishu concides with Vaishakhi.

Notes:
The recently built monument of Gujarat, ‘Statue of Unity’ was recently included in the ‘8 Wonders of SCO’ list released by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. It is the tallest statue of the world, which was built as a tribute to the Indian leader Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
The 182-metre statue was inaugurated by the Prime Minister of India in October 2018 in Gujarat’s Kevadiya colony. The statue was built on the river Narmada, facing the Sardar Sarovar Dam. SCO comprises of eight member states, which are India, Pakistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Notes:
The ‘National Girl Child Day’ is celebrated every year in India, on January 24. It was started by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development from 2008 and the day is celebrated on January 24 every year, to create awareness among people about inequalities and exploitation faced by the girls in the society.
Several awareness programmes and campaigns are being organised across the country to spread awareness about the rights of the girl child. Programmes which promote the importance of education, health and nutrition for girls are also held.

Notes:
The 44th International Kolkata Book Fair is set to be inaugurated in Kolkata by the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Russian Ambassador to India Nikolay Rishatovich Kudashev.
Russia has been selected as the focal theme country of the international fair, whose theme gate will be a replica of the iconic Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow. The annual fair is to be held from January 29 to February 9, which is set to host about 600 books stalls. Several eco-friendly measures have been taken in the event, in which nearly 20 countries will be participating. Kolkata Literature Festival will also be held alongside the book fair.

Notes:
The Oxford University Press has selected the hindi word ‘Samvidhaan’ as the Oxford Hindi Word of 2019’. Samvidhaan is the Hindi word which represents the meaning of constitution. It also denotes a body of fundamental principles as per which a state or an organisation is to be governed.
A word or expression that has attracted the attention of large number of people and reflects the mood and character of the past year is selected as the Oxford word. The Oxford Hindi Word of the Year is chosen by the team of Oxford Dictionaries in India with the guidance from a panel of language experts.

Notes:
The four-day National Horticultural Fair, which is the country’s biggest horticultural fair is set to be organised at the Hessarghatta campus of the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR), Bengaluru.
Indian Institute of Horticultural Research organises the national-level fair, which is scheduled to be held from February 5 to 8, 2020. The theme of this year’s fair is ‘Making farming an enterprise’. More than 50,000 farmers from various States of the country are expected to take part in the exhibition. Several crop varieties, horticultural technologies and practices are to be showcased in the fair.