Questions

Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

I don’t know whether the Madras Photographic Society has anything to do with the recently-publicised Chennai Photo Biennales, the first last year and the next scheduled for 2018, but participant or not, it certainly deserves a bow for being the country’s first photographic society. Its founder was an Army doctor, Alexander Hunter. The Society was founded in 1857, shortly after Lord Canning arrived as Governor-General. Canning and Lady Canning, both photography enthusiasts, were responsible for creating the famed Government series, The People of India. Hunter had still earlier, in 1850, privately started the Madras School of Arts. The School, taken over by Government in 1852, moved from Popham’s Broadway to Poonamallee High Road. There, he and an eight-member committee revised the syllabus, offering two streams, Industrial and Artistic. Hunter was put in charge of the institution, renamed the Government School of Industrial Arts, in 1855. It was the first formal school of Art in the country. In it, Hunter introduced Photography.

Hunter retired in 1868, to be succeeded by Robert Chisholm. No mean photographer, Hunter encouraged the School, it is now the Government College of Arts and Crafts to build up a photographic collection. Unfortunately, little is left of his work, especially the monuments of South India captured by Government photographer Linnaeus Tripe and his assistant C Iyahsawmi. Hunter himself did a series of pictures of the ‘Seven Pagodas’ (Mahabalipuram) and worked with his wards on photographs of the five hill tribes of the Nilgiris. It was at a prize-giving of the School that Hunter urged the Governor to provide it more suitable premises. They came up on the PH Road site in Chisholm’s time and to his design — and remain there.

Who was in charge of the Government School of Industrial Arts before Chisholm?

Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

It is a labour of love and the result of painstaking research. Chikankari - A Lucknawi Tradition by Paola Manfredi, an Italian, is a book that shows her close and long association with the craft. Lucknow’s chikankari is known across the world yet very little research or documentation has been done. Articles or features have appeared off and on but this book is amongst the first of its kind, which aims to document the vast treasure called Chikan. What makes the book extremely interesting is that unlike other books that tend to rely on second hand material, with exhaustive references and quotes, Paola Manfredi has filled her tome with passionate grass-roots level research. The narrative more in the nature of a personal journey, with all the quirks and street-smart practicality, makes the book refreshing. As Paola says in the book, it is not a scholarly or academic research but more of a documentation of the world of chikankari.

Paola questions the use of chikan as a word for embroidery, highlighting that it has a broader connotation encompassing haute couture, the fine art of making a garment, embroidering it and finishing it with finesse. She is no stranger to chikankari having worked with SEWA and several craftsmen. Her love for white on white embroidery also found a calling in chikan. Paola came to India to work in textile exports and as she says, “If you like textiles ... India is a heaven, an inexhaustible treasure trove.”

When did Paola get her first experience of chikankari?

Select the antonym of

repatriation

Select the antonym of

to contend

Select the antonym of

endeavour

Select the antonym of

abdicate

Choose the word which is nearly opposite in meaning to the given word:-

Refractory

Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

"Tryst with Destiny" was a speech delivered by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, to the Indian Constituent Assembly in Parliament, on 14th August 1947. It is considered to be one of the greatest speeches of all times and to be a landmark oration that captures the essence of the triumphant culmination of the largely non­violent Indian independence struggle against the British Empire in India.

"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon the assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow­mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, this is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell".

Choose the answer which captures Nehru's belief.