Questions

Upanishads are books on

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

Doing an internship at the University of Lille in France, I almost always found myself stuck whenever I had to speak to non-Indians about India or on anything 'Indian'. This was more because of the subtle differences in the way the French understood India in comparison to what I thought was 'Indian'. For instance, when I, or any Indian for that matter, say 'Hindi' is an Indian language, what it means is that it is one of the languages widely spoken in India. This need not be similar to the understanding that the French would have when they hear of 'Hindi' as an Indian language. Because for them Hindi then becomes the only language spoken in India. This is a natural inference that the French, Germans, Italians and many other European nationals would tend to make, because that is generally how it is in their own respective countries. The risk of such inappropriate generalisations made about 'Indian' is not restricted to language alone but also for India's landscape, cuisine, movies, music, climate, economic development and even political ideologies. The magnitude of diversity of one European country can be easily compared to that of one of the Indian State, isn't it? Can they imagine that India is one country whose diversity can be equated to that of the entire European continent? The onus is upon us to go ahead and clarify the nuances in 'Indianness' while we converse. But why should one do so? How does it even matter to clarify?

Why do some French people think that Hindi is the only Indian language?

Read each sentence to find out whether there is any error in any part

As I was leaving for Delhi(a), he asked me whether(b) I could buy a tape recorder for him(c). No error.(d)

Improve the bracketed part of the sentence.

Each of our (trainee pay theirs) tuition fee at the beginning of the course.

Select the synonym of

defuse

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.

Besides Artistic which was the other course on offer at the erstwhile Madras School of Arts?

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

In mid-2012 I completed my first massive online open course, or MOOC, the kind widely offered by Coursera, EdX, Udacity and so on in partnership with different educational institutions. It was on clinical trials and ethical practices, offered by Johns Hopkins, on Coursera. This was shortly before the MOOC sensation hit India, and when Coursera, which was founded by two Stanford professors, itself was just a few months old. The MOOC bug had bit me. The course I’d completed was mainly designed for health care professionals who would be involved in actual clinical trials, not college students who had no prior knowledge of that area. I decided to enroll in the course because it was the only biology related course open at the time. However, I did see hope in that sometime in the future I’d be able to get a glimpse of what classes are like in the hallowed halls of major educational institutions around the world. By early 2013, Coursera and EdX had partnered with so many educational institutions and expanded their course offerings to include everything from food and nutrition to Greek mythology to business, that I was spoilt for choice. I spent hours going through course catalogues and poring over course descriptions, almost delirious with excitement at the fact that I was actually going to be able to take classes offered by universities I had only dreamt of attending.

The course the author completed on MOOC was related to which subject?

Hypokinetic diseases refer to those that are caused by