UIL Social Studies

• Cellular Jail was a British colonial jail used for political prisoners during British rule. It is located on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
• B.P. Koirala was the prime minister of Nepal in 1959 and 1960. He was arrested in December of 1960 when King Mahendra ended democracy.
• Siddharta Gautama (the Buddha) was born in Lumbini, a popular pilgrimage site for Buddhists.
• The Poona Pact was an agreement to grant electoral seats in the British India legislature to the depressed classes.
• B.R. Ambedkar became the law minister of India's government in 1947 and helped frame the country's constitution. He was a leader of the Dalits.
• The Vedas are the oldest Hindu texts. The Sanskrit term "veda" means "knowledge".
• Mohammad Iqbal advocated for a separate Muslim state. Two years following his death, the Muslim League approved the idea of Pakistan, which was eventually established in 1947.
• Sikhism considers the Adi Granth as its holy scripture.
• A union territory is an administrative division in the Republic of India.
• The first Indian woman to go to space was Kalpana Chawla.
• More than 50 Kashmiri protestors were killed during the Gawkadal Massacre in 1990.
• Operation Blue Star of 1984 was an attempt to remove a Sikh militant leader and his followers from the Golden Temple in Punjab.
• Champaran Satyagraha was an uprising in 1917 started by Mahatma Gandhi in the Champaran district of Bihar in which farmers objected the forced growth of indigo.
• Allan Octavian Hume was a British politician who worked in British India. He studied birds across India and donated his notes and collections to the Natural History Museum in London.
• The official language of Bhutan is Dzongkha. It is written using Tibetan script.
• Babri Masjid was a 16th-century mosque located in a city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It was destroyed in December 1992 by Hindu nationalists.
• G.G. Ponnambalam started a political party for the Tamils in Sri Lanka in 1944.
• The primary reason for the 1966 Mizo National Front uprising was to become a sovereign nation from India.
• William Jones was a linguistics scholar and judge who established the Asiatic Society of Bengal and helped influence the widespread study of South Asian culture.
• Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, a communist party, led an insurrection in 1987 against the government of Sri Lanka.
• Islam is the main religion in the Maldives, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
• Hinduism is the main religion in India and Nepal.
• Buddhism is the main religion in Bhutan and Sri Lanka.
• In 2005, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck revealed the draft of Bhutan's first constitution, and in 2007, abdicated the throne to his son.
• Droupadi Murmu was elected as president of India in 2022. She is the country's first president from a tribal community.
• The Bengali independence movement was led by the Awami League. Bangladesh became an independent country in 1941.
• In 1948, India became involved in a territorial dispute with China over the Kashmir region.
• Sinhala is the official language of Sri Lanka.
• From 1846 to 1951, the Rana family controlled the government in Nepal.
• The cities of Colombo, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, and Kandy are all located in Sri Lanka.
• The Maldives may derive from the Sanskrit word "maladvipa" meaning "garland of islands".
• Bhutan (Druk Yul) means "thunder dragon".
• Pakistan means "land of the pure".
• The main language spoken in India is Hindi.
• The Himalayan Mountains are located in the northern part of Pakistan.
• Bangladesh borders the Bay of Bengal between Burma (Myanmar) and India.
• Ibrahim Mohamed Solih has served as president of the Maldives since 2018.
• Nepal adopted the federal parliamentary republic system of politics in 2007.
• C.R. Das gave up his career as a lawyer in the Calcutta High Court to devote himself to the non-cooperation movement full-time.
• Bose discovered Swami Vivekananda's works in 1912 and the Hindu sage's teachings of a life service to humanity gave him purpose.