NEIGHBOURS OF INDIA - 1 - ANSWERS

1. B. Bhutan

Archery was declared the national sport in 1971, when Bhutan became a member of the United Nations.

Archery in Bhutan is culturally distinctive because it is a martial art practiced among a modern population that abhors killing. Traditional Bhutanese archery differs from Olympic standards in technical details such as the placement of the targets and other equipments. The distance to the target is about 130 / 140 metres. The relatively small targets are cut from wood and brightly painted, usually measuring about 3 feet tall and 11 inches wide. "Bulls eyes" are called "karay". Traditionally, Bhutanese bows are made of bamboo and arrows from bamboo or reeds, fletched with feather vanes. Arrows may be painted and tipped with metal arrowheads. The quiver may be wooden, with an animal hide covering and a woven strap.

Changlimithang Stadium in Thimphu is one of the kingdom's most prominent archery fields. The most notable archery competition in Bhutan are "Coronation National Archery tournament" and "Yangphel tournament". Other major archery competitions are held during Losar, the Bhutanese and Tibetan New Year.

2. B. Kazi Nazrul Islam

Kazi Nazrul Islam (25 May 1899 – 29 August 1976) was a Bengali poet, writer, musician, anti-colonial revolutionary from the undivided Bengal and the "National Poet of Bangladesh". Popularly known as Nazrul, he produced a large body of poetry and music with themes that included religious devotion and rebellion against oppression. Nazrul's activism for political and social justice earned him the title of "Rebel Poet". His compositions (nearly 4,000 songs) form the avant-garde genre of Nazrul Geeti.

Born in a Bengali Muslim Kazi family in the Burdwan District of present day West Bengal, Nazrul as a young man worked as a muezzin (the person who recites the adhan or call to prayer) at a local mosque. He joined the British Indian Army in 1917 and served in the 49th Bengal Regiment before establishing himself as a journalist in Calcutta. Nazrul called for revolution through his poetic works such as "Bidrohi" or “The Rebel” and "Bhangar Gaan" or “The Song of Destruction”. He was also very critical of the British Raj in his publication Dhumketu or “The Comet,” (a bi-weekly magazine) suffering frequent imprisonment for his participation in the Indian independence movement.

(Nazrul in his youth)

Nazrul's works explored themes such as freedom, humanity, love and revolution and opposed all forms of bigotry and fundamentalism which greatly inspired Bengalis of East Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War.

In 1942 at the age of 43, Nazrul began to suffer from an unknown disease, losing his voice and memory which was later diagnosed as "Pick's disease", a rare incurable neuro-degenerative disease. It caused Nazrul's health to decline steadily and forced him to live in isolation in his later life in India. At the invitation of the Government of Bangladesh, Nazrul and his family moved to Dhaka in 1972 where he died on 29 August 1976.

Bidrohi (The Rebel)

(One of Nazrul's most famous works)

I am the unutterable grief,

I am the trembling first touch of the virgin,

I am the throbbing tenderness of her first stolen kiss.

I am the fleeting glance of the veiled beloved,

I am her constant surreptitious gaze...

I am the burning volcano in the bosom of the earth,

I am the wildfire of the woods,

I am Hell's mad terrific sea of wrath!

I ride on the wings of lightning with joy and profundity,

I scatter misery and fear all around,

I bring earthquakes on this world! "(8th stanza)"

I am the rebel eternal,

I raise my head beyond this world,

High, ever erect and alone!

(Translation by Kabir Choudhary - Courtesy - Wikipedia)

3. B. Mahbub-ul-Haq

Mahbub ul Haq (24 February 1934 – 16 July 1998) was a Pakistani economist, politician and international development theorist.

Mahbub ul Haq who had double degree in Economics in Punjab University and Cambridge University, received his PhD from Yale University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Harvard Kennedy School. He returned to Pakistan to serve as the Chief Economist of the Planning Commission during the 1960s and but moved to the U.S after the election of the socialist government led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1971. At the World Bank he worked as the Policy Director throughout the 1970s and also the Chief Economic Adviser to Robert McNamara, an American business executive and former United States Secretary of Defense in 1960s.

He returned to Pakistan in 1982 and in 1985 became the country's Finance Minister, overseeing a period of economic liberalisation. In 1988 he moved back to U.S. where he served as the Special Adviser at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). At the UNDP, Haq led the establishment of the Human Development Report and the widely accepted HDI, (along with Indian economist and Nobel Laurate Amartya Sen) which measures development by well-being, rather than by income alone. He returned to Pakistan in 1996 to establish the Human Development Center in Islamabad.

4. B. Malaria

Tu Youyou (born 30 December 1930) is a Chinese pharmaceutical chemist. She discovered “artemisinin” and “dihydroartemisinin” used to treat malaria, a breakthrough in twentieth-century tropical medicine, saving millions of lives in South China, Southeast Asia, Africa and South America.

For her work, Tu received the 2011 Lasker Award in clinical medicine and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura. Tu is the first Chinese Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and the first female citizen of the People's Republic of China to receive a Nobel Prize in any category. She is also the first Chinese person to receive the Lasker Award. Tu Youyou was born, educated (at Peking University) and carried out her research (at China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine) exclusively in China.

5. C. Kandy

“Sri Dalada Maligawa” or the “Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic” is a Buddhist temple in the city of Kandy, Sri Lanka. It is located in the Royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy, which houses the relic of the tooth of the Buddha. Since ancient times, the relic has played an important role in local politics because it is believed that whoever holds the relic holds the governance of the country. Kandy was the last capital of the Sri Lankan kings and is a World Heritage Site mainly due to the temple.

 (The relic inside the Temple)

According to Sri Lankan legends, when the Buddha died in 543 BC, his body was cremated in a sandalwood pyre at Kushinagar and his left canine tooth was retrieved from the funeral pyre by his disciple, Khema. Khema then gave it to King Brahmadatta for veneration. It became a royal possession in Brahmadatta's country and was kept in the city of Dantapuri of Kalinga (modern Puri, Odisha) from where it was smuggled to the island of Sri Lanka by Princess Hemamali and her husband, Prince Dantha on the instructions of her father King Guhasiva. They landed on the island in Lankapattana during the reign of Sirimeghavanna of Anuradhapura (301-328) and handed over the tooth relic. The king enshrined it in Anuradhapura. Safeguard of the relic was a responsibility of the monarch, therefore over the years, the custodianship of relic came to symbolize the right to rule. With change of dynasty, the relic changed hands and placed in different temples under close guard of the King.

The present-day temple of the tooth was built by Vira Narendra Sinha, the last Sinhalese King of Sri Lanka of the Kingdom of Kandy in the early 18^th century.