General Awareness and Punjab General Knowledge
General Awareness and Punjab General Knowledge tests static state facts plus a thin layer of national and current events. Punjab questions usually cluster around the five rivers, Partition and reorganisation, Sikh history, state institutions, and agriculture.
Land and rivers
Punjab means "land of five rivers": Sutlej, Beas, Ravi, Chenab and Jhelum. After Partition, Chenab and Jhelum lie mainly in Pakistan; the Indian state's working river system is dominated by Sutlej, Beas and Ravi. Bhakra dam is on the Sutlej, Ranjit Sagar on the Ravi, and Harike wetland forms near the Beas-Sutlej confluence. Punjab borders Pakistan to the west, Haryana to the south and east, Himachal Pradesh to the north, Rajasthan to the south-west, and the Chandigarh union territory. It has 23 districts grouped into five divisions; Chandigarh is the capital but is not part of Punjab.
History and polity
Harappan remains are associated with Ropar (Rupnagar). Guru Nanak was born in 1469 at Nankana Sahib; Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa at Anandpur Sahib in 1699. Maharaja Ranjit Singh's kingdom was annexed by the British in 1849 after the Anglo-Sikh wars. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre occurred in Amritsar in 1919. Partition in 1947 divided Punjab; the Punjabi Suba movement led to the Punjab Reorganisation Act of 1966, creating Punjab and Haryana and making Chandigarh a union territory. The Punjab Legislative Assembly has 117 seats; the state sends 13 members to the Lok Sabha and 7 to the Rajya Sabha. The Punjab and Haryana High Court sits at Chandigarh.
Worked example
A question lists Ravi, Beas, Sutlej and Chenab and asks which river does not flow through Indian Punjab. The answer is Chenab: it enters Pakistan near the border and is not an Indian Punjab river in the post-1947 system. The reasoning is historical geography, not the literal five-river name.
Traps
Do not treat Chandigarh as a Punjab district; do not assume all five rivers flow through the Indian state; do not confuse the 1966 reorganisation with independence; and check whether a question asks about undivided Punjab or the present state.