All 8 Bhakti & Sufi Movements questions the Punjab PSC asked between 2015 and 2024, each with a worked answer and the exam it came from. First 10 free to read.
Free to read, with the worked answer and the exam each one came from. The book prints this topic in the order the Commission favours, so these are the ones to know first.
Which of the above statements are correct ?
Who among the above was/were preaching when Lodi dynasty fell and Babur took over ?
Sant Tukaram was a 17th-century Bhakti poet of Maharashtra, not Bengal, so pair D is wrong. Sankaradeva belonged to Assam, Kabir to Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and Narsi Mehta to Gujarat.
The saying 'Hanooz Dilli door ast' (Delhi is still far away) is attributed to Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya, the Chishti saint of Delhi. In 1325 Sultan Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq was returning from Bengal. He threatened to punish the Shaikh once he reached Delhi. The saint replied with these words. The Sultan died when a wooden pavilion collapsed on him at Afghanpur, just outside the city. Nasiruddin Chirag-i-Delhi was Nizamuddin's disciple and successor. Muinuddin Chishti founded the order at Ajmer. Baba Farid was Nizamuddin's own master.
The Nirguna stream of Bhakti worshipped a formless God without attributes. It rejected idol worship and caste. Its leading voices were Kabir, Guru Nanak Dev Ji and Ravidas (Raidas), along with Dadu Dayal. Mira Bai belonged to the Saguna tradition. She worshipped Krishna as a personal deity with form, as did Surdas, Tulsidas and Chaitanya. So I, II and III only.
Statement I is wrong: Data Ganj Bakhsh (Ali Hujwiri, Lahore) was an 11th-century Sufi and was not a Chishti, while Baba Farid Shakarganj was a 13th-century Chishti saint - neither belonged to the 15th century. The other three statements are correct: Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti (Ajmer) and Nizamuddin Auliya (Delhi) belonged to the Chishti silsila (Sufi order); Sultan Iltutmish wished to confer the office of Shaikh-ul-Islam on Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, but he refused in order to stay away from the royal court in accordance with Chishti tradition; and Nizamuddin Auliya made Delhi the centre of the Chishti silsila.
The Qadiriyya order was founded in Baghdad (Iraq) on the teachings of Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani in the 12th century. It later spread to India, where Dara Shikoh and the saint Mian Mir of Lahore were among its followers.
Wahdat-ul-Wujud means the Unity of Being. It holds that God and creation are one reality, and the created world is only a reflection of the divine. The Spanish-born Sufi Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240) expounded it. It became the philosophical basis of the Chishti order in India. Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi later countered it in India with Wahdat-ul-Shuhud, the unity of witness. That view held the mystic's sense of oneness to be subjective, not real. Rabia of Basra preached divine love. Mansur al-Hallaj was executed for his cry 'Anal Haq'.
Ramananda founded the Ramanandi sampradaya, and is honoured as Jagadguru Ramanandacharya. Its best-known later figure is Tulsidas, author of the Ramcharitmanas. He came into the order through his guru Narharidas. Ramananda himself is the founder of the lineage, not a figure within it. Valmiki belongs to a far older age. Tukaram was a Varkari saint of Maharashtra.
Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat in 1526. Guru Nanak (1469–1539) was alive and preaching then; he even describes Babur's invasion in his hymns. Tulsidas (born 1532) and Dadu Dayal (born 1544) came later.
The Commission set 8 Bhakti & Sufi Movements questions across 8 papers between 2015–2024. That is the whole set, not a sample — every one of them is in the book, and the 8 most-asked are on this page free.
Not in this set — each of these 8 was set once in the years covered. Questions elsewhere in the book do repeat, and carry a badge saying how often.
Here. Every question on this page is a solved MCQ: the four options as printed, the correct answer, and a worked explanation in plain English — not just a letter. The rest of the 8 are in the book, in the same form.
Switch to Attempt mode at the top of the questions. You get one question at a time and it is marked the moment you pick an option, with the reason underneath — the same way the exam feels, on your phone.
The questions are on screen rather than in a downloadable file, so they stay current and correct. The printed book has all 8 of these plus the rest of the General Knowledge section, and every buyer gets the whole thing online as well.
The exams behind these questions, most first. A paper here is a sitting: a question set in two papers of the same sitting counts once.
| Exam | Year | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| District Manager (Group-B) in Punjab State Warehousing Corporation Under the Dep | 2024 | 2 |
| Principal, Industrial Training Institute (Women) | 2024 | 1 |
| District Defence Services Welfare Officer | 2023 | 1 |
| Naib Tehsildar | 2023 | 1 |
| Punjab Civil Services (Executive Branch) to Be Fi | 2019 | 1 |
| Punjab Civil Services(Executive Branch) of Register | 2019 | 1 |
| Punjab State Civil Services Combined Competitive Examination-2018 Mains Examinat | 2018 | 1 |
| Punjab Civil Services (Prelims) — General Studies | 2015 | 1 |