RAS question
The famous 'Panihari' folk song describes:
Correct answer: (B) Women fetching water from wells.
The famous Panihari folk song describes women fetching water from wells and lakes in water-scarce Rajasthan.
Explanation
Panihari is tied to Rajasthan's everyday water culture, not to courtly battle, ritual, or trade scenes. The song describes women going to fetch water from wells or lakes, a common sight in water-scarce Rajasthan, and reflects daily life and emotions. Rajasthan Foundation explains that Rajasthani music uses rhythm and words to describe water, everyday lives and emotions, and specifically notes that women created Panihari music to express the shortage of water. That is why the best answer is women fetching water: the song turns a routine necessity in a dry region into folk expression.
Why the other options are wrong
- (A) A war scene does not match Panihari, which is grounded in women's water-fetching and the emotional experience of water scarcity.
- (C) A religious ceremony is not the theme here, because the song is presented as a daily-life folk expression linked to water shortage.
- (D) A market scene is outside the song's stated context, which centres on women, water and routine life rather than buying and selling.
Concept
This tests Rajasthan folk music as a social-history source, where songs preserve everyday work, emotion and ecology. RAS repeatedly asks such themes because art and culture questions often connect a folk form with the life-setting that produced it.