RAS question
The Shekhawati region of Rajasthan is popularly known as the:
Correct answer: (A) Open Art Gallery of the World.
The Shekhawati region of Rajasthan is popularly known as the Open Art Gallery of the World.
Explanation
Shekhawati is associated with the title because its towns and villages are packed with painted havelis and grand mansions. The core region lies in Jhunjhunu and Sikar, while Rajasthan Foundation, Government of Rajasthan describes Shekhawati as comprising Sikar, Jhunjhunu and Churu. Its havelis were built by wealthy Marwari merchants in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and carry elaborate frescoes. The region is an open-air art gallery and has the largest collection of painted buildings anywhere in the world. That art-and-architecture identity, not a generic political or geographical label, is what the question is testing.
Why the other options are wrong
- (B) Golden City does not match Shekhawati's fame, which is its painted havelis and frescoes rather than a gold-coloured city epithet.
- (C) City of Lakes is wrong because Shekhawati is identified through frescoed havelis and painted buildings, not through lakes.
- (D) Land of Forts is wrong because Shekhawati's open-air gallery of havelis, mansions and frescoes, not forts, is the cited basis.
Concept
This tests Rajasthan History, Art and Culture through a regional epithet tied to built heritage. RAS often asks such nicknames because they connect a place, its patrons and its visible art tradition in one recallable fact.