Spot check: testing celeb politicians' India knowledge

Through five questions, we tried to find out how much our celebrity politicians know about the country and their own parties. You’ll be surprised and amused by their answers.

Is Bhutan part of India? S Radhakrishnan was the first President of India. Sare Jahaan se Achha was written by Kazi Nazrul Islam. Or the classic, no clue.

These were just a few of the answers we recieved when we decided to test our budding politicians’ general knowledge. We didn’t want any of them Googling the answers, so the interviews were conducted over the phone, like a pop quiz, where we didn’t inform them about the purpose of our call in advance.

The result was as surprising as it was hilarious. While we have to give it to some celebrities who came up with vague on-the-spot excuses for avoiding answering the questions, there were others who just hung up abruptly.

Without any intention of undermining their ability or their understanding of politics, this was an attempt to test our budding politicians’ general knowledge. We wanted to test how much do these celebrities, who may become our representatives in the future, really know about their own political parties, or even the country that they claim to want to run and improve?

Inputs by Dibyojyoti Baksi