50 Fun Facts About Indian History

Which Mughal emperor ended his days a prisoner of his own son in Agra Fort?

Shah Jahan was locked in Agra Fort from July 1658 until his death in January 1666, within sight of the Taj Mahal he had built for his wife.

Which diamond did an 11-year-old Maharaja surrender to Queen Victoria when Britain annexed Punjab?

The Koh-i-Noor now sits in the Queen Mother's crown, which was placed on her coffin at her 2002 funeral, and both India and Pakistan have demanded its return.

Which village did Gandhi's 24-day, 240-mile march reach in 1930 to break the British salt law?

Dandi's handful of salt on 6 April 1930 set off civil disobedience across India, and over 60,000 people were jailed as a result.

Which Hindu nationalist shot Gandhi three times at a Delhi prayer meeting on 30 January 1948?

Nathuram Godse was seized on the spot by an American vice-consul, Herbert Reiner, and hanged at Ambala jail in November 1949.

Which Indus Valley city in Sindh held some 40,000 people and a brick Great Bath?

Mohenjo-daro was unknown until the 1920s, when an archaeologist noticed what he took for a Buddhist stupa on top of the site; it lies in Sindh, Pakistan.

Which 1757 battle did Clive win after bribing Bengal commander Mir Jafar to keep his troops idle?

Plassey was over in about eleven hours; Clive then saluted Mir Jafar as Nawab of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, and the East India Company's rule of India began.

Which general ordered troops to fire on an unarmed crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in 1919?

Reginald Dyer's men fired 1,650 rounds in about ten minutes; 21 years later a survivor shot Michael O'Dwyer, the Punjab governor who had backed him, in London.

Which Mauryan emperor embraced Buddhism after his Kalinga conquest, in which 100,000 were killed?

Ashoka's lion capital at Sarnath became the emblem of the Republic of India, and his wheel, the Ashoka Chakra, sits at the centre of the national flag.

Which Portuguese navigator landed near Calicut in 1498 on the first sea voyage from Europe to India?

Vasco da Gama died of malaria in Cochin on Christmas Eve 1524, three months into his term as Portugal's viceroy of India.

Which Bengali poet wrote the anthems of both India and Bangladesh and renounced his knighthood?

Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize, the 1913 literature award for Gitanjali; the knighthood went back after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

Which Mughal emperor could not read, yet kept a 24,000-volume library and founded Din-i Ilahi?

Akbar is believed to have been dyslexic; he was read to every evening, and Hindu, Christian and Zoroastrian ideas all fed into his Din-i Ilahi creed.

Which descendant of Timur founded the Mughal Empire by beating Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat with cannon?

Babur was first buried at Agra, but at his own wish his body was moved to Kabul, where his garden tomb, the Bagh-e Babur, still stands.

Which ruler of Mysore, killed defending his capital in 1799, pioneered iron-cased war rockets?

Tipu Sultan's mechanical organ of a tiger mauling a European soldier, Tipu's Tiger, was looted from his palace and has sat in London's V&A museum since 1880.

Which 72.5-metre tower did the Delhi Sultanate's founder begin beside a mosque made from 27 temples?

Qutb Minar is the tallest brick minaret in the world; Aibak finished only one storey, and his son-in-law Iltutmish added three more.

Who fled British surveillance in 1941 dressed as a Pathan and later led the Indian National Army?

Subhas Chandra Bose died of third-degree burns after his plane crashed in Japanese-held Taiwan on 18 August 1945, three days after Japan's surrender.

Which Dalit-born jurist chaired the drafting of India's constitution and embraced Buddhism in 1956?

B. R. Ambedkar's public conversion at Nagpur on 14 October 1956 came less than two months before his death, and mass ceremonies still copy it today.

Which home minister folded over 550 princely states into India and sent the army into Hyderabad?

Sardar Patel, the 'Iron Man of India', is commemorated by the Statue of Unity in Gujarat, at 182 metres the tallest statue in the world.

Which revolutionary threw bombs into the Delhi assembly in 1929 and was hanged in Lahore aged 23?

Bhagat Singh's hanging was brought forward by 11 hours to the evening of 23 March 1931; in jail he had staged a 116-day hunger strike.

Which British lawyer, never before east of Paris, drew the India–Pakistan border in five weeks?

Cyril Radcliffe destroyed all his papers before leaving India; his line was announced two days after independence, and some 14 million people crossed it.

To which city was Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, exiled after the 1857 revolt?

Rangoon's exile was mirrored in reverse when Britain deposed Burma's last king, Thibaw, in 1885 and sent him to Ratnagiri in India.

Which adviser to Chandragupta Maurya is credited with the Arthashastra, a treatise on statecraft?

Chanakya is the Kautilya of the Arthashastra, a text colonial scholars thought lost until a manuscript surfaced in 1905.

Which king lost to Alexander on the Jhelum in 326 BCE, yet was reinstated as ruler of his own lands?

Porus, asked how he wished to be treated, replied 'as a king would treat another king', and Alexander let him keep his territory as a satrap.

Which 5th-century astronomer, namesake of India's first satellite, said the Earth spins daily?

Aryabhata put pi at 62,832/20,000, or 3.1416, accurate to two parts in a million, and called it an approximation, a hint he suspected it was irrational.

Which monastery in Bihar, where the pilgrim Xuanzang studied, did Bakhtiyar Khalji burn down?

Nalanda's modern successor opened in nearby Rajgir in September 2014 with just 15 students, some 800 years after the original was torched.

Which daughter of Iltutmish ruled Delhi from 1236 to 1240, the only woman ever to sit on its throne?

Razia held open court dressed in a man's cloak and hat; deposed in 1240, she was killed within months, and her grave lies near Turkman Gate in Old Delhi.

Which Delhi ruler moved his capital to Daulatabad, then issued brass and copper coins worth silver?

Muhammad bin Tughluq's coins were easy to forge, so households minted their own and paid their taxes in them; the experiment was abandoned by 1333.

Which Afghan ruler ousted Humayun in 1540, rebuilt the Grand Trunk Road and issued the first rupiya?

Sher Shah Suri's rupiya was a silver coin of a standard 178 grains, the direct ancestor of today's rupee, and he ruled Hindustan for only five years.

Which Persian ruler sacked Delhi in 1739, killing some 30,000, and carried off the Peacock Throne?

Nadir Shah's plunder was so vast that he suspended taxation in Persia for three years after returning home.

Which Maratha leader fled Aurangzeb's custody in a basket and was crowned at Raigad Fort in 1674?

Shivaji met the Bijapur general Afzal Khan at a 1659 parley wearing armour under his clothes and a bagh nakh, a metal 'tiger claw', hidden on his left arm.

Which dynasty's golden age produced the poet Kalidasa and Delhi's rust-resistant iron pillar?

The Gupta emperor Chandragupta II raised the 7.2-metre iron pillar at Mehrauli in Delhi; its high-phosphorus iron grows a protective film that has held off corrosion for 1,600 years.

Which sepoy of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry attacked his officers at Barrackpore in March 1857?

Mangal Pandey was hanged on 8 April 1857 before every unit at Barrackpore; the sepoys of Meerut rose a month later, on 10 May, and marched on Delhi.

Which rifle's cartridges, said to be greased with cow and pig fat, helped ignite the 1857 revolt?

The Enfield's paper cartridge had to be bitten open before loading, so grease from the cow offended Hindu sepoys and grease from the pig offended Muslims.

Which queen of Jhansi, whose adopted heir the British rejected, died fighting at Gwalior in 1858?

Rani Lakshmibai's opponent Hugh Rose called her 'the best and bravest of the rebels'; she fled Jhansi's siege on horseback with her adopted son tied to her waist.

Under which policy did Dalhousie annex Satara, Jhansi and Nagpur when their rulers died heirless?

The Doctrine of Lapse had been articulated by the Company's directors as early as 1834, and the Crown renounced it in 1858 after the revolt it helped provoke.

Which city served as capital of British India until George V announced the move to Delhi in 1911?

Calcutta handed over to a capital that did not yet exist: Lutyens' New Delhi was not inaugurated until February 1931, twenty years later.

Which viceroy's 1905 partition of Bengal set off the Swadeshi boycott and was undone in 1911?

Lord Curzon also restored the Taj Mahal and other monuments; Nehru later said that when every other viceroy was forgotten, Curzon would be remembered 'because he restored all that was beautiful in India'.

Which British ornithologist and retired civil servant founded the Indian National Congress in 1885?

A. O. Hume's real passion was birds: his 82,000 specimens went to the British Museum in 1885, the year the Congress first met, and he was dubbed the 'Pope of Indian Ornithology'.

Which Parsi economist, author of the 'drain of wealth' theory, became Britain's first Indian MP?

Dadabhai Naoroji won Finsbury Central by just five votes in 1892, and his book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India put the drain at £200–300 million.

Which Bengali reformer founded the Brahmo Sabha, defended the 1829 ban on sati and died in Bristol?

Raja Ram Mohan Roy is buried at Arnos Vale cemetery in Bristol under a Bengali-style chhatri, and the city holds a remembrance service for him every September.

Which disciple of Ramakrishna began an 1893 Chicago speech with 'Sisters and brothers of America'?

Swami Vivekananda's birthday, 12 January, is India's National Youth Day; he bowed to the goddess Saraswati before opening with those words.

Where did a mob kill 22 policemen in 1922, prompting Gandhi to call off Non-cooperation nationwide?

Chauri Chaura's violence made Gandhi call off the movement at its height on 12 February 1922; nineteen of the rioters were later hanged.

Which crop were Champaran's tenants forced to grow, prompting Gandhi's first satyagraha in India?

Indigo had been undercut by German synthetic dye, but the First World War cut off that supply and made the planters' crop profitable again.

Which Congress declaration of 26 January 1930 gave India the date it later picked for Republic Day?

Purna Swaraj means complete self-rule; Congress kept 26 January as its Independence Day from 1930, so the constitution was timed to take effect that day in 1950.

Which movement, launched by Gandhi in Bombay in August 1942, came with his mantra 'Do or Die'?

Quit India's leaders were arrested the next morning, so the little-known Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the flag at the 9 August session; over 100,000 arrests followed.

Under which code name did Indian troops take Hyderabad from its Nizam in five days in 1948?

Operation Polo was officially a 'police action'; the Nizam announced a ceasefire at 5 pm on 17 September, and Hyderabad, the largest princely state, joined India.

Which Congress veteran was the last Governor-General of India and the only Indian to hold the post?

C. Rajagopalachari held the post from June 1948 to 26 January 1950, and in 1954 was among the very first recipients of the Bharat Ratna.

Which Vijayanagara emperor, reigning from 1509, kept the eight Telugu poets called Ashtadiggajas?

Krishnadevaraya's capital so impressed the Portuguese visitor Domingo Paes that he compared its size to Rome, with aqueducts and artificial lakes.

Whose marriage to Charles II in 1662 handed the Seven Islands of Bombay to England as dowry?

Catherine of Braganza's dowry also included Tangier and £300,000, and Charles passed Bombay to the East India Company in 1668.

Which all-British body, sent to study reform in 1928, was met by black flags reading 'Go Back'?

The Simon Commission had not a single Indian member; Lala Lajpat Rai led its Lahore protest, was critically injured and died on 17 November 1928.

Which 1932 agreement, signed in Yerwada jail, ended Gandhi's fast over separate Dalit electorates?

The Poona Pact swapped separate electorates for 148 reserved seats, nearly twice what the Communal Award had offered, and was signed by 23 people at 5 pm on 24 September 1932.