50 Fun Facts About Indian Independence Day

Mountbatten picked 15 August 1947 for the handover because it was the second anniversary of which wartime event?

Japan's surrender of 15 August 1945 was personal for Mountbatten, who as Supreme Allied Commander in South East Asia took the formal Japanese capitulation at Singapore that September.

Which other country holds a liberation day on 15 August, marking the 1945 end of 35 years of colonial rule?

South Korea calls the day Gwangbokjeol, 'restoration of light', and its government traditionally issues special pardons on it; the North marks the same date.

How did Gandhi mark 15 August 1947, having stayed away from Delhi's celebrations to calm communal violence?

Fasting for 24 hours, Gandhi spoke to a Calcutta crowd urging peace between Hindus and Muslims while Delhi celebrated, and his presence there is credited with keeping the east far calmer than the west.

Which Booker-winning novel's narrator, Saleem Sinai, is born at the exact moment India becomes a free country?

Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel, went on to win the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and the Best of the Booker in 2008, the prize's two anniversary awards.

Which territory stayed under European rule until a 36-hour Indian military operation in December 1961?

Goa fell to Operation Vijay, which ended 451 years of Portuguese rule, fourteen years after the rest of India had become free.

Until 2021, Indian law allowed a national flag to be made only from which cloth, with any other fabric risking prison?

Khadi was the only lawful material, and a flag of anything else carried up to three years in prison; the code was amended in December 2021 to allow polyester and machine-made flags.

Complete Nehru's line of 14 August 1947: 'when the world sleeps, India will awake to…'?

'Life and freedom' closes the most quoted sentence of 'Tryst with Destiny', which Nehru spoke to the Constituent Assembly in Parliament House as the clocks approached twelve.

Which British prime minister announced on 20 February 1947 that Britain would quit India within sixteen months?

Clement Attlee had sat on the Simon Commission in 1927 and argued by 1933 that British rule was alien to India; his announcement also named Mountbatten as the last viceroy.

Who became Pakistan's first Governor-General in August 1947, a post Mountbatten had hoped to hold for both dominions?

Muhammad Ali Jinnah refused a large salary in the post, fixing it at one rupee a month, and died in office thirteen months later.

From which ashram near Ahmedabad did Gandhi set out on 12 March 1930 with 78 marchers to break the salt law?

Sabarmati was 385 km from the coast at Dandi, a 24-day walk that drew 100,000 people onto the road out of Ahmedabad on its first morning.

Who designed the spinning-wheel Swaraj flag that Gandhi commissioned and Congress carried through the 1920s?

Pingali Venkayya had already submitted thirty designs in a 1916 booklet funded by Madras High Court members before Gandhi asked him for a red-and-green banner with the wheel at its centre.

Who hoists the tricolour in each state capital on 15 August, a right won only in 1974 after a Tamil Nadu campaign?

The Chief Minister has done it only since 1974, when Tamil Nadu's M. Karunanidhi pressed Indira Gandhi for the same honour the Prime Minister enjoys at the Red Fort.

Through which seafront arch, built to mark a king's 1911 landing, did the last British troops depart in February 1948?

The Gateway of India saw the First Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry march out to a 21-gun salute on 28 February 1948, six months after the Raj had formally ended.

Which Maharashtrian leader, jailed six years in Mandalay, declared 'Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it'?

Bal Gangadhar Tilak took the slogan from his associate Kaka Baptista and, for all his talk of self-rule, never sought a complete break from the British Empire.

Which 'Nightingale of India' became the country's first woman governor, in the United Provinces in 1947?

Sarojini Naidu had already become the first Indian woman to preside over Congress, in 1925, and it was Gandhi who coined the nickname for the lyrical colour of her verse.

Which two-word slogan, the Indian National Army's salute, appeared on free India's first stamps in November 1947?

Jai Hind went onto the 1.5, 3.5 and 12 anna stamps of 21 November 1947, a phrase coined by Chempakaraman Pillai decades before Bose's army made it a greeting.

In which year did Gandhi return to India from South Africa, aged 45, at Gopal Krishna Gokhale's request?

1915 brought Gandhi home after two decades abroad, and he soon set about organising peasants, farmers and urban labourers against discrimination and excessive land tax.

Which 1919 law allowing jail without trial, damned as the 'Black Act', drew Gandhi's first all-India satyagraha?

The Rowlatt Act was rushed through on 18 March 1919 against the united opposition of the council's Indian members, and the protests it provoked ended in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre weeks later.

In which language did Tagore write India's anthem, whose verses are sung in a heavily Sanskritised register?

Bengali, in its literary Sadhu Bhasha form, is the anthem's language, and the song was first sung in public at the Calcutta Congress session on 27 December 1911.

In which language did Nehru deliver 'Tryst with Destiny' to the Constituent Assembly on 14 August 1947?

English was the language of the speech, now counted among the great addresses of the 20th century, given in Parliament House in the last minutes of British rule.

Which two provinces, each only narrowly Muslim-majority, did Radcliffe's commissions split between the two dominions?

Punjab and Bengal were 55.7% and 54.4% Muslim, too close to hand either whole to Pakistan, so a separate five-member commission drew the line through each.

Whose 1882 novel Anandamath carried 'Vande Mataram', adopted by Congress in 1905 as its salute to the motherland?

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's poem was first sung to a Congress session by Tagore in 1896, and on 24 January 1950 it was given equal honour with the anthem as the national song.

Roughly how many people were displaced along religious lines when British India was divided in 1947?

Around 15 million sits at the centre of estimates that run from 12 to 20 million, while the death toll is still disputed anywhere between 200,000 and two million.

Which 2022 campaign asked Indians to fly the tricolour at home from 13 to 15 August and upload a selfie with it?

Har Ghar Tiranga marked 75 years since 1947 under the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav umbrella, months after the flag code was eased to let machine-made polyester flags be sold.

Which pastime, practised from rooftops, is Delhi's own addition to the 15 August celebrations each year?

Kite flying adds to the occasion in Delhi and some other cities, in a sky where the airspace over the Red Fort is closed to aircraft for the day.

About how long does a full formal rendition of 'Jana Gana Mana' last, by the government's own reckoning?

52 seconds is the full version's length, and a 20-second short version exists for lesser occasions.

On which 1947 date did Mountbatten broadcast the plan to divide British India into two dominions?

The 3 June plan was accepted by the Congress Working Committee that same day, and Mountbatten advised the princely states to join one dominion or the other rather than stay independent.

Which British law, given royal assent on 18 July 1947, created two dominions from 15 August?

The Indian Independence Act let one person serve as Governor-General of both dominions and divided the armed forces and joint property between them.

Which title did the British king drop by proclamation on 22 June 1948, as the 1947 handover law required?

Emperor of India had been borne by British monarchs since Victoria took it in 1876, and its abbreviation kept appearing on coins throughout 1948.

On which 1947 date did the Constituent Assembly adopt the tricolour, three weeks before it first flew over free India?

On 22 July Nehru proposed the flag and presented two specimens, one silk and one cotton, with the Ashoka Chakra in place of the Congress flag's spinning wheel.

Relative to the handover, when was the Radcliffe award published, finally telling villages which country they were in?

Two days later, on 17 August, the lines were revealed; Indian and Pakistani representatives had been handed copies at 5 pm on the 16th with two hours to study them.

Which Gujarat princely state, about 80% Hindu, saw its Nawab accede to Pakistan in 1947 despite sharing no border?

Junagadh was blockaded by India, which cut its fuel, coal, air and postal links, and a February 1948 plebiscite went almost unanimously for joining India instead.

Which maharaja signed Kashmir's Instrument of Accession to India on 26 October 1947, days after a tribal invasion?

Hari Singh was banished from Jammu and Kashmir after signing, and the Pashtun tribal attack at Muzaffarabad on 22 October had itself followed an armed uprising in Poonch.

What did the Muslim League call 16 August 1946, the day that opened the Great Calcutta Killings?

Direct Action Day began with armed gangs gathering at Calcutta's Ochterlony Monument to hear Huseyn Suhrawardy, the province's League premier, and the killing it unleashed pushed Congress towards accepting a divided India.

Which force's February 1946 mutiny, begun as a strike over conditions in Bombay, spread from Karachi to Calcutta?

The Royal Indian Navy revolt drew in over 10,000 ratings and is credited by many with hastening Britain's exit, yet both Congress and the League told the strikers to stand down.

Which viceroy's 'Breakdown Plan' for a staged British withdrawal saw him replaced by Mountbatten in early 1947?

Lord Wavell had proposed pulling out in stages to full self-government on 31 March 1948, a plan London rejected before sending a new viceroy with a firm deadline and a royal pedigree.

Above which entrance to the Red Fort did Nehru hoist the flag in 1947, a spot every prime minister has used since?

The Lahori Gate faces the city of Lahore, and the fort's design is credited to Ustad Ahmad Lahori, the architect of the Taj Mahal.

Which poet, later named Pakistan's national poet, wrote 'Saare Jahan Se Achha', still played at Indian parades?

Muhammad Iqbal wrote the Urdu song before leaving for England in 1905, and India plays it as a hymn to communal harmony.

Who hoisted the Congress flag at Gowalia Tank on 9 August 1942, after the Quit India leaders were jailed overnight?

Aruna Asaf Ali presided over what remained of the session that morning, and the ground where she raised the flag was later renamed August Kranti Maidan.

Which revolutionary shot Michael O'Dwyer, who had backed the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, in London in 1940?

Udham Singh had survived the massacre himself as a young man and waited 21 years for his revenge, which came on 13 March 1940.

On which spring festival day in April 1919 did Dyer's troops fire on the crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar?

Baisakhi had filled Amritsar with pilgrims and farmers for the annual fair, and many in the garden had not heard Dyer's ban on gatherings of more than four people.

Which founder of a Pondicherry ashram was born on 15 August 1872, exactly 75 years before India's handover?

Sri Aurobindo was born Aurobindo Ghosh in Calcutta, and he argued for complete autonomy in his writings before turning from politics to yoga.

Which day did Modi name Partition Horrors Remembrance Day in 2021, to recall the displaced and dead of 1947?

The eve of Independence Day, 14 August, was chosen so that the nation remembers the sufferings and sacrifices of 1947 each year before it celebrates.

Which 1942 British offer of post-war dominion status did Gandhi call 'a post-dated cheque drawn on a failing bank'?

The Cripps Mission landed in Delhi on 22 March 1942, weeks after the fall of Singapore had shaken faith in Britain, and its failure fed straight into Quit India that August.

What does 'satyagraha', the name Gandhi coined for his method of resistance, literally mean in Sanskrit?

Holding firmly to truth joins satya, 'truth', with agraha, 'polite insistence', and Gandhi listed fearlessness and equal respect for all religions among its principles.

Who sang 'Vande Mataram' to the Constituent Assembly minutes before Nehru rose to give 'Tryst with Destiny'?

Sucheta Kripalani went on to head a state government, the first woman in India to do so, leading Uttar Pradesh from 1963 to 1967.

Which district, 97% non-Muslim and mostly Buddhist, did the Radcliffe award nonetheless hand to East Pakistan?

The Chittagong Hill Tracts had no official representation before the commission, and their people were left without any word of their fate until after the flags had gone up.

Which Hindustani rewrite of 'Jana Gana Mana' did Bose's Free India government adopt as its anthem in 1943?

Shubh Sukh Chain was written by Mumtaz Hussain of the movement's radio station with Colonel Abid Hasan Safrani, and it displaced 'Vande Mataram' as the provisional government's anthem.

Which cosmonaut, asked by Indira Gandhi in 1984 how India looked from space, answered 'Saare Jahan Se Achha'?

Rakesh Sharma, an air force pilot, was quoting a line that means 'better than the whole world', and he came home to the Ashoka Chakra, India's highest peacetime gallantry award.

Which British monarch's 1911 visit to India spawned the myth that 'Jana Gana Mana' was composed in his praise?

George V was in fact hailed by a different song at the same Congress session, 'Badshah Humara', and the press confusion has dogged Tagore's hymn ever since.