Indian Independence Movement
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50 free Indian Independence Movement trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
India's freedom struggle ran for ninety years, from the soldiers' uprising of 1857 to the midnight handover of August 1947. It produced mass marches, boycotts and hunger strikes, armed revolutionaries, and a way of doing politics that later inspired movements around the world. This quiz follows the whole arc of the national movement: the great rebellion and the start of Crown rule, the founding and growth of Congress, Gandhi's campaigns of civil disobedience, the revolutionaries who chose the gun instead, the Second World War, and the hurried partition that created two countries. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you learn the story behind each answer. It suits students revising India's road to self-rule and decolonisation, teachers and quiz hosts planning an Independence Day round, and anyone curious about how the British Raj came to an end.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Gandhi's 24-day walk to the seaside village of Dandi in 1930 defied a British tax on which everyday commodity?
Salt
Salt was a British monopoly under an 1882 law that kept its collection and manufacture in government hands. Gandhi picked up a lump of salty mud at the shore, and over 60,000 Indians were jailed in the protests that followed.
Q 02Which silent film star met Gandhi at a house in East London during the Indian leader's 1931 visit?
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin and Gandhi talked about modern technology, which Gandhi distrusted. The conversation helped inspire the factory satire Modern Times, and a memorial garden now marks the meeting place.
Q 03The last viceroy chose 15 August for India's independence because it marked which country's World War II surrender?
Japan
Japan had surrendered exactly two years earlier, when the viceroy was the Allied commander in South East Asia. He pulled the handover forward from a British deadline of June 1948.
Q 04Which Indian national holiday falls on 26 January because Congress declared complete independence on that date in 1930?
Republic Day
Republic Day marks the constitution taking effect in 1950, timed to that anniversary. Until the British left, Congress had kept 26 January as its own Independence Day.
Q 05Which American civil rights leader made a five-week tour of India in 1959 to study Gandhi's nonviolent methods?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. said he went to other countries as a tourist but came to India as a pilgrim. He had already borrowed Gandhi's tactics for the Montgomery bus boycott.
Q 06Which European country kept its colony of Goa until Indian troops seized it in 1961, long after the British left?
Portugal
Portugal had ruled Goa for 451 years when Indian forces moved in. The air, sea and land operation that ended it lasted just over 36 hours.
Q 07Which British monarch stayed on as King of India for more than two years after independence in 1947?
George VI
George VI remained India's head of state until a new constitution took effect in 1950. He had already given up the grander title Emperor of India in June 1948.
Q 08Which honour was Gandhi nominated for five times between 1937 and 1948 without ever receiving it?
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize went to nobody in 1948, the year Gandhi was assassinated days after his final nomination. The committee said there was no suitable living candidate.
Q 09In which country did Gandhi spend 21 years as a lawyer and activist before returning to India in 1915?
South Africa
South Africa was meant to be a short stay: Gandhi sailed there in 1893 to handle one lawsuit for an Indian merchant. He came home a seasoned organiser of protest.
Q 10Which device sat at the centre of the Congress flag as a symbol of Gandhi's drive to make Indians self-reliant?
Spinning wheel
The spinning wheel, or charkha, stood for Indians making their own clothing. At independence it gave way to the Ashoka Chakra, a wheel from an ancient pillar that looks the same from both sides of a flag.
Q 11The 1857 rebels who reached Delhi rallied behind the 81-year-old last emperor of which dynasty?
Mughal
The Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar became the revolt's symbolic leader. After the rebels lost Delhi, the British exiled him to Rangoon in Burma, ending the dynasty.
Q 12Which uncle of Prince Philip served as the last viceroy of India and oversaw its partition in 1947?
Lord Mountbatten
Lord Mountbatten stayed on after the handover as independent India's first governor-general, at the request of its new prime minister.
Q 13Which barrister, once praised as an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, became Pakistan's first governor-general?
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Q 21Which revolutionary, hanged in 1931 aged 23, had set off bombs inside Delhi's Central Legislative Assembly?
Bhagat Singh
Bhagat Singh and an associate set off two weak homemade bombs among empty benches, a largely symbolic act. He was hanged for the earlier killing of a police officer and became a folk hero.
Q 22Which poet, author of Gitanjali, renounced his British knighthood in protest at the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre?
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore wrote to the viceroy that badges of honour now made his people's shame more glaring, and that he wished to stand beside them without one. He had been knighted in 1915.
Q 23Which British brigadier general ordered troops to fire on the unarmed crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919?
Muhammad Ali Jinnah began in Congress and helped shape its 1916 pact with the Muslim League. He died about a year after Pakistan was born.
Q 14Which present-day country began as the eastern wing of Pakistan when British India was partitioned in 1947?
Bangladesh
Bangladesh, whose name means country of Bengal, was first called East Bengal and then East Pakistan. It broke away in the Liberation War of 1971.
Q 15Which leader gave the Tryst with Destiny speech to India's Constituent Assembly towards midnight on 14 August 1947?
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru spoke as the first prime minister, minutes before India became free. Between 1921 and 1945 the British had kept him in jail for more than nine years in all.
Q 16Rumours that grease on which new army item contained cow and pig fat helped spark the 1857 rebellion in India?
Rifle cartridges
Rifle cartridges had to be opened with the mouth, so the rumour offended Hindu and Muslim soldiers alike. One historian finds little evidence that many greased rounds were ever issued.
Q 17In which Punjab city did troops fire on a crowd gathered in the walled garden of Jallianwala Bagh in 1919?
Amritsar
Amritsar was crowded for the annual Baisakhi fair, and a ban on public meetings had been announced only that morning. The firing went on for about ten minutes.
Q 18Which mass campaign did Gandhi launch in Bombay in August 1942, leading to the arrest of nearly all Congress leaders?
Quit India Movement
The Quit India Movement lost almost its entire leadership to prison without trial within hours of Gandhi's speech. Most stayed locked up, out of contact with their followers, for the rest of the war.
Q 19Which former Congress president slipped past British surveillance in 1941 and later led the Indian National Army?
Subhas Chandra Bose
Subhas Chandra Bose left home disguised as a Pathan and made his way to Berlin. In 1943 he crossed to Asia by submarine and rebuilt an army from Indian prisoners of war.
Q 20Which British prime minister announced in February 1947 that Britain would hand over power in India by June 1948?
Clement Attlee
Clement Attlee led the Labour government that gave India and Pakistan independence through an act of Parliament later that year. Winston Churchill had long led the opposition to Indian self-rule.
Reginald Dyer
Reginald Dyer was relieved of his command, yet a London newspaper called him the man who saved India and raised over £26,000 for him from sympathetic readers.
Q 24Which Congress leader, nicknamed the Iron Man of India, brought more than 500 princely states into the new nation?
Vallabhbhai Patel
Vallabhbhai Patel did it as the country's first home minister. His other title, Sardar, meaning chief, was first used by the women of Bardoli during a campaign he led there.
Q 25Which jurist, born into a caste treated as untouchable, chaired the committee that drafted India's constitution?
B. R. Ambedkar
B. R. Ambedkar was named chairman two weeks after becoming free India's first law minister. In 1932 he had signed the Poona Pact, a compromise on how the lowest castes would vote.
Q 26Gandhi's first campaign in India, at Champaran in 1917, backed tenant farmers forced to grow which cash crop?
Indigo
Indigo had to be planted on part of each tenant's land as a condition of the lease, for barely any payment. German synthetic dye had cut demand until the First World War stopped its supply.
Q 27At which Delhi landmark did the British put Indian National Army officers on trial in 1945, sparking mass protests?
Red Fort
The Red Fort trials backfired: the first three defendants were a Hindu, a Sikh and a Muslim, and rival parties protested side by side. Prime ministers now raise the flag there every Independence Day.
Q 28Which Russian novelist exchanged letters with Gandhi and gave his name to a farm commune Gandhi founded in 1910?
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy and Gandhi corresponded for only a year, from October 1909 until the novelist's death. Gandhi called him the greatest apostle of non-violence of the age.
Q 29Which city lost its status as capital of British India when the 1911 royal durbar announced a move to Delhi?
Calcutta
Calcutta had become a less hospitable place for the British after mass protests against the 1905 partition of Bengal. The king-emperor announced the switch in person.
Q 30Which term for nonviolent protest did Gandhi adopt after a newspaper contest to replace the phrase passive resistance?
Satyagraha
Satyagraha was Gandhi's reworking of the winning entry, sadagraha, sent in by a relative. It joins Sanskrit words for truth and holding firmly.