Mahatma Gandhi Trivia
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60 free Mahatma Gandhi trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Mahatma Gandhi trivia quiz covers Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi from a coastal town in Gujarat to the garden of Birla House. The easy questions cover the basics: the country he freed, the philosophy he named, the march to the sea, the honorific that means 'great-souled', the man who shot him and the national holiday that marks his birthday. From there it moves through his father the chief minister, his marriage at 13, the vow he made to his mother before sailing to London, the vegetarian society he joined, the night on a station platform in Pietermaritzburg and the 21 years in South Africa that made him. The harder end covers the Natal Indian Congress, the stretcher-bearers of the Boer War, Tolstoy Farm, Champaran indigo, Kheda, the Khilafat movement, the Rowlatt Act, the 1922 sedition sentence, Dandi and Dharasana, the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, Kingsley Hall, the Poona Pact, Churchill's 'half-naked fakir', Quit India, Direct Action Day, partition, his last fast, the trial of his killers, and where his ashes ended up, from Allahabad to the source of the Nile. Every answer was checked against Gandhi's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our India and Nelson Mandela quizzes are natural companions.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the honorific 'Mahatma' mean in Sanskrit?
'Great-souled'
'Great-souled' is the literal meaning, yet Gandhi wrote that the title often deeply pained him and never once tickled him.
Q 02In which coastal town of Gujarat was Gandhi born on 2 October 1869?
Porbandar
Porbandar was his birthplace, but he grew up mostly in Rajkot, where his father moved to serve a smaller state and Gandhi went to school.
Q 03What position did Gandhi's father Karamchand hold in his home princely state?
Dewan, or chief minister
Karamchand was dewan, or chief minister, despite starting as a clerk with only an elementary education; he married four times.
Q 04Which film star did a London doctor introduce to Gandhi during his 1931 visit?
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin was introduced to him by Dr Chuni Lal Katial, a London doctor who later became Britain's first South Asian mayor.
Q 05Being married at 13 cost the young Gandhi a year of what?
Schooling
Schooling: the wedding cost him a year of high school, and a teacher later had him skip a class to make up the loss.
Q 06What three things did Gandhi vow to his mother to abstain from in London?
Meat, alcohol and women
Meat, alcohol and women were off-limits, yet his Modh Bania caste still declared him an outcaste for sailing abroad.
Q 07At which of the Inns of Court did Gandhi train as a barrister?
Inner Temple
Inner Temple called him to the bar in June 1891; two days later he sailed for India, where he learned his mother had died while he was away.
Q 08Which organisation did Gandhi join and serve on the executive committee of as a student in England?
The London Vegetarian Society
The London Vegetarian Society's president, Arnold Hills, owned the Thames Ironworks, whose works football team became West Ham United.
Q 09Why did Gandhi refund his first client's fee?
He froze in court
He froze in court: rising to cross-examine in Mamibai's small-cause case in Bombay, he could think of no question, sat down and told the agent to hire someone else.
Q 10Who hired Gandhi for the one-year legal job that first took him to South Africa?
A Muslim merchant's shipping firm
A Muslim merchant's shipping firm, Dada Abdullah & Co., wanted a lawyer with Kathiawari roots and paid him £105 plus a first-class return fare.
Q 11At which South African station was Gandhi thrown off a train for staying in first class?
Pietermaritzburg
Pietermaritzburg station is where he spent a freezing night in the waiting room and resolved to stay in South Africa and fight discrimination.
Q 12How many years did Gandhi live in South Africa?
21
21 years: Gandhi sailed for South Africa in 1893, aged 23, and settled back in India in 1915.
Q 13Which political organisation did Gandhi help found in 1894 to unite South Africa's Indians?
The Natal Indian Congress
The Natal Indian Congress grew out of his own farewell party in Durban, where news of a bill to strip Indians of the vote persuaded him to stay.
Q 21Which future 'Iron Man of India' was Gandhi's top volunteer in the 1918 Kheda agitation?
Vallabhbhai Patel
Vallabhbhai Patel, then a successful Ahmedabad barrister, volunteered when Gandhi asked for a Gujarati to lead, and the British suspended revenue collection.
Q 22In 1918 Gandhi surprised many by doing what for the British war effort?
Trying to recruit combatants
Trying to recruit combatants for the British army won him not a single recruit by July 1918: 'They object because they fear to die.'
Q 23Which 1919 British law allowing internment without trial did Gandhi warn would provoke resistance?
The Rowlatt Act
Q 14What did Gandhi organise during the Boer War in 1900?
An Indian ambulance corps of stretcher-bearers
An Indian ambulance corps of stretcher-bearers carried wounded British soldiers for miles to field hospitals, and Gandhi was decorated for the work.
Q 15What 1906 Transvaal law prompted Gandhi to first adopt satyagraha?
Compulsory registration and fingerprinting of Asians
Compulsory registration and fingerprinting of Asians meant carrying a certificate for officials to inspect on demand, so Gandhi urged Indians to defy it and suffer the penalties.
Q 16What does 'satyagraha' mean?
Devotion to, or insistence on, the truth
Devotion to, or insistence on, the truth: Gandhi's cousin Maganlal won a readers' contest with 'sadagraha', which Gandhi changed to satyagraha.
Q 17What was the name of the multilingual journal Gandhi started in South Africa in 1903?
Indian Opinion
Indian Opinion ran in English, Gujarati, Hindi and Tamil, and from 1904 it was printed at Gandhi's Phoenix Settlement near Durban.
Q 18Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach's 1910 community near Johannesburg was named after which writer?
Tolstoy
Tolstoy wrote 'A Letter to a Hindu' to Taraknath Das in 1908; Gandhi reprinted it, translated it into Gujarati and began writing to the novelist.
Q 19At whose request did Gandhi return to India in 1915?
Gopal Krishna Gokhale
Gopal Krishna Gokhale introduced him to Indian politics, but Gandhi later rejected his mentor's faith in Western institutions.
Q 20Which crop were Champaran's peasants forced to grow, prompting Gandhi's 1917 campaign?
Indigo
Indigo had to be grown on part of each tenant's land as a condition of tenancy.
The Rowlatt Act let police jail suspects for up to two years without trial, and protests against it led to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
Q 24Which campaign, defending the Ottoman Caliph, did Gandhi support in 1919 to win Muslim cooperation?
The Khilafat Movement
The Khilafat Movement collapsed in 1922 after the non-cooperation campaign ended and Gandhi was arrested.
Q 25Which 1909 book by Gandhi argued that British rule survived only through Indian cooperation?
Hind Swaraj
Hind Swaraj was written in Gujarati aboard the Kildonan Castle in November 1909, as Gandhi sailed from London back to South Africa.
Q 26In which town did a crowd burn a police station, prompting Gandhi to halt non-cooperation?
Chauri Chaura
Chauri Chaura's crowd set the police post ablaze, killing more than 20 policemen; weeks later Gandhi was jailed for six years for sedition.
Q 27After Gandhi's arrest in May 1930, which woman led the satyagrahis' march on the Dharasana Salt Works?
Sarojini Naidu
Sarojini Naidu warned the marchers not to use violence under any circumstances, and the police beating of hundreds of them made news worldwide.
Q 28India's Republic Day falls on 26 January to honour which 1930 event?
Congress's declaration of independence
Congress's declaration of independence was promulgated on 26 January 1930, so the constitution took effect on that same date in 1950.
Q 29Which viceroy's March 1931 pact with Gandhi freed prisoners in return for suspending civil disobedience?
Lord Irwin
Lord Irwin's pact sent Gandhi to London as the Congress's sole representative at the Second Round Table Conference.
Q 30Which British politician called Gandhi 'a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir' in 1931?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill also called him a 'Hindu Mussolini'.