Indian Culture Trivia
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48 free Indian Culture trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
India runs on more than one calendar, more than one script and well over a dozen official languages, so its culture is less a single thing than a crowd: a lamp-lit autumn night in one state is a kite-flying morning in another, and a wedding can take a week. These 48 questions cover festivals across faiths, the classical dance and music traditions, languages and the scripts they are written in, what people wear and why, the films and songs that crossed the world, the sports India invented or dominated, and the small everyday customs — a greeting, a forehead dot, a lunchbox courier — that visitors notice first. Every answer comes with a short explanation of why it matters. It suits a school or college quiz round, a pub quiz set, or a warm-up before a first trip. Play it on your phone with instant answers, or print it for the table.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which spring festival's eve bonfire recalls the demoness burned while trying to kill the boy devotee Prahlada?
Holi
Holi's eve is Holika Dahan, a bonfire marking the fire that burned the demoness Holika instead of Prahlada, a devotee of Vishnu; the coloured powders come out the next morning.
Q 02Which festival, a public holiday in India, ends Ramadan with dishes of sheer khurma and sweet toasted vermicelli?
Eid al-Fitr
Eid al-Fitr starts once the new moon is sighted on Chand Raat, an evening of late shopping for clothes and gifts; the morning prayer is followed by biryani, sheer khurma and sivayyan with milk and dried fruit.
Q 03At which festival, on the last day of the month of Shravana, do sisters tie a thread on their brothers' wrists?
Raksha Bandhan
Raksha Bandhan's thread is the rakhi, a talisman or amulet, and the festival usually falls in August; until the mid-20th century the name more often meant a same-day rite where a family priest tied threads on his patrons for money.
Q 04Which ten-day festival ends with clay idols paraded and immersed in water, around 150,000 of them in Mumbai alone?
Ganesh Chaturthi
Ganesh Chaturthi became a public spectacle in 1893, when Lokmanya Tilak used it to get around a British ban on public assembly; the tenth-day immersion is called the visarjan.
Q 05Which unstitched garment, 4.5 to 9 yards long and usually draped in the Nivi style, is worn over a petticoat?
Sari
The sari is worn with a fitted choli over a petticoat called ghagra, parkar or ul-pavadai, and it is formal attire across India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan.
Q 06Which Indian greeting is spoken with a slight bow, palms pressed together and thumbs close to the chest?
Namaste
Namaste literally means 'bowing to you' — namaḥ is 'bow' and te is 'to you' — and in Hinduism it carries the sense 'I bow to the divine in you'.
Q 07Which Indian instrument did George Harrison play on the Beatles' 'Norwegian Wood', a first for a Western rock record?
Sitar
The sitar first caught Harrison's eye while the Beatles filmed Help! in April 1965; by 1966 he was taking lessons from Ravi Shankar, whose concerts had carried the instrument west since 1956.
Q 08Which game, born as chaturanga in India, made 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju its world champion in 2024?
Chess
Chess spread from India to Persia and the Arab world before reaching Europe, and Gukesh beat Ding Liren to become the youngest undisputed world champion.
Q 09Which Kolkata festival, inscribed on UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2021, runs from Mahalaya to Vijayadashami?
Durga Puja
Durga Puja's tenth day, Vijayadashami, opens with sindoor khela, married women smearing vermilion on the idols and on each other before the images are carried to the water.
Q 10Which Gujarat festival's nights end with dandiya raas, partners in two lines striking decorated sticks?
Navratri
Navratri means 'a period of nine nights', and in Gujarat each night opens with arti before the dancing; the festival comes round twice a year, in Chaitra and again in Ashvin.
Q 11Which harvest festival, held over four days in Tamil Nadu, opens the month of Thai on 14 or 15 January?
Pongal
Pongal means 'boiling over' in Tamil, after the dish of rice boiled with milk and jaggery that is allowed to spill from the pot; the four days are Bhogi, Thai Pongal, Mattu Pongal and Kaanum Pongal.
Q 12Which Punjabi spring harvest festival also marks the day Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa, 13 April 1699?
Vaisakhi
Vaisakhi is also the Indian solar new year, and Sikhs mark it with nagar kirtan processions and the raising of the Nishan Sahib flag outside gurdwaras.
Q 13At which north Indian festival do married women fast from sunrise to moonrise, then view the moon through a sieve?
Karva Chauth
Q 21Which double-reed instrument did Ustad Bismillah Khan play at the Red Fort as the flag rose on 15 August 1947?
Shehnai
The shehnai is a wooden pipe with a double reed and a flared bell, played at weddings and temple festivals; Bismillah Khan received the Bharat Ratna in 2001, and India held a day of mourning when he died in 2006.
Q 22Hindi is the mother tongue of fewer than half of Indians; which language shares official Union status with it?
English
English is the Union government's other official language, and India's Constitution names no national language; 43.63% of Indians gave Hindi as mother tongue in 2011.
Q 23Which of India's 22 scheduled languages is the main language of Kerala?
Malayalam
Karva Chauth's fast is kept for a husband's safety and long life, and after sighting the moon the woman looks at her husband's face through the same sieve; it falls on the fourth day of the waning moon.
Q 14Which eight-day Jain festival ends with Samvatsari, when everyone asks forgiveness with the words 'Micchami Dukkadam'?
Paryushana
Paryushana means 'abiding and coming together', and Jains spend it fasting, praying and hearing the scriptures; Digambara Jains keep a ten-day version called Dasa Lakshana Parva.
Q 15Which circle dance from Gujarat joined UNESCO's intangible heritage list in December 2023?
Garba
Garba is danced by women in honour of Amba Mata, the primordial mother, and each night usually closes with dandiya raas, the sibling dance in which partners tap sticks to a shared rhythm.
Q 16Which classical dance, known as Sadiraattam until 1932, was revived by Rukmini Devi Arundale at Kalakshetra?
Bharatanatyam
Bharatanatyam got its name at a 1932 meeting of the Madras Music Academy, proposed by E. Krishna Iyer and Rukmini Devi, who opened Kalakshetra at Adyar in 1936 to teach it in the gurukul tradition.
Q 17Which classical dance, named for travelling storytellers, has gharanas named after Jaipur, Banaras and Lucknow?
Kathak
Kathak's Jaipur gharana is known for fast spins and footwork, Banaras for footwork and Krishna stories, and Lucknow for grace; a fourth school grew at the court of Raigarh, whose king hired teachers from all three.
Q 18Which Assamese dance from the Vaishnavite monasteries founded by Sankardev was recognised as classical only in 2000?
Sattriya
Sattriya grew out of the Ankiya Nat one-act plays that the 15th-century polymath Sankardev wrote for his monasteries, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi admitted it to the classical canon on 15 November 2000.
Q 19Which Punjabi farmers' dance, driven by the double-headed dhol, became a pop genre abroad in the 1970s and 1980s?
Bhangra
Bhangra's dhol is struck with a heavy beater on one end and a lighter stick on the other, giving the swinging, syncopated beat; the dance itself welcomed the spring harvest in pre-partition Gurdaspur.
Q 20Which element of Indian classical music carries a season, time of day or mood, and is said to 'colour the mind'?
Raga
A raga is a melodic framework for improvisation, akin to a mode, and the word's root means 'colouring' or 'dyeing'; the rhythm cycle that partners it is the tala.
Malayalam became a classical language of India in 2013, a status Tamil was the first to receive, in 2004.
Q 24Which ancient language of Panini's Ashtadhyayi do several thousand Indians still report as their mother tongue?
Sanskrit
Sanskrit's census returns are thought to reflect a wish for prestige rather than daily use, yet Panini's 'Eight-Chapter Grammar' still anchors its study as the foundation of Vyakarana, the Vedanga of grammar.
Q 25Which script, used for Hindi, Marathi and Nepali, hangs its letters from a horizontal headline called the shirorekha?
Devanagari
Devanagari runs left to right with rounded shapes inside squared outlines, and the headline that groups letters into words is already visible in the Kutila inscription of 992 CE.
Q 26Which language, written in Nastaliq-style Perso-Arabic script, is mutually intelligible with Hindi in everyday speech?
Urdu
Urdu and Hindi form one continuum, Hindustani, that split on script and register: Urdu draws technical vocabulary from Persian and Arabic, and its Nastaliq calligraphy differs from the Naskh used for Arabic.
Q 27Which language, the second most spoken in India, did the 1952 Dhaka protests behind Mother Language Day defend?
Bengali
Bengali speakers in East Pakistan fought on 21 February 1952 to have their language made a state language rather than a provincial one; UNESCO adopted the date in 1999 and it has been observed since 2000.
Q 28Which everyday word began as the name of an Indian head massage that Dean Mahomed brought to Britain?
Shampoo
Shampoo meant a head massage with hair oil long before it meant soap: Dean Mahomed brought 'shampooing' to Britain, and the first liquid hair-washing soap, named 'Champooing', appeared in Switzerland in 1900.
Q 29Which unstitched men's garment, about 4 yards of cloth, did Gandhi adopt in 1921 in solidarity with India's rural poor?
Dhoti
The dhoti is known as the panchakacham in the south, and Gandhi often wore it bare-chested, without a kurta, to stand with the rural poor and the handicrafts they made.
Q 30Which forehead dot, worn at the ajna chakra or 'third eye' between the eyebrows, is often a sticker these days?
Bindi
Bindi comes from a word meaning 'point, drop or dot', and the red dot is worn by Hindus, Jains and Buddhists; a similar mark goes on babies in China, where it also stands for the opening of the third eye.