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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'
It was first applied to him in South Africa in 1914; Indians also called him Bapu, roughly 'father'.
Q 02In which coastal town of Gujarat was Gandhi born on 2 October 1869?
Porbandar
His father served the small princely state of the same name.
Q 03What position did Gandhi's father Karamchand hold in his home princely state?
Dewan, or chief minister
He had only an elementary education and had been a clerk, but proved a capable minister; he married four times.
Q 04According to his sister, what was one of the young Gandhi's favourite pastimes?
Twisting dogs' ears
She described him as 'restless as mercury'; the stories of Shravana and King Harishchandra made a deep impression on him.
Q 05How old was Gandhi when he married Kasturbai Kapadia in May 1883?
13
His brother and cousin were married at the same joint ceremony; he later wrote with regret about his teenage lust.
Q 06What three things did Gandhi vow to his mother to abstain from before she let him go to London?
Meat, alcohol and women
The Modh Bania elders of Bombay excommunicated him anyway for going.
Q 07At which of the Inns of Court did Gandhi train as a barrister?
Inner Temple
He also took English literature classes at University College London under Henry Morley.
Q 08Which organisation did Gandhi join and serve on the executive committee of as a student in England?
The London Vegetarian Society
Its president Arnold Hills, a shipbuilder, later founded West Ham United football club.
Q 09How old was Gandhi when he was called to the bar in June 1891?
22
Back in India he learned his mother had died while he was away; his Bombay practice failed because he could not cross-examine witnesses.
Q 10For roughly what annual salary did Gandhi agree in 1893 to go to South Africa as a lawyer?
£105 plus expenses
The one-year job turned into 21 years in South Africa.
Q 11At which South African station was Gandhi thrown off a train for staying in first class?
Pietermaritzburg
He sat shivering on the platform all night deciding whether to go home or fight; he fought.
Q 12How many years did Gandhi live in South Africa?
21
He arrived aged 23 in 1893 and left in 1914; he briefly returned to India in 1902.
Q 13Which political organisation did Gandhi help found in 1894 to unite South Africa's Indians?
The Natal Indian Congress
It grew out of a farewell party that turned into a working committee against a bill to strip Indians of the vote.
Q 21Which future 'Iron Man of India' was Gandhi's top volunteer in the 1918 Kheda agitation?
Vallabhbhai Patel
Patel negotiated with the British, who suspended revenue collection and released prisoners.
Q 22In 1918 Gandhi surprised many by doing what for the British war effort?
Trying to recruit combatants
He wrote 'Appeal for Enlistment' but admitted in July he had not won a single recruit: '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
He raised 1,100 volunteers and won the Queen's South Africa Medal for carrying wounded from Spion Kop.
Q 15What 1906 Transvaal law prompted Gandhi to first adopt satyagraha at a mass meeting in Johannesburg?
Compulsory registration and fingerprinting of Asians
Historians note it was also a protest against biometric identification treating Indians as criminals.
Q 16What does 'satyagraha' mean?
Devotion to, or insistence on, the truth
He first tabled it as a political principle in a 1920 Congress resolution on non-cooperation.
Q 17What was the name of the multilingual journal Gandhi started in South Africa in 1903?
Indian Opinion
Each issue carried material in English, Gujarati, Hindi and Tamil.
Q 18Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach's 1910 community near Johannesburg was named after which writer?
Tolstoy
Tolstoy had written to him 'A Letter to a Hindu'; Gandhi nurtured peaceful resistance on the farm.
Q 19At whose request did Gandhi return to India in 1915?
Gopal Krishna Gokhale
The moderate Congress leader introduced him to Indian politics; Gandhi Indianised his liberal approach.
Q 20Which crop were Champaran's peasants forced to grow, prompting Gandhi's 1917 campaign?
Indigo
Demand for the dye had been falling for twenty years, yet planters made them sell at a fixed price.
The protests that followed ended in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
Q 24Which campaign, defending the Ottoman Caliph, did Gandhi support in 1919 to win Muslim cooperation?
The Khilafat Movement
It collapsed in 1922 with his arrest, and Muslim leaders drifted away from Congress.
Q 25Which 1909 book by Gandhi argued that British rule survived only through Indian cooperation?
Hind Swaraj
Its English translation carried the copyright legend 'No Rights Reserved'.
Q 26To how many years' imprisonment was Gandhi sentenced for sedition in March 1922?
Six
He was released in 1924.
Q 27How far did Gandhi and his volunteers march from Ahmedabad to Dandi in 1930 to make salt?
388 km (241 miles)
The march ran from 12 March to 6 April; the British responded by jailing at least 60,000 people.
Q 28On what date did the Indian National Congress, led by Gandhi, declare India's independence in Lahore?
26 January 1930
The British ignored it; the date is now Republic Day.
Q 29Which viceroy's March 1931 pact with Gandhi freed prisoners in return for suspending civil disobedience?
Lord Irwin
Under the pact Gandhi went to London as sole Congress representative at the Round Table Conference.
Q 30Which British politician called Gandhi 'a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir' in 1931?
Winston Churchill
He got the Inn wrong. Churchill also called him a 'Hindu Mussolini'.