Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
40 free Pakistan Independence Day trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Pakistan celebrates its independence a day before India does, even though both states were born at the same midnight in August 1947. The reason is a travel schedule, and that is only the first of many surprises in the story of 14 August: the name of the country was coined by a student in England, its first anniversary stamps printed the wrong date, and its anthem went seven years without words. These 40 questions follow the Pakistan Movement from the founding of the Muslim League to the Lahore session of 1940 and the Partition summer, then turn to the people and symbols the day honours: Jinnah and his sister, Liaquat Ali Khan, the poet Iqbal, the flag and the anthem, Minar-e-Pakistan and Mazar-e-Quaid, the gun salutes and the flag-lowering at Wagah. It suits a school or college quiz for Youm-e-Azadi, a family round at a 14 August gathering, or anyone who wants the real history behind the green and white. Every answer comes with a short explanation and a source.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Pakistan's first anniversary stamps, issued in 1948, printed which date of the month as the nation's independence day?
The 15th
The 15th was the date written into the Independence Act and used in Jinnah's first broadcast, and only in later years did 14 August settle as the holiday. Pakistan's handover ceremony had simply come a day early.
Q 02Which country was the first to recognise Pakistan, establishing diplomatic relations on 14 August 1947 itself?
Iran
Iran recognised Pakistan on its first day, and when its Shah paid a state visit in March 1950 the new country's still-wordless anthem was played for a visiting head of state for the first time.
Q 03What does 'Zindabad', the word Pakistanis chant after their country's name at every 14 August rally, literally mean?
Long live
Long live is the literal sense, a Persian-derived suffix tacked onto a name, and the cry was first raised during the Pakistan Movement before becoming the Muslim League's greeting.
Q 04In which city, at the Ahsan Manzil palace of its Nawab, was the All-India Muslim League founded in December 1906?
Dhaka
Dhaka hosted the founding at a Muslim educational conference, on the Nawab's proposal, three months after the Simla Deputation had won a hearing from the viceroy.
Q 05Muhammad Iqbal's tomb in Lahore, with its state-provided guard, stands beside the gateway of which Mughal landmark?
Badshahi Mosque
Badshahi Mosque's entrance faces the tomb across Hazuri Bagh, the walled garden between the mosque and Lahore Fort, which is why Iqbal's grave sits inside a Mughal showpiece.
Q 06Which country gave the four-tiered crystal chandelier that hangs above Jinnah's grave inside Mazar-e-Quaid in Karachi?
China
China's gift throws a green glow over the inner sanctum of the white-marble mausoleum, which also holds the graves of Fatima Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan.
Q 07Which British monarch was Pakistan's first head of state, reigning as its king from 1947 until 1952?
George VI
George VI was King of Pakistan as well as of Britain, and on his death in 1952 his daughter Elizabeth inherited the Pakistani throne, which she kept until the country became a republic.
Q 08How many guns salute the 14 August flag-raising in Islamabad, more than the 21 fired in each provincial capital?
31
31 guns follow the hoisting at Parliament House and the Presidency, after which the President and Prime Minister address the nation on television.
Q 09The lambskin hat Jinnah wore in his later years, now sold across Pakistan as the 'Jinnah cap', is what kind of hat?
Karakul
Karakul hats are made from the fleece of the Karakul sheep of Central Asia, the fur also sold as Persian lamb or astrakhan, and Jinnah insisted on formal dress even on his deathbed.
Q 10Before politics, Fatima Jinnah qualified in 1923 as the first woman in British India in which profession?
Dentistry
Dentistry came first: a Calcutta degree in 1923 and her own clinic, which she closed in 1929 to run her widowed brother's household and, later, his campaigns.
Q 11Which military president did Fatima Jinnah, then aged 71, challenge as the united opposition's candidate in 1965?
Ayub Khan
Ayub Khan won, but only after sneering at her clothing and painting the founder's sister as pro-Indian and pro-American in a bitter campaign.
Q 12Fatima Jinnah is honoured in Pakistan as 'Madar-e-Millat'; what does that title mean?
Mother of the Nation
Mother of the Nation is paired with a second title, Khatun-e-Pakistan, and she was buried beside her brother at Mazar-e-Quaid only after sustained public pressure.
Q 13Which 1916 Congress–League agreement, shaped by Jinnah, earned him the title 'ambassador of Hindu–Muslim unity'?
The Lucknow Pact
Q 21Pakistan's anthem opens 'Pak sarzamin shad bad'; how does that first line translate into English?
Blessed be the sacred land
Blessed be the sacred land is the literal rendering, and the whole three-stanza anthem runs about 80 seconds without repeating a single verse.
Q 22Which barrister led the team that turned the Muslim League banner into the national flag adopted on 11 August 1947?
Syed Amir-uddin Kedwaii
Syed Amir-uddin Kedwaii, an Aligarh graduate, kept the League's green field and white crescent and added the white hoist stripe, and was awarded a Pakistan Movement Gold Medal only in 1991.
Q 23Choudhry Rahmat Ali, who coined 'Pakistan', died destitute in which English city, his college paying for the funeral?
The Lucknow Pact had Congress concede separate Muslim electorates, and Jinnah signed it as a member of both parties, a quarter-century before he demanded a separate state.
Q 14Jinnah, who had hidden his tuberculosis from almost everyone since the 1930s, died how long after Pakistan's creation?
Just over a year
Just over a year: he died in September 1948 aged 71, and only his sister and a handful of confidants had known how ill he was through the Partition talks.
Q 15What did Cyril Radcliffe do with his 40,000-rupee fee after seeing the violence that followed the line he drew?
Refused to accept it
Refused to accept it, and he destroyed all his papers before leaving India, so the reasoning behind the line can never be checked.
Q 16What Arabic-derived term names the Muslims who migrated from India to Pakistan at Partition, and their descendants?
Muhajir
Muhajir means immigrant, echoing the Prophet's followers who left Mecca for Medina, and today Muhajirs are Pakistan's fifth-largest ethnic group, concentrated in Karachi.
Q 17Only one word of Pakistan's anthem, 'ka', is not shared with Persian; in which language is it officially written?
Urdu
Urdu in its classical register, so heavy with Persian vocabulary that Persian speakers can follow much of it; 'ka' simply means 'of'.
Q 18Which poet wrote the words of Pakistan's anthem, and sang them himself at its first radio broadcast in August 1954?
Hafeez Jalandhari
Hafeez Jalandhari's verses were picked in 1952 and formally adopted on 16 August 1954, so Pakistan went seven years without official words to its anthem.
Q 19Who composed the tune of Pakistan's anthem in 1949, first played without words for a visiting head of state in 1950?
Ahmed G. Chagla
Ahmed G. Chagla died in February 1953, before the anthem was officially adopted with Hafeez Jalandhari's words in August 1954, so he never heard his melody sung as the anthem; a navy band gave its 1950 premiere.
Q 20Which reformer, who founded the Aligarh college in 1875, is widely credited as the father of the two-nation theory?
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan began as a champion of Hindu–Muslim unity, then told a Meerut audience in 1888 that the two communities were separate nations.
Cambridge
Cambridge's Emmanuel College buried the man who named the country; he had left Pakistan in 1948 with his belongings confiscated, after falling out with its new rulers.
Q 24Leaving Delhi for Karachi on 7 August 1947 in Mountbatten's plane, Jinnah was heard to murmur which words as it taxied?
That's the end of that
That's the end of that was his farewell to Delhi, and four days later Jinnah was presiding over Pakistan's new legislature in Karachi.
Q 25Which chief minister of undivided Bengal moved the 1940 Lahore Resolution, seconded by Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman?
A. K. Fazlul Huq
A. K. Fazlul Huq, the 'Sher-e-Bangla' or Tiger of Bengal, moved it on 23 March 1940; the text never used the word Pakistan, which the Hindu press attached to it within days.
Q 26Which British general, lately head of India's Northern Command, became the Pakistan Army's first commander-in-chief?
Frank Messervy
Frank Messervy, born in Trinidad, held the post for only a year, and in November 1947 publicly denied that any serving Pakistani officers were directing the fighting with India.
Q 27Which 1909 measures, named for a viceroy and a secretary of state, first granted Indian Muslims separate electorates?
The Morley–Minto Reforms
The Morley–Minto Reforms granted what the Simla Deputation had asked of Lord Minto in 1906, and Congress saw the separate electorates as imperial divide-and-rule.
Q 28The lapis lazuli tombstone on Muhammad Iqbal's grave in Lahore was a gift from the people of which country?
Afghanistan
Afghanistan's gift carries Quranic verses carved there, while the tomb's red sandstone came from Jaipur, and India's post-1947 export curbs on it delayed the building for years.
Q 29In which city's Company Bagh, since renamed in his memory, was Liaquat Ali Khan shot dead while speaking in 1951?
Rawalpindi
Rawalpindi's park became Liaquat Bagh; the prime minister was addressing 100,000 people when the assassin, Said Akbar, shot him twice, and police killed the gunman on the spot.
Q 30Which 1949 measure, moved by Liaquat Ali Khan, declared that sovereignty over the universe belongs to Allah alone?
The Objectives Resolution
The Objectives Resolution passed on 12 March 1949 over the votes of every non-Muslim member, and it is now part of Pakistan's constitution under Article 2A.