Indira Gandhi (November 19, 1917-October 31, 1984) was Prime Minister of India from January 19, 1966 to March 24, 1977, and from January 14, 1980 until her assassination in 1984.
She was the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India.
A brilliant political strategist and thinker, Indira also possessed an extraordinary desire for political power. As a woman occupying the highest position of government in a very patriarchal society, Indira was expected to be a passive leader, but her actions proved her otherwise.
When her father died in 1964, she was pressured to take up a career in politics. She was elected as a member of Parliament and was appointed a minister in the cabinet of Congress Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. Shastri died in office in 1966, and Indira successfully ran to succeed him as party leader, and thus Prime Minister of India.
Prime Minister
As Prime Minister, Indira carefully used every tool available at her disposal to consolidate her power and authority.
Re-elected in 1971, she proceeded to boost her government’s fortunes through a successful war against neighbouring Pakistan in East Bengal, where India’s intervention enabled local separatists to crown their nine-month war of independence with the creation of the independent republic of Bangladesh.
Opponents had long made allegations that her party had practiced electoral fraud to win the 1971 elections. In June 1975 the High Court of Allahabad found the sitting Prime Minister guilty of election fraud, and ordered her to be removed from her seat in Parliament and banned from running for an additional six years. Rather than face the charges, Indira declared a state of emergency.
Indira’s emergency rule lasted nineteen months. In 1977, greatly misjudging her own popularity, she called elections and was roundly defeated. She agreed to step down without any objection. Three years later she would be re-elected, although her second term would be much less authoritarian.
Indira’s later reign was most marked by a serious Sikh insurgency that would eventually lead to her own assassination. Alarmed at the rise in popularity of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, India’s leaders were disturbed by his proclamation that Sikhs were a sovereign and self-ruling community.
Fearing Pakistani support for the movement, in June 1984 Indira ordered Operation Blue Star, a military action to evacuate Golden Temple, which had been occupied by Jarnail Singh and his militant supporters with a heavy cache of arms. The occupiers refused to depart peacefully and a firefight ensued.
Sikh alienation was deep and had dramatic consequences—on October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards, one of whom was fatally shot and the other subsequently sentenced to death by hanging in 1988. She died shortly after arriving at the AIIMS, in New Delhi.
To this day, Indira’s legacy as Prime Minister remains mixed. Though she had a strong personality, and her reign was popular with many segments of India’s population, especially the youth and the poor, her decision to declare a state of emergency solely to escape prosecution remains controversial.
Her two sons, Sanjay and Rajiv, were both involved in politics. Sanjay Gandhi died in a plane crash in June 1980. Rajiv Gandhi entered politics in February 1981 and became prime minister after his mother’s death.
