Indira Gandhi, daughter of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was herself prime minister from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 until she was assassinated in 1984, India's first and so far only woman in the post. She led India to victory over Pakistan in 1971 and oversaw its first nuclear test, but she also governed for nearly two years under a state of emergency that suspended civil liberties.
Nehru's daughter
Indira Nehru was born on 19 November 1917 in Allahabad, the only surviving child of Jawaharlal Nehru, then a rising leader of the independence movement, and his wife Kamala. Her childhood was lonely. She studied at Santiniketan and at Somerville College, Oxford, but left without a degree. In 1942 she married Feroze Gandhi, no relation of Mahatma Gandhi, and the same year she was jailed for some months during the Quit India campaign. They had two sons, Rajiv and Sanjay.
After independence she acted as her widowed father's hostess and aide. As Congress party president in 1959 she helped bring about the dismissal of the communist government of Kerala. After Nehru's death in 1964 she joined Lal Bahadur Shastri's cabinet, and when Shastri died in January 1966, party bosses chose her as prime minister, expecting to control her.
Taking command
She proved far more forceful than they expected. In 1969 she nationalised the 14 largest banks and backed her own candidate for president against the party machine, leading to her expulsion and a split in Congress; most MPs stayed with her. Campaigning on the slogan "Garibi Hatao" (remove poverty), she won a landslide in 1971. Her government also abolished the allowances paid to the former princes, and the Green Revolution in farming reached its height in the 1970s.
Bangladesh and the bomb
In 1971 the Pakistani army's crackdown in East Pakistan drove some 10 million refugees into India. Gandhi signed a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, supported the Bengali rebels and, after Pakistan struck Indian airfields on 3 December, went to war. Within two weeks some 93,000 Pakistani troops surrendered at Dhaka on 16 December, and Bangladesh became independent. The Bangladesh Liberation War left India the dominant power in South Asia. In 1974 India carried out an underground nuclear test at Pokhran, and in 1975 Sikkim joined India after a referendum.
The Emergency
Rising prices, drought and a protest movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan weakened her. On 12 June 1975 the Allahabad High Court voided her 1971 election for electoral malpractice. She refused to resign, and on 25 June President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed declared a state of emergency on her government's advice. Opposition leaders were arrested, the press censored and elections postponed; more than 100,000 people were imprisoned, and she governed through ordinances. Her younger son Sanjay wielded great unofficial power. When she called elections in 1977, Congress was heavily defeated and she lost her own seat.
Return and Operation Blue Star
The Janata coalition that replaced her soon fell apart, and Gandhi's Congress won a landslide in January 1980. Sanjay died in a plane crash that June, and she drew her elder son Rajiv into politics. In Punjab, the militant preacher Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and armed followers fortified the Golden Temple at Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine. In June 1984 she ordered the army in. Operation Blue Star cleared the complex but damaged the Akal Takht shrine, and estimates of the dead, including many pilgrims, range from hundreds to thousands.
Assassination
On 31 October 1984 two of her Sikh bodyguards shot her in the garden of her residence in New Delhi, apparently in revenge for the assault. Rajiv succeeded her within hours. Anti-Sikh riots followed in which more than 3,000 Sikhs were killed in Delhi and an estimated 8,000 across India. Admirers remember her decisive leadership and her concern for the poor; critics point to the Emergency, her centralisation of power and her cult of personality.
On our maps
Our 1960 map shows India and Pakistan, then still in two parts; by the 1985 map Bangladesh appears as an independent state.
In pictures
1 images · scroll →From the atlas
Indira Gandhi in time and on the map
Indira Gandhi lived from 1917 to 1984. Borders of Time has 5 world maps from those years: 1920, 1930, 1938, 1945 and 1960.
Living at the same time, among others on this site: Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006), Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989), Hirohito (1901–1989), Karl Popper (1902–1994), Kim Il Sung (1912–1994), Menachem Begin (1913–1992), Mother Teresa (1910–1997), Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) and Rosa Parks (1913–2005).
Events of those years: Indian independence movement (1757–1947), Satsuma Rebellion (1877–2005), Progressive Era (1897–1920), Nahda (1900–2000), Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), New Culture Movement (1910–1920), World War I (1914–1918), Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic (1914–1923), Armenian genocide (1915–1923) and Arab Revolt (1916–1918).
Born just before and after, among others on this site: before, Alan Turing (1912–1954) and Albert Camus (1913–1960); after, John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) and Anwar Sadat (1918–1981).
Quick answers
- When was Indira Gandhi born, and when did Indira Gandhi die?
- Indira Gandhi was born in 1917 in Prayagraj and died in 1984 in New Delhi, aged about 67.
- Who was Indira Gandhi?
- Prime Minister of India (1966-1977; 1980-1984).