Indira Gandhi Biography and Works.

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, known as Indira Gandhi, was born on November 19, 1917. She was an Indian politician who served as the Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms-from 1966 to 1977 and a fourth term-1980-1984.

Indira Gandhi was born to Jawaharlal and Kamala Nehru and spent her childhood in Allahabad. She received her college education at Somerville College, Oxford.

She married Feroze Gandhi in 1942 whom she knew from Allahabad and who died in 1960 before he could consolidate his own political force. The couple had two sons – Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi.

After the death of her father, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964, Indira Gandhi was elected to Parliament and she was the Minister of Information and Broadcasting in Lal Bahadur Shastri’s government. As Shastri died unexpectedly of a heart attack less than two years after assuming office, the numerous contenders for the position of the Prime Ministership picked Indira Gandhi as a compromise candidate. She showed extraordinary political skills and became the world’s second longest serving female Prime Minister.

She was assassinated by her bodyguards on October 31, 1984 at her official residence in Delhi as she garnered the undying hatred of Sikhs after she ordered an assault upon the Sikh shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar to crush the secessionist movement of Sikh militants, led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. The name of the operations was ‘Operation Bluestar.

Trivia

She was also the only Indian Prime Minister to have declared a state of emergency in order to ‘rule by decree’ and the only Indian Prime Minister to have been imprisoned after holding that office.