Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi (1917-84, Indian stateswoman. The daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, she received a university education and was active in the Congress Part y from 1938. She married Feroze Gandhi, who was not related to the Mahatma, in 1942. After her father’s death in 1964 she became minister of information and then prime minister (1966). Although she was praised for her handling of foreign affairs, a series of economic and political crises led her to introduce a repressive state of emergency (1975); she also tried to control population growth by enforced sterilization. The unpopularity of these measures caused her to lose the general election in 1977. On being reelected in 1979 she was faced by mounting religious violence, especially by Sikh extremists. After ordering the army to attack Sikh militants at the Golden Temple in Amritsar (1984), she was murdered by her own Sikh bodyguard. Her elder son Rajiv Gandhi (1944-91) succeeded her as prime minister and leader of the Congress Party (Mrs Gandhi’s favourite son, Sanjay, had died in a plane crash in 1980). Continuing religious violence led him to resign as prime minister in 1989. Rajiv’s assassination two years later while campaigning for re-election brought an end to the dynasty founded by Nehru, which had dominated Indian politics since the country was partitioned in 1947.
