- Wikipedia

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Indira Gandhi
Official portrait, 1983

Prime Minister of India
In office 14 January 1980 \u2013 31 October 1984
President	Neelam Sanjiva Reddy Zail Singh
Vice President	Mohammad Hidayatullah \nRamaswamy Venkataraman
Preceded by	Charan Singh
Succeeded by	Rajiv Gandhi
In office 24 January 1966 \u2013 24 March 1977
President	Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Zakir Husain V. V. Giri Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed B. D. Jatti (Acting)
Vice President	\n Zakir Husain \n V. V. Giri \n Gopal Swarup Pathak \n B. D. Jatti \n
Deputy	Morarji Desai (13 March 1967 \u2013 16 July 1969)
Preceded by	Lal Bahadur Shastri^[a]
Succeeded by	Morarji Desai
Union Minister of External Affairs
In office 19 July 1984 \u2013 31 October 1984
Prime Minister	Herself
Preceded by	P. V. Narasimha Rao
Succeeded by	Rajiv Gandhi
In office 6 September 1967 \u2013 13 February 1969
Prime Minister	Herself
Preceded by	M. C. Chagla
Succeeded by	Dinesh Singh
Union Minister of Defence
In office 14 January 1980 \u2013 15 January 1982
Prime Minister	Herself
Preceded by	Chidambaram Subramaniam
Succeeded by	Ramaswamy Venkataraman
In office 1 December 1975 \u2013 20 December 1975
Prime Minister	Herself
Preceded by	Swaran Singh
Succeeded by	Bansi Lal
Union Minister of Home Affairs
In office 27 June 1970 \u2013 5 February 1973
Prime Minister	Herself
Preceded by	Yashwantrao Chavan
Succeeded by	Uma Shankar Dikshit
In office 9 November 1966 \u2013 13 November 1966
Prime Minister	Herself
Preceded by	Gulzarilal Nanda
Succeeded by	Yashwantrao Chavan
Union Minister of Finance
In office 17 July 1969 \u2013 27 June 1970
Prime Minister	Herself
Preceded by	Morarji Desai
Succeeded by	Yashwantrao Chavan
Union Minister of Information & Broadcasting
In office 9 June 1964 \u2013 24 January 1966
Prime Minister	Lal Bahadur Shastri
Preceded by	Satya Narayan Sinha
Succeeded by	Kodardas Kalidas Shah
President of the Indian National Congress
In office 1959
Preceded by	U. N. Dhebar
Succeeded by	Neelam Sanjiva Reddy
President of the Indian National Congress (I)
In office 1978\u20131984
Preceded by	Devakanta Barua (as INC (R))
Succeeded by	Rajiv Gandhi
Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha
In office 1980\u20131984
Preceded by	Mallikarjun Mudiraj
Succeeded by	P. Manik Reddy
Constituency	Medak, Andhra Pradesh
In office 1978\u20131980
Preceded by	D. B. Chandregowda
Succeeded by	D. M. Puttegowda
Constituency	Chikmagalur, Karnataka
In office 1967\u20131977
Preceded by	Baijnath Kureel
Succeeded by	Raj Narain
Constituency	Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh
Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha
In office 1964\u20131967
Constituency	Uttar Pradesh
\n
Personal details
Born	Indira Nehru (1917-11-19)19 November 1917 Allahabad, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, British India (present-day Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, India)
Died	31 October 1984(1984-10-31) (aged 66) New Delhi, Delhi, India
Manner of death	Assassination\n
Monuments	Shakti Sthal
\n
Political party	Indian National Congress (1938\u20131969) Congress (R) (1969\u20131978) Congress (I) (1978\u20131984)
Spouse	\n Feroze Gandhi \n (m. 1942; died 1960)
Children	Rajiv Gandhi (son) Sanjay Gandhi (son)
Parents	Jawaharlal Nehru (father) Kamala Nehru (mother)
Relatives	See Nehru\u2013Gandhi family
Education	Visva-Bharati University (dropped out)^[1] Somerville College, Oxford (dropped out)^[1]
Occupation	Politician
Awards	See below
Signature	$\"\"$
Nicknames	See list
\n \n \n Indira Gandhi's voice \n \n Gandhi on India\u2013United States relations Recorded 29 July 1982 \n

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi^[b] (n\u00e9e Nehru; 19 November 1917 \u2013 31 October 1984)^[2] was an Indian politician and stateswoman who served as the prime minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. She was India's first and, to date, only female prime minister, and a central figure in Indian politics as the leader of the Indian National Congress (INC). She was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, and the mother of Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded her in office as the country's prime minister. Gandhi's cumulative tenure of 15 years and 350 days makes her the second-longest-serving Indian prime minister after her father. Henry Kissinger described her as an \"Iron Lady\", a nickname that became associated with her tough personality.\n

During her father Jawaharlal Nehru's premiership from 1947 to 1964, Gandhi was his hostess and accompanied him on his numerous foreign trips. In 1959, she played a part in the dissolution of the communist-led Kerala state government as then-president of the Indian National Congress, otherwise a ceremonial position to which she was elected earlier that year. Lal Bahadur Shastri, who had succeeded Nehru as prime minister upon his death in 1964, appointed her minister of information and broadcasting in his government; the same year she was elected to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament. After Shastri's sudden death in January 1966, Gandhi defeated her rival, Morarji Desai, in the INC's parliamentary leadership election to become leader and also succeeded Shastri as prime minister. She led the Congress to victory in two subsequent elections, starting with the 1967 general election, in which she was first elected to the lower house of the Indian parliament, the Lok Sabha. In 1971, her party secured its first landslide victory since her father's sweep in 1962, focusing on issues such as poverty. But following the nationwide state of emergency she implemented, she faced massive anti-incumbency sentiment causing the INC to lose the 1977 election, the first time in the history of India to happen so. She even lost her own parliamentary constituency. However, due to her portrayal as a strong leader and the weak governance of the Janata Party, her party won the next election by a landslide and she returned to the premiership.\n

As prime minister, Gandhi was known for her uncompromising political stances and centralization of power within the executive branch. In 1967, she headed a military conflict with China in which India repelled Chinese incursions into the Himalayas.^[3] In 1971, she went to war with Pakistan in support of the independence movement and war of independence in East Pakistan, which resulted in an Indian victory and the independence of Bangladesh, as well as increasing India's influence to the point where it became the sole regional power in South Asia.^[4] She played a crucial role in initiating India's first successful nuclear weapon test in 1974. Her rule saw India grow closer to the Soviet Union by signing a friendship treaty in 1971, with India receiving military, financial, and diplomatic support from the Soviet Union during its conflict with Pakistan in the same year.^[5] Though India was at the forefront of the non-aligned movement, Gandhi made it one of the Soviet Union's closest allies in Asia, each often supporting the other in proxy wars and at the United Nations.^[6] Responding to separatist tendencies and a call for revolution, she instituted a state of emergency from 1975 to 1977, during which she ruled by decree and basic civil liberties were suspended.^[7] More than 100,000 political opponents, journalists and dissenters were imprisoned.^[7] She faced the growing Sikh separatism movement throughout her fourth premiership; in response, she ordered Operation Blue Star, which involved military action in the Golden Temple and killed hundreds of Sikhs. On 31 October 1984, she was assassinated by two of her bodyguards, both of whom were Sikh nationalists seeking retribution for the events at the temple.\n

Gandhi is remembered as the most powerful woman in the world during her tenure.^[8]^[9]^[10] Her supporters cite her leadership during victories over geopolitical rivals China and Pakistan, the Green Revolution, a growing economy in the early 1980s, and her anti-poverty campaign that led her to be known as \"Mother Indira\" (a pun on Mother India) among the country's poor and rural classes. Critics note her cult of personality and authoritarian rule of India during the Emergency. In 1999, she was named \"Woman of the Millennium\" in an online poll organized by the BBC.^[11] In 2020, she was named by Time magazine among the 100 women who defined the past century as counterparts to the magazine's previous choices for Man of the Year.^[12]\n

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v t e Prime Minister of India
\n List \n By previous experience \n
Prime ministers	\n Jawaharlal Nehru \n Lal Bahadur Shastri\n Premiership \n Indira Gandhi \n Morarji Desai\n Premiership \n Charan Singh \n Rajiv Gandhi \n V. P. Singh\n Premiership \n Chandra Shekhar \n P. V. Narasimha Rao \n Atal Bihari Vajpayee\n Premiership \n H. D. Deve Gowda \n Inder Kumar Gujral \n Manmohan Singh \n Narendra Modi (Incumbent)\n Premiership \n	$\"Emblem$
Acting	\n Gulzarilal Nanda \n
\n Things named after prime ministers\n Nehru \n Indira \n Rajiv \n Office \n Residence \n International trips\n Nehru \n Indira \n Vajpayee \n Modi \n Spouses \n Children \n Nicknames \n $\"\"$ Category \n

v t e Recipients of Bharat Ratna Award
1954\u20131960	\n C. Rajagopalachari, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and C. V. Raman (1954) \n Bhagwan Das, M. Visvesvaraya, and Jawaharlal Nehru (1955) \n Govind Ballabh Pant (1957) \n Dhondo Keshav Karve (1958) \n
1961\u20131980	\n Bidhan Chandra Roy, and Purushottam Das Tandon (1961) \n Rajendra Prasad (1962) \n Zakir Husain, and Pandurang Vaman Kane (1963) \n Lal Bahadur Shastri (1966) \n Indira Gandhi (1971) \n Varahagiri Venkata Giri (1975) \n K. Kamaraj (1976) \n Mother Teresa (1980) \n
1981\u20132000	\n Vinoba Bhave (1983) \n Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1987) \n M. G. Ramachandran (1988) \n B. R. Ambedkar, and Nelson Mandela (1990) \n Rajiv Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel, and Morarji Desai (1991) \n Abul Kalam Azad, J. R. D. Tata and Satyajit Ray (1992) \n Gulzarilal Nanda, Aruna Asaf Ali, and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (1997) \n M. S. Subbulakshmi, and C. Subramaniam (1998) \n Jayaprakash Narayan, Amartya Sen, Gopinath Bordoloi, and Ravi Shankar (1999) \n
2001\u20132020	\n Lata Mangeshkar, and Bismillah Khan (2001) \n Bhimsen Joshi (2008) \n C. N. R. Rao, and Sachin Tendulkar (2014) \n Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Madan Mohan Malaviya (2015) \n Nanaji Deshmukh, Bhupen Hazarika, and Pranab Mukherjee (2019) \n
2021\u20132040	\n Karpoori Thakur, Lal Krishna Advani, Charan Singh, P. V. Narasimha Rao, and M. S. Swaminathan (2024) \n

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Early life and career

First, second and third terms as prime minister (1966\u20131977)

First year

1967\u20131971

Military conflict with China

1971\u20131977

War with Pakistan

Verdict on electoral malpractice

State of Emergency (1975\u20131977)

Rule by decree

Rise of Sanjay Gandhi

1977 election and opposition years

In opposition and return to power

1980 elections and fourth term

Operation Blue Star

Assassination

International reaction

Foreign policy

South Asia

Middle East

Asia-Pacific

Africa

The Commonwealth

The Non-aligned Movement

Western Europe

Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries

Soviet intelligence in India

United States

Economic policy

Green Revolution and the Fourth Five-Year Plan

The Fifth Five-Year Plan

Operation Forward and the Sixth Five-Year Plan

Inflation and unemployment

Domestic policy

Nationalisation

Administration

Social reform

Language policy

National security

India's nuclear programme

Electoral history

Personal life

Views on women

Awards and honours

National honours

Foreign honours

Posthumous honours

Legacy

In popular culture

Bibliography

See also

References

Notes

References

Sources

Bibliography

External links

Indira Gandhi

Media collections