Indira Gandhi Biography: All about the life of Indira Gandhi

Indira Gandhi Biography: Indira Gandhi was born on 19 November 1917. She was an Indian politician. She is the third Prime Minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 until 1984. She was the first and to date only female head of state of India. She was a central figure in Indian politics as a minister, and leader of the Indian National Congress. Gandhiji was the daughter of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and mother of Rajiv Gandhi. Who became the sixth Prime Minister of the country after him. Henry Kissinger described her as the “Iron Lady”. A nickname that became associated with his strict personality throughout his lifetime.

Indira Gandhi Biography 

Personal Details 

Indira Gandhi Career 

During Nehru’s tenure as Prime Minister from 1947 to 1964, Gandhi served as his hostess. and accompanied him on many of his foreign trips. He played a role in the dissolution of the communist-led Kerala state government in 1959 as the then President of the Indian National Congress. and a formal post to which he had been elected earlier that year. Lal Bahadur Shastri appointed him the Minister of Information and Broadcasting in her government. After Shastri’s sudden death in January 1966, Gandhiji became the leader of the Congress Party by defeating her rival Morarji Desai in the parliamentary leadership election. And after Shastri she also became the Prime Minister.

He led the Congress to victory in the two subsequent elections, starting with the 1967 general elections. In which she was elected to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament, for the first time. In 1971, the Congress Party led by Gandhiji managed to achieve its first landslide victory since his father’s victory in 1962, focusing on issues such as poverty. But after the nationwide emergency imposed by her, she faced a massive anti-incumbency wave and lost the 1977 general election, the first time for the Congress party to do so. Gandhi was removed from office and even lost her seat in Parliament in the elections. Nevertheless, due to Gandhi’s leadership and the weak governance of the Janata Party regime, the first non-Congress government in the history of independent modern India, his faction of the Congress Party won a landslide victory in the next general election.

As Prime Minister, Gandhi was known for his political assertiveness and unprecedented centralization of power. In 1967, he led a military conflict with China in which India successfully repelled Chinese incursions into the Himalayas. In 1971, she went to war with Pakistan in support of the independence movement and independence struggle in East Pakistan. Which resulted in India’s victory and the creation of Bangladesh, with India’s influence increasing to such an extent that it became the sole regional power. Power in South Asia.

During Gandhi’s reign India came closer to the Soviet Union by signing the Friendship Treaty in 1971, the same year India received military, financial and diplomatic support from the Soviet Union during its conflict with Pakistan. Citing separatist tendencies and in response to calls for revolution, Gandhi imposed a state of emergency from 1975 to 1977, during which basic civil liberties were suspended and the press censored. Large scale atrocities were committed during that period. Gandhiji faced growing Sikh separatism during his third prime ministership; In response, he ordered Operation Blue Star, which included military action at the Golden Temple and resulted in bloodshed and hundreds of Sikhs killed. On 31 October 1984, Gandhi was assassinated by his bodyguards, both of whom were Sikh nationalists seeking vengeance for the incidents at the temple.

Indira Gandhiji is remembered as the most powerful woman in the world during her tenure. Her supporters cite her leadership during the victories over China and Pakistan, a growing economy in the early 1980s, and her anti-poverty campaign that led her to be called “Mother Indira“. I became known. among the poor and rural sections of the country. However, critics note his authoritarian rule of India during the Emergency. In 1999, Gandhi was named “Woman of the Millennium” in an online poll conducted by the BBC. 

Indira Gandhi’s Personal Life 

She married Feroze Gandhi in 1942 at the age of 25. Their marriage lasted for 18 years until he died of a heart attack in 1960. He had two sons – Rajeev and Sanjay. Initially, his younger son Sanjay was his chosen successor, but after his death in a flying accident in June 1980, In February 1981, Gandhi asked his son Rajiv to leave his job as a pilot and encouraged him to enter politics, but he was reluctant to do so. Rajiv took over as Prime Minister after his mother’s assassination in 1984; He served until December 1989. On 21 May 1991, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a suicide bomber working on behalf of the LTTE.

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