Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (née Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was the prime minister of the Republic of India for three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and for a fourth term from 1980 until her assassination in 1984, a total of fifteen years. She was India's first, and to date only, female prime minister. She was the world's longest serving women Prime Minister.
Death
In 1982 a large number of Sikhs, led by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, occupied and fortified the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) complex at Amritsar, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine. Tensions between the government and the Sikhs escalated, and in June 1984 Gandhi ordered Operation Blue Star in which the Indian army attacked and ousted the separatists from the complex. Some buildings in the shrine were badly damaged in the fighting, and more than 80 soldiers and hundreds of pilgrims died, according to government officials. However, Sikh estimates of the death toll were considerably higher, suggesting that the number of soldiers and civilians killed may have been in the thousands. Five months later Gandhi was killed in her garden in New Delhi in a fusillade of bullets fired by two of her own Sikh bodyguards in revenge for the attack in Amritsar. She was succeeded as prime minister by her son Rajiv Gandhi, who served until 1989.
Personal life
In 1942 she married Feroze Gandhi (died 1960), a fellow member of the party. The couple had two children, Sanjay and Rajiv Gandhi. However, the two parents were estranged from each other for much of their marriage. Indira Gandhi’s mother, Kamala Nehru, had died in the mid-1930s, and thereafter the Nehrus’ daughter often acted as her father’s hostess for events and accompanied him on his travels.
