Indira Gandhi

Indira Gandhi

Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, 1966-77 and 1980-84. She was assassinated in 1984.

Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) was the only child of Kamla and Jawaharlal Nehru. She spent part of her childhood in Allahabad, where the Nehrus had their family residence, and part in Switzerland, where her mother Kamla convalesced from her periodic illnesses. She received her college education at Somerville College, Oxford. A famous photograph from her childhood shows her sitting by the bedside of Mahatma Gandhi, as he recovered from one of his fasts; and though she was not actively involved in the freedom struggle, she came to know the entire Indian political leadership. After India's attainment of independence, and the ascendancy of Jawaharlal Nehru, now a widower, to the office of the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi managed the official residence of her father, and accompanied him on his numerous foreign trips. She had been married in 1942 to Feroze Gandhi, who rose to some eminence as a parliamentarian and politician of integrity but found himself disliked by his more famous father-in-law, but Feroze died in 1960 before he could consolidate his own political forces.