Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India
India's first and only woman prime minister, whose tenure spanned the creation of Bangladesh, the nuclear program, the Emergency, and Operation Blue Star, ending with her assassination.
Timeline
Birth and Early Life
Indira Nehru was born in Allahabad, the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, later India's first prime minister. She grew up amid the independence movement, was jailed briefly during the Quit India campaign in 1942, the year she married Feroze Gandhi, and served as her father's unofficial hostess and aide.
Location: Allahabad, India
Congress President
Indira Gandhi served a one-year term as president of the Indian National Congress, her first major party office. In 1964 she joined the cabinet as Minister of Information and Broadcasting under Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.
Location: New Delhi, India
Becomes Prime Minister
After Shastri's sudden death, Congress party elders chose Gandhi as prime minister, reportedly expecting her to be pliable. Elected over the senior Morarji Desai, she took office at 48 as one of the world's youngest heads of government and India's first woman premier.
Location: New Delhi, India
Bank Nationalization and the Congress Split
Gandhi nationalized 14 major commercial banks by ordinance, a populist move that bypassed her own finance ministry and won mass support. Her battles over bank nationalization and the abolition of princely privy purses culminated in November 1969 with a split of the Congress party between her faction and the old guard.
Location: New Delhi, India
The Bangladesh War
After a refugee crisis triggered by Pakistan's military crackdown in East Pakistan, and following the August 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty, India intervened in the Bengali independence war. Pakistani forces surrendered at Dhaka on 16 December 1971, creating Bangladesh and giving India a decisive victory that transformed South Asia's balance.
Location: Dhaka, Bangladesh
India's First Nuclear Test
India detonated its first nuclear device, code-named Smiling Buddha, at Pokhran in the Rajasthan desert, becoming the world's sixth nuclear power. The government described it as a peaceful nuclear explosion, though the test drew sanctions and confirmed India's nuclear weapons capability outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Location: Pokhran, India
The Emergency
After the Allahabad High Court invalidated her 1971 election for campaign violations, Gandhi declared a state of emergency on 25 June 1975. Censorship was imposed, opposition leaders were jailed, and a slum clearance and forced sterilization campaign run under her son Sanjay's direction caused lasting controversy. Her stated justification was national stability amid strikes and agitation; the period is widely regarded as Indian democracy's deepest suspension. She lifted it in January 1977 and called elections.
Location: New Delhi, India
Electoral Defeat and Comeback
Gandhi's Congress was routed by the Janata Party in the March 1977 elections, ending her premiership, and she faced arrest and expulsion from Parliament. After the Janata coalition collapsed under its own divisions, she returned to power with a large majority in January 1980.
Location: New Delhi, India
Operation Blue Star
The army stormed the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar to remove Sikh militants led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who had fortified the shrine during a violent separatist campaign in Punjab. The operation caused heavy casualties and damage to the Akal Takht, shocking Sikhs in India and abroad, and prompted mutinies among Sikh soldiers.
Location: Amritsar, India
Assassination and Aftermath
Gandhi was shot dead at her residence by two of her Sikh bodyguards, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, in retaliation for the Golden Temple operation. Anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and other cities killed thousands in the following days, and her son Rajiv Gandhi succeeded her as prime minister.
Location: New Delhi, India