Rajiv Gandhi

Rajiv Gandhi (born August 20, 1944, Bombay [now Mumbai], India—died May 21, 1991, Sriperumbudur, near Madras [now Chennai]) was an Indian politician and government official who rose to become the leader of the Congress (I) Party (a faction of the Indian National Congress [Congress Party] established in 1981) and served as prime minister of India (1984–89) after the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi, in 1984. He was himself assassinated in 1991.

(Read Indira Gandhi’s 1975 Britannica essay on global underprivilege.)

Rajiv and his younger brother, Sanjay (1946–80), the sons of Feroze and Indira Gandhi, were educated at the prestigious Doon School in Dehra Dun (now in Uttarakhand state). Rajiv then attended Imperial College, London, and completed an engineering course at the University of Cambridge (1965). He met his future wife, Sonia, during his time in England. After returning to India, he acquired a commercial pilot’s license and, beginning in 1968, worked for Indian Airlines.

While his brother was alive, Rajiv largely stayed out of politics; but, after Sanjay, a vigorous political figure, died in an airplane crash on June 23, 1980, Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, drafted Rajiv into a political career. In June 1981 he was elected in a by-election to the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of national parliament) and in the same month became a member of the national executive of the Indian Youth Congress (the youth wing of the Congress Party).

Whereas Sanjay had been described as politically “ruthless” and “willful” (he was considered a prime mover during the state of emergency his mother decreed in India in 1975–77), Rajiv was regarded as a nonabrasive person who consulted other party members and refrained from hasty decisions. After his mother was killed on October 31, 1984, Rajiv was sworn in as prime minister that same day and was elected leader of the Congress (I) Party a few days later. He led the Congress (I) Party to a landslide victory in elections to the Lok Sabha in December 1984, and his administration took vigorous measures to reform the government bureaucracy and liberalize the country’s economy. Gandhi’s attempts to discourage separatist movements in Punjab state and the Kashmir region backfired, however, and after his government became embroiled in several financial scandals, his leadership became increasingly ineffectual. He resigned his post as prime minister in November 1989 after the Congress (I) Party was defeated in parliamentary elections, though he remained leader of the party.

In May 1991 Gandhi was campaigning in Tamil Nadu state for the next round of parliamentary elections when he and 16 others were killed by a bomb concealed in a basket of flowers carried by a woman associated with the Tamil Tigers. In 1998 an Indian court convicted 26 people in the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi. The conspirators, who consisted of Tamil militants from Sri Lanka and their Indian allies, had sought revenge against Gandhi because the Indian troops he had sent to Sri Lanka in 1987 to help enforce a peace accord there had ended up fighting the Tamil separatist guerrillas. After Rajiv’s death, his widow, Sonia Gandhi, took over the leadership of the Congress Party (the “I” designation was formally dropped in 1996). Their son, Rahul Gandhi, also became an Indian politician and leading figure of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party).