Daughter of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi grew up steeped in the independence movement and went on to dominate Indian politics for nearly two decades. Her tenure included the 1971 war with Pakistan that led to Bangladesh's creation, the controversial Emergency period of authoritarian rule, and her assassination in 1984 by her own bodyguards.
Indira Gandhi was born into the heart of India's independence struggle. Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, would become independent India's first prime minister, and her childhood home in Allahabad was frequently a meeting point for Congress Party leaders plotting the end of British rule. She once said she couldn't remember a time she wasn't political.
She rose through the Congress Party ranks to become prime minister in 1966, a position many rivals assumed she'd hold as a pliable figurehead. She proved otherwise, nationalizing banks, leading India to decisive victory in the 1971 war that created Bangladesh, and overseeing India's first nuclear test in 1974.
Her legacy is complicated by the Emergency she declared in 1975, suspending civil liberties and jailing political opponents for nearly two years, and by the 1984 storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar to root out Sikh militants, which left hundreds dead. Months later, on October 31, 1984, her own Sikh bodyguards assassinated her in retaliation, cementing her life story as one of India's most consequential and turbulent political sagas.
Key people: Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru