Rajiv Gandhi

August 20, 1944 – May 21, 1991

Indian politician who became Prime Minister of India after his mother Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984 and was himself assassinated in 1991.

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Biography

Rajiv Ratna Gandhi was born in Bombay in 1944, the elder son of Indira Gandhi and grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru. He attended the Doon School and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and then Imperial College London without completing a degree. Back in India he became a commercial pilot for the state-owned Indian Airlines and stayed out of politics.

After his younger brother Sanjay died in a plane crash in 1980, Rajiv entered politics at his mother's request and in 1981 won Sanjay's parliamentary seat of Amethi. When Indira Gandhi was assassinated on 31 October 1984 he was sworn in as prime minister the same day, at 40 the youngest in India's history, and that December he led the Congress to the largest Lok Sabha majority ever.

His government faced the Bhopal gas disaster, the Shah Bano controversy and the Bofors arms-deal scandal. In 1987 he signed the Indo-Lanka Accord and sent Indian peacekeepers to Sri Lanka, which brought India into conflict with the Tamil Tigers, and in 1988 he sent troops to reverse a coup in the Maldives. After the Congress lost the 1989 election he was leader of the opposition until December 1990. While campaigning for the 1991 election he was killed by an LTTE suicide bomber at Sriperumbudur on 21 May 1991.