- Indira Gandhi was born on 19 November 1917 in Allahabad to Jawaharlal Nehru and Kamala Nehru.
Young Indira Gandhi - She also has a younger brother but he died young. She grew up in large family estate in Allahabad called Anand Bhavan.
- Tutors taught Indira Gandhi mostly at home. She intermittently attended school until matriculation in 1934.
- Indira Gandhi attended University of Oxford for higher education.
Indira with her Father - During her stay in Great Britain, Indira frequently met her future husband Feroze Gandhi. Soon they fell in love. Feroze belonged to a Zoroastrian Parsi family of Gujarat.
- Indira Gandhi and Feroze got married in March 1942 in Allahabad. The couple had two sons, Rajiv Gandhi (born 1944) and Sanjay Gandhi (born 1946).
- In the 1950s, Indira served her father unofficially as a personal assistant during his tenure as the first Prime Minister of India.
- In 1955, congress worker elected her to Congress Working Committee. Later, Party member elected her as the president in 1959.
- She also served as Minister for Information and Broadcasting in the Cabinet of Lal Bahadur Shastri.
In 1966, she became the Prime Minister of India for the first time after death of Lal Bahadur Shastri.
- In the election of 1967 she won by a narrow majority. However, in 1971, she won with a wide majority over a coalition of conservative parties.
Indira Gandhi with her Family - Under her leadership Indian army achieve hasty and momentous victory over Pakistan in 1971 war. This triumph eventually led to the creation of Bangladesh.
- In 1972, the new Congress Party achieved a huge victory in the national elections because of her able leadership. Shortly afterward, she was charged with violating the election laws.
- In 1975, she declared a state of Emergency in India in response to a verdict of Allahabad High Court, which disqualified her of her seat in Parliament and ordered her to stay out of politics for six years.
- Early in 1978, those supporting Gandhi broke away from the Congress Party and formed a new party known as the Congress (I) Party. The ‘I’ here signified Indira.
- She resumed her power when the new Congress (I) Party got a huge victory in the Lok Sabha election held in 1980.
- She played an important role in abolishing privy purses, nationalizing banks and launching the first nuclear tests at Pokhran.
- Indira ordered Indian army in June 1984 to enter the Golden Temple in order to remove sikh terrorist from the complex. Army codename the action as operations blue star.
- On 31 October 1984, two of Gandhi’s sikh bodyguards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, shot her with their service weapons in response for operations blue star.
- Her family cremated her on 3 November near Raj Ghat in Delhi. The Government of India renamed the cremation site as Shakti Sthal.
- Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi was the second-longest-serving prime minister of India.
