Indira Gandhi, in full 

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, née Nehru, (born November

19, 1917, Allahabad, India—died October 31, 1984, New Delhi), Indian politician who
was the first female prime minister of India, serving for three consecutive terms (1966–
77) and a fourth term from 1980 until she was assassinated in 1984.
Early life and rise to prominence

Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and

Harry S. Truman
Indira Nehru was the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, who was one of the chief figures in
India’s struggle to achieve independence from Britain, was a top leader of the powerful
and long-dominant Indian National Congress (Congress Party), and was the first prime
minister (1947–64) of independent India. Her grandfather Motilal Nehru was one of the
pioneers of the independence movement and was a close associate of Mohandas
(“Mahatma”) Gandhi. She attended, for one year each, Visva-Bharati University
in Shantiniketan (now in Bolpur, West Bengal state) and then the University of
Oxford in England. She joined the Congress Party in 1938.

In 1942 she married Feroze Gandhi (died 1960), a fellow member of the party. The
couple had two children, Sanjay and Rajiv. However, the two parents were estranged
from each other for much of their marriage. Indira’s mother had died in the mid-1930s,
and thereafter she often acted as her father’s hostess for events and accompanied him
on his travels.

Indira Gandhi and Jacqueline

Kennedy
The Congress Party came to power when her father took office in 1947, and Gandhi
became a member of its working committee in 1955. In 1959 she was elected to the
largely honorary post of party president. She was made a member of the Rajya
Sabha (upper chamber of the Indian parliament) in 1964, and that year Lal Bahadur
Shastri—who had succeeded Nehru as prime minister—named her minister of
information and broadcasting in his government.
First period as prime minister
Indira Gandhi
On Shastri’s sudden death in January 1966, Gandhi was named leader of the Congress
Party—and thus also became prime minister—in a compromise between the party’s right
and left wings. Her leadership, however, came under continual challenge from the right
wing of the party, led by former minister of finance Morarji Desai. She won a seat in the
1967 elections to the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of the Indian parliament), but the
Congress Party managed to win only a slim majority of seats, and Gandhi had to accept
Desai as deputy prime minister.