rajiv gandhi

Rajiv Gandhi was born on 20 August 1944 in Mumbai into the most famous and influential political family of the country. Jawaharlal Nehru was his maternal grandfather, who was the first Prime Minister of India and an aide of Mahatma Gandhi in the freedom struggle. Feroze Gandhi, his father, was a young member of the Indian National Congress and met Indira and her mother Kamala Nehru in Allahabad and befriended them while working for the party and later married Indira Gandhi. After Independence, the family settled in Lucknow and Feroze Gandhi started working as an editor of a newspaper called National Herald, that was founded by Motilal Nehru. Rajiv Gandhi later moved with his mother and younger brother to their grandfather Jawaharlal Nehrus residence in 1949. Relations between his parents strained slowly and further deteriorated when Feroze Gandhi challenged corruption within the party leadership over the scandal of Haridas Mundra. The family reconciled after Feroze Gandhi suffered a heart attack in 1958. Feroze Gandhi died of a second heart attack in 1960.

Rajiv Gandhi completed his schooling from the Welham Boys School and the Doon School in Dehradun. In 1961 he went to London to study Alevels. He then joined Trinity College of Cambridge for an engineering course but did not complete the degree course and left in 1965. He then joined Imperial College in London in 1966 but left the place a year later without the degree. He started working as a professional pilot for Indian Airlines. He married Sonia Gandhiin 1968, who was originally an Italian and worked as a waitress in the Varsity Restaurant, a Greek restaurant in the city of Cambridge. They had their first child Rahul Gandhi in 1970 and their Second child Priyanka Gandhi in 1972.

Rajiv Gandhis younger brother Sanjay Gandhis sudden death in a plane crash in 1980 led him to join politics. Rajiv Gandhi reluctantly joined Indian politics at the behest of his mother, the then Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi, and pressure from the Congress party. Both he and his wife were opposed to the idea of his joining politics but he eventually declared his candidature from Amethi, which was Sanjay Gandhis Lok Sabha constituency. He defeated Sharad Yadav and was made the General Secratary of the Congress, which would serve as his grooming process. His close friend the then Sports Minister Sardar Buta Singh was the President of the committee. He also became the President of the youth wing of the party, the Youth Congress.

On 31 October 1984 while Rajiv Gandhi was in West Bengal, Indira Gandhi was shot by her two bodyguards in the garden of her official residence, at 1, Safdarjung Road at New Delhi while she was passing the wicket gate guarded by them. The bodyguards namely Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, after shooting her, dropped their weapons and surrendered. Beant Singh was shot to death on that day while Kehar Singh was arrested for his involvement in the conspiracy. He and Satwant Singh were given death sentence and hanged at the Tihar Jail at Delhi. Within hours of the assassination, the then President Zail Singh and Union Minister and a senior leader of the Congress party Sardar Buta Singh convinced him to become the new Prime Minister of India. After he assumed office, Rajiv Gandhi asked Zail Singh to hold fresh elections and dissolve the Parliament as the Lower House completed a fiveyear term. The history of the Indian Parliament saw a landslide victory for the party, which gave Rajiv Gandhi complete power of government. He also became the President of the Congress party.

He led in a significantly different direction from his mother Indira Gandhis socialism. Bilateral relations with the US were improved that were longstrained during the period of Indira Gandhi, owing to her closeness with the then USSR. Scientific and economic cooperation was expanded.

Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on 21 May 1991 in a village called Sriperambudur, about 50 km from Chennai. He went there on a public meeting while campaigning for the Congress candidate for the Sriperambudur Lok Sabha constituency. He was approached by a lady later identified as Thenmozhi Rajaratnam at 10:10 p.m. in the public gathering. When she bent down as if to touch Rajiv Gandhis feet, she detonated an explosive that was attached to a belt tucked under her dress. Rajiv Gandhi, the assassin, and 25 others were killed in the blast. His mutilated body was taken to New Delhis All India Institute of Medical Sciences for postmortem and reconstruction. His funeral on 24 May 1991 was attended by dignitaries of over sixty countries and was telecast live. The site of his cremation is now known as Vir Bhumi.

The International Airport of Hyderabad is named after him as Rajiv Gandhi International Airport.
The Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences is located in Bangalore, India.
The Rajiv Gandhi Technical University also known as Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya and State Technological University, a multicampus affiliating university of India is located in Madhya Pradesh.
A premier research institute in India, the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, which is exclusively devoted to Molecular Biology and Biotechnology research, is located at Trivandrum, Kerala.

Rajiv Gandhis death has shocked the world and marks the end of the Nehru dynasty that had led India for all but five years since independence from Britain.After his brother Sanjay was killed in an air crash in 1980, he gave up his job as an airline pilot and was elected to Sanjays parliamentary seat.He became prime minister after his mother, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards in 1984.Often seen as a reluctant leader, he and his Congress Party won a record majority later that year.

He encouraged foreign investment, a freer economy and rejuvenated his own party, ridding it of his mothers unelected cronies.After he lost the election in 1989, Rajiv Gandhi resigned.This time, the Congress Party was expected to win the largest number of parliamentary seats but not overall control against the Hindu BJP Party and the Janata Dal, now split into two parties.The campaign has been marred by sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims in what has proved to be the most violent election in Indian history. Two hundred people have already been killed.

He increased government support for science and technology and associated industries, and reduced import quotas, taxes and tariffs on technologybased industries, especially computers, airlines, defence and telecommunications. In 1986, he announced a National Policy on Education to modernise and expand higher education programs across India. He founded the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya System in 1986 which is a Central government based institution that concentrates on the upliftment of the rural section of the society providing them free residential education from 6th till 12 grade.His efforts created MTNL in 1986, and his public call offices, better known as PCOs, helped spread telephones in rural areas. He introduced measures significantly reducing the Licence Raj, in post1990 period, allowing businesses and individuals to purchase capital, consumer goods and import without bureaucratic restrictions.

Rajiv authorised an extensive police and army campaign to contain terrorism in Punjab. A state of martial law existed in the Punjab state, and civil liberties, commerce and tourism were greatly disrupted.There are many accusations of human rights violations by police officials as well as by the militants during this period. It is alleged that even as the situation in Punjab came under control, the Indian government was offering arms and training to the LTTE rebels fighting the government of Sri Lanka. The IndoSri Lanka Peace Accord was signed by Rajiv Gandhi and the Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayewardene, in Colombo on 29 July 1987. The very next day, on 30 July 1987, Rajiv Gandhi was assaulted on the head with a rifle butt by a young Sinhalese naval cadet named Vijayamunige Rohana de Silva,while receiving the honour guard. The intended assault on the back of Rajiv Gandhis head glanced off his shoulder and it was captured in news crew photographs and video.With his speech while addressing the Joint Session of the US Congress and India, he said, India is an old country, but a young nation; and like the young everywhere, we are impatient. I am young and I too have a dream. I dream of an India,strong, independent, selfreliant and in the forefront of the front ranks of the nations of the world in the service of mankind.

At a Boat Club rally 19 days after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv said: Some riots took place in the country following the murder of Indiraji. We know the people were very angry and for a few days it seemed that India had been shaken. But, when a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little.This statement sent a wrong signal to the authorities, who adopted a callous approach of not allowing the truth to come out despite the government setting up probe panels one after the other, including two full fledged judicial commissions (the first headed by retired Chief Justice of India Ranganath Misra and the second by former apex court judge G.T. Nanavati). As mentioned in the book When a Tree Shook Delhi by senior advocate H.S. Phoolka and journalist Manoj Mitta (who have based the details of the book mainly on evidence produced before the nine panels and trial courts and high courts in the form of affidavits by witnesses), the police ironically cracked down on the Sikh victims, who had been defending their properties when they were attacked by hooligans led by local Congress leaders.