Indira Gandhi takes charge as first female Prime Minister of India

Indira Gandhi acquired her last name not from any relation to the legendary Indian independence activitist Mohanda Gandhi, but from her lawyer husband. Still, she came from a politically important Nehru family, whose legacy in part carried her to the nation’s highest office. And she did spend a little over a year imprisoned for subversive activities against the British occupation of India. For much of her country’s formative years, it was led from the top by Gandhi.

On this day, January 19, in 1966, Indira Gandhi began her reign as the Prime Minister of India. She won the post in a contested election against the government’s former finance minister. Her rule would be defined by a war with Pakistan, a controversial “emergency rule” provision extending her power, and prosecution of the Sikh religious minority group.

Gandhi presided over the armed conflict with the neighboring country of Pakistan in 1971, which established from Eastern Pakistan the new independent state of Bangladesh. That same year she won a re-election, but in 1975 several charges of corruption led to her official removal from power. Gandhi in response declared emergency rule, citing an article of the Indian constitution, ordered the arrest of her political opponents and ruled by decree for nearly three years until an election finally removed her from office. Gandhi returned in 1979, this time declaring war on the Sikh minority within India. She ordered a military raid on a prominent Sikh holy site, the Golden Temple, which killed several hundred Sikh militants and untold thousands of civilians caught in the line of fire. Gandhi’s own Sikh bodyguards assassinated her in the prime minister’s residence in 1984.