Biography of Rajiv Gandhi

Name:	Rajiv Gandhi
Birth Date:	20 August 1944
Death Date:	21 May 1991
Birthplace:	Mumbai
Occupation:	Prime Minister
Born In:	Maharashtra

Biography

Rajiv Ratna Gandhi (August 20, 1944 – May 21, 1991), the eldest son of Indira and Feroze Gandhi, was the 6th Prime Minister of India (and the 3rd from their family) from his mother's death on 31 October 1984 until his resignation on December 2, 1989 following a general election defeat. Becoming the Prime Minister of India at the age of 40, he is the youngest person to date to hold that office.

Rajiv Gandhi worked as a professional airline pilot for Indian Airlines, married Sonia Maino, an Italian lady he had met in college, Before marriage he accepted christianity. he remained aloof from politics despite his mother being the Indian Prime Minister. It was only following the death of his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi in 1980, that Rajiv was convinced to enter politics. Upon the assassination of his mother in 1984, Congress party leaders convinced him to become the new Prime Minister. Rajiv Gandhi led the Congress to a major election victory in 1984 soon after, amassing the largest majority in Parliament. He had the public image of being young, modern and Mr. Clean - an honest leader free of machine politics and corruption. He began dismantling the License Raj - government quotas, tariffs and permit regulations on economic activity - modernized the telecommunications industry, the education system, expanded science and technology initiatives and improved relations with the United States. He also was responsible for sending Indian troops for peace efforts in Sri Lanka, which soon ended in open conflict with the LTTE, forcing Rajiv to pull Indian forces out. The Bofors scandal broke his honest, corruption-free image and resulted in a major defeat for his party in the 1989 elections.

Rajiv Gandhi remained the Congress leader till the elections in 1991. He was assassinated while campaigning, by a female suicide bomber who sought revenge for his intervention against the LTTE. His Italian-born widow Sonia Gandhi became the leader of the Congress party in 1998, and led the party to victory in the 2004 elections. His son Rahul Gandhi is a member of parliament.

Rajiv Gandhi was born in India's most famous political family. His grandfather was the Indian freedom fighter Jawaharlal Nehru, who would become India's first Prime Minister after independence. Rajiv and his younger brother Sanjay were raised in Allahabad and Delhi, but suffered from the separation of their mother, who lived with Nehru to care for him, and their father Feroze Gandhi. Even as his parents were reconciled in 1958, Feroze died from a heart attack in 1959. Rajiv finished his high school education from the Doon school and attended college at the Imperial College London and Cambridge University, but he did not receive a degree. At Cambridge, he met and fell in love with an Italian student Sonia Maino. Maino's family opposed the match, but Maino came to India to Rajiv and they married in 1969.

Gandhi began working for Indian Airlines as a professional pilot even as his mother became Prime Minister in 1966. He exhibited no interest in politics and did not live regularly with his mother in Delhi at the Prime Minister's residence. In 1970, his wife gave birth to Rahul, his first child, and in 1972, Priyanka, his second child and only daughter. Even as Gandhi remained aloof, his younger brother Sanjay became a close advisor to their mother.

Entry into politics
It was following his younger brother's death in 1980 that Rajiv was pressured by Congress politicians and his mother to enter politics. Rajiv and his wife were both opposed to the idea, and Rajiv even publicly stated that he would not contest for his brother's seat, but he finally accepted his mother's urging and announced his candidacy for Parliament. His entry was criticized by many in the press, public and opposition political parties, who saw the role of Nehru's dynasty intensifying in Indian politics.

Elected for Sanjay's Lok Sabha (parliamentary) constituency of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh state in February 1981, Rajiv became an important political advisor to his mother. It was widely perceived that Indira Gandhi was grooming Rajiv for the prime minister's job, and Rajiv soon became the president of the Youth Congress - the Congress party's youth wing. Rajiv was also involved in the fight against terrorism in Punjab, and was one of the men who advised Indira to launch Operation Bluestar

Rajiv was in Orissa when Indira Gandhi was assassinated on October 31, 1984. Top Congress leaders, as well as President Zail Singh pressed Rajiv to become India's Prime Minister, within hours of his mother's assassination by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Some accuse him of not doing enough to stop the anti-Sikh riots which ensued, killing more than 5,000 people. Commenting on the violence, he said, "'When a giant tree falls, the earth below shakes". Many Congress politicians were blamed for orchestrating the violence. Assuming office, Rajiv asked President Zail Singh to dissolve Parliament and hold fresh elections. Rajiv Gandhi also officially became the President of the Congress.

Owing largely to the feelings of sympathy in wake of Indira's murder, the Congress party won a landslide victory - the margin of majority in Parliament was the largest in Indian history, giving Rajiv absolute control of government. Rajiv Gandhi also benefited from his youth and a general perception of being Mr. Clean, or free of a background in corrupt, machine politics. Rajiv thus revived hopes and enthusiasm amongst the Indian public for the Congress.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi began leading in a direction significantly different from Indira Gandhi's socialism. He improved bilateral relations with the United States - long strained owing to Indira's socialism and close friendship with the USSR - and expanded economic and scientific cooperation. He increased government support for science and technology and associated industries, and reduced import quotas, taxes and tariffs on technology-based industries, especially computers, airlines, defence and telecommunications. He introduced measures significantly reducing the License Raj - allowing businesses and individuals to purchase capital, consumer goods and import without red-tape and bureaucratic restrictions. In 1986, Rajiv announced a national education policy to modernize and expand higher education programs across India.

Rajiv authorized an extensive police and Army campaign against the militants in Punjab. A state of martial law existed in the region, and civil liberties, commerce and tourism were greatly disrupted. There are many accusations of human rights violations by police officials in this period, but the militancy was brought under control. 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.

But Rajiv's government suffered a major setback when its efforts to arbitrate between the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE rebels backfired. As per the peace accords signed in 1987, the LTTE would disarm to the Indian Peace Keeping Force which was sent to Sri Lanka. But distrust and a few incidents of conflict broke out into open fighting between the LTTE militants and Indian soldiers. Over a thousand Indian soldiers were killed, and pressure increased from the Sri Lankan government and nationalist politicians on the Indians to cease to interfere in the domestic crisis. Rajiv Gandhi withdrew the Indian soldiers in a situation which clearly pointed at the failure of Indian diplomacy and military tactics.

Main article: Bofors scandal
Rajiv's finance minister, Vishwanath Pratap Singh uncovered compromising details about government and political corruption, to the consternation of Congress leaders. Transferred to the Defence ministry, Singh uncovered what became known as the Bofors scandal, involving tens of millions of dollars - concerned alleged payoffs by the Swedish Bofors arms company through an Italian businessman and Gandhi family associate, Ottavio Quattrocchi, in return for Indian contracts. Upon the uncovering of the scandal, Singh was conspicuously dismissed from office, and later from Congress membership. Rajiv Gandhi himself was later personally implicated in the scandal, when the investigation was continued by Narasimhan Ram and Chitra Subramaniam of The Hindu newspaper, shattering his image as an honest politician.

V. P. Singh's image as an exposer of government corruption made him very popular with the public, and opposition parties united under his name to form the Janata Dal coalition. In the 1989 elections, the Congress suffered a major setback. With the support of Indian communists and the Bharatiya Janata Party, V. P. Singh and his Janata Dal formed a government. Rajiv Gandhi became the Leader of the Opposition, while remaining Congress president. It is speculated that Rajiv and Congress leaders engineered the collapse of V. P. Singh's government in 1990 by promising support to Chandra Shekhar, a high-ranking leader in the Janata Dal. Rajiv's Congress offered outside support briefly to Chandra Sekhar, who became Prime Minister. But this support was withdrawn in 1991 and fresh elections were announced.

Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Sriperumbudur on May 21, 1991, a city close to Chennai, whilst campaigning for a UCPI candidate in Tamil Nadu, by the suicide bomber Thenmuli Rajaratnam A.K.A Dhanu. Dhanu is widely believed to have been a LTTE member.

In 1998 an Indian court convicted 26 people in the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi. The conspirators, who consisted of Tamil militants from Sri Lanka and their Indian allies, had sought to stop Gandhi from getting elected in the then upcoming elections. They wanted to stop him from sending Indian troops into Sri Lanka as he had done in 1987 (where he was assaulted by a Sinhalese nationalist sailor, Wijayamuni Wijitha Rohana, while inspecting a guard of honour) to help enforce a peace accord.

Those troops ended up fighting the Tamil separatist guerrillas. His death brought the ailing Congress Party back into power in the 1991 general election on a similar wave of feeling as had followed his mother's assassination. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1991. A magnificent memorial, christened Veer Bhumi was constructed at his cremation spot.