Indira Gandhi Is Assassinated
- Date
- 1984
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- South Asia (India)
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984 by her own bodyguards, an act that convulsed the world's largest democracy.
On the morning of 31 October 1984, as she walked through the garden of her New Delhi residence, two Sikh members of her security detail, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, opened fire, killing her. The assassination was revenge for Operation Blue Star that June, when Gandhi had ordered the army to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine, to flush out armed separatists; the assault killed hundreds and outraged Sikhs worldwide. Her death unleashed anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and elsewhere in which thousands of Sikhs were massacred, a pogrom that left deep and lasting communal wounds. Gandhi, daughter of independent India's first prime minister and a dominant, often authoritarian figure who had once imposed emergency rule, was succeeded by her son Rajiv Gandhi. The killing underscored the volatile intertwining of religion, separatism and politics in India and reshaped the country's turbulent 1980s.
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Empires active in 1984
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Yugoslavia1918 CE – 1992 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Indira Gandhi Imposes India's Emergency1975–1977
- Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi1948
- Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika1985–1991 (from 11 March 1985)
- Fall of the Berlin Wall9 November 1989
- Iranian RevolutionJanuary–February 1979
- Revolutions of 1989 across Eastern Europe1989 (Autumn of Nations)
Further reading
The wider story
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy
Magisterial, readable history of the subcontinent since independence.
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