75 Facts About Rajiv Gandhi

Rajiv Gandhi was an Indian politician who served as the 6th prime minister of India from 1984 to 1989.

Rajiv Gandhi took office after the assassination of his mother, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to become the youngest Indian Prime minister at the age of 40.

Rajiv Gandhi attended college at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

Rajiv Gandhi returned to India in 1966 and became a professional pilot for the state-owned Indian Airlines.

Rajiv Gandhi's leadership was tested over the next few days as organised mobs of Congress supporters rioted against the Sikh community, resulting in anti-Sikh massacres in Delhi.

Rajiv Gandhi's son Rahul Gandhi was a Member of Parliament until being disqualified in March 2023 after being convicted in a criminal defamation case and was the President of the Indian National Congress till 2019.

Rajiv Gandhi was born in Bombay on 20 August 1944 to Indira and Feroze Gandhi.

Rajiv Gandhi was admitted to the Welham Boys' School, Dehradun and Doon School, Dehradun in 1954, where Sanjay joined him two years later.

Rajiv Gandhi was educated at the Ecole D'Humanite, an international boarding school in Switzerland.

Rajiv Gandhi left the Doon School in 1961 with a second-class certificate, having performed well in his final subjects apart from a pass mark in chemistry.

D'Rozario, who had been a college classmate of Feroze Rajiv Gandhi, recommended that Rajiv Gandhi should read engineering, and met with Mark Pryor, the Senior Tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Rajiv Gandhi passed on his second attempt in June, and was admitted to Trinity on 4 September 1962, joining the college in October.

Rajiv Gandhi really was not studious enough, as he went on to admit later.

Rajiv Gandhi returned to India in 1966, the year his mother became prime minister.

Rajiv Gandhi went to Delhi and became a member of the Flying Club, where he trained as a pilot.

In 1968, after three years of courtship, he married Edvige Antonia Albina Maino, who changed her name to Sonia Rajiv Gandhi and made India her home.

In 1972, the couple had a daughter, Priyanka Rajiv Gandhi, who married Robert Vadra.

Rajiv Gandhi was a friend of Amitabh Bachchan, and was familiar with Bachchan even before he launched his acting career.

On 23 June 1980, Rajiv's younger brother Sanjay Gandhi died unexpectedly in an aeroplane crash.

At that time, Rajiv Gandhi was in London as part of his foreign tour.

Rajiv Gandhi advised Rajiv not to fly aeroplanes and instead "dedicate himself to the service of the nation".

Rajiv Gandhi entered politics on 16 February 1981, when he addressed a national farmers' rally in Delhi.

On 4 May 1981, Indira Rajiv Gandhi presided over a meeting of the All India Congress Committee.

Rajiv Gandhi then paid the party membership fees of the party and flew to Sultanpur to file his nomination papers and completed other formalities.

Rajiv Gandhi won the seat, defeating Lok Dal candidate Sharad Yadav by a margin of 237,000 votes.

Rajiv Gandhi first showed his organisational ability by "working round the clock" on the 1982 Asian Games.

Rajiv Gandhi was one of 33 members of the Indian parliament who were part of the Games' organising committee; sports historian Boria Majumdar writes that being "son of the prime minister he had a moral and unofficial authority" over the others.

The report submitted by the Asian Games committee mentions Rajiv Gandhi's "drive, zeal and initiative" for the "outstanding success" of the games.

Rajiv Gandhi was in West Bengal on 31 October 1984 when his mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, to avenge the military attack on the Golden Temple during Operation Blue Star.

Sardar Buta Singh and President Zail Singh pressed Rajiv Gandhi to succeed his mother as prime minister within hours of her murder.

Rajiv Gandhi officially became the president of the Congress party, which won a landslide victory with the largest majority in history of the Indian Parliament, giving Rajiv Gandhi absolute control of government.

Rajiv Gandhi benefited from his youth and a general perception of being free of a background in corrupt politics.

Rajiv Gandhi took his oath on 31 December 1984; at 40, he was the youngest prime minister of India.

Rajiv Gandhi said he would monitor their performance and would "fire ministers who do not come to the mark".

Rajiv Gandhi administered and created the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

Rajiv Gandhi had announced 'Sandesh Yatra' at the plenary session of AICC in Mumbai in 1985.

Rajiv Gandhi sought to liberalize India's trade policies but faced stiff opposition to the proposed reforms.

Rajiv Gandhi did so by providing incentives to make private production profitable.

Rajiv Gandhi increased government support for science, technology and associated industries, and reduced import quotas, taxes and tariffs on technology-based industries, especially computers, airlines, defence and telecommunications.

Rajiv Gandhi introduced measures to significantly reduce the Licence Raj after 1990, allowing businesses and individuals to purchase capital, consumer goods and import without bureaucratic restrictions.

In 1986, by request of the president of Seychelles France-Albert Rene, Rajiv Gandhi sent India's navy to Seychelles to oppose an attempted coup against Rene.

Rajiv Gandhi dispatched 1500 soldiers and the coup was suppressed.

On Thursday, 9 June 1988, at the fifteenth special session of the United Nations General Assembly, held at Headquarters, New York, Rajiv Gandhi made vocal his views on a world free of nuclear weapons, to be realised through an, 'Action Plan for Ushering in a Nuclear-Weapon Free and Non-Violent World Order.

In February 1987, the Pakistani president Zia-ul-Haq visited Delhi, where he met Rajiv Gandhi to discuss "routine military exercises of the Indian army" on the borders of Rajasthan and Punjab.

Rajiv Gandhi reciprocated, in December 1988, by visiting Islamabad and meeting the new prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, to reaffirm the 1972 Shimla agreement.

Rajiv Gandhi discussed the matter with the Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa at the SAARC meeting in 1986.

In that year, the Sri Lankan army blockaded the Tamil majority district of Jaffna; Rajiv Gandhi ordered relief supplies to be dropped into the area by parachute because the Sri Lankan navy did not allow the Indian Navy to enter.

On 30 July 1987, a day after Rajiv Gandhi went to Sri Lanka and signed the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, an honour guard named Vijitha Rohana hit him on his shoulder with his rifle; Rajiv Gandhi's quick reflexes saved him from injury.

Rajiv Gandhi lifted the ban on All India Sikh Students Federation and filed an inquiry into the 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots.

Rajiv Gandhi held a closed-door meeting with senior Akali Dal leaders to find a solution to the Punjab problem.

In May 1988, Rajiv Gandhi launched the Operation Black Thunder to clear the Golden Temple in Amritsar of arms and gunmen.

Rajiv Gandhi's prime-ministership marked an increase of insurgency in northeast India.

In 1987, Rajiv Gandhi addressed this problem; Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh were given the status of states that were earlier union territories.

Rajiv Gandhi ended the Assam Movement, which was launched by Assamese people to protest against the alleged illegal migration of Bangladeshi Muslims and immigration of other Bengalis to their state, which had reduced the Assamese to a minority there.

Rajiv Gandhi signed the Assam Accord on 15 August 1985.

Rajiv Gandhi employed former Rockwell International executive Sam Pitroda as his adviser on public information infrastructure and innovation.

Rajiv Gandhi's government allowed the import of fully assembled motherboards, which led to the price of computers being reduced.

Rajiv Gandhi was later personally implicated in the scandal when the investigation was continued by Narasimhan Ram and Chitra Subramaniam of The Hindu newspaper, damaging his image as an honest politician.

Rajiv Gandhi told Rajiv Gandhi about this and instituted an enquiry.

Mukherjee said Rajiv Gandhi explained his position in a meeting between the two at the prime minister's residence on 19 June 1989.

Eminent lawyer and politician, former Law Minister of India Ram Jethmalani said that as prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi was "lacklustre and mediocre".

Rajiv Gandhi chose Champaran as the starting point for his 'Bharat Yatra'.

Rajiv Gandhi started the Sadbhavna Yatra from Charminar in Hyderabad on 19 October 1990.

In 1992, the Indian newspapers Times of India and The Hindu published reports alleging that Rajiv Gandhi had received funds from the KGB.

The letter says the KGB maintained contact with Rajiv Gandhi, who expressed his gratitude to the KGB for benefits accruing to his family from commercial dealings of a controlled firm.

Albats later said that in December 1985, Chebrikov had asked for authorisation from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to make payments to family members of Rajiv Gandhi, including Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

Rajiv Gandhi's mutilated body was airlifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi for post-mortem, reconstruction and embalming.

Rajiv Gandhi was cremated at Veer Bhumi, on the banks of the river Yamuna near the shrines of his mother Indira Gandhi, brother Sanjay Gandhi, and grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru.

Thomas, confirmed that Rajiv Gandhi was killed because of personal animosity by the LTTE chief Prabhakaran arising from his sending the Indian Peace Keeping Force to Sri Lanka and the IPKF atrocities against Sri Lankan Tamils.

The Rajiv Gandhi administration had already antagonised other Tamil militant organisations like PLOTE for reversing the 1988 military coup in Maldives.

Nalini Sriharan, the only surviving member of the five-member squad behind the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, is serving life imprisonment.

Nalini regrets the killing of Rajiv Gandhi and said the real conspirators have not been caught yet.

Rajiv Gandhi argued that even life convicts were released after 14 years.

Rajiv Gandhi said the government was "planning to rename" all the stadia in Haryana state named after him.

India's Rajiv is a 1991 Indian documentary television series by Simi Garewal, released closely after Gandhi's assassination it covers his life up to that event.