7 Augusto Pinochet 7

stand trial on charges stemming from Operation Colombo

and on separate charges relating to tax evasion.

Indira Gandhi

(b. Nov. 19, 1917, Allahabad, India—d. Oct. 31, 1984, New Delhi)

I

ndira Gandhi served as prime minister of India for

three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and a fourth

term from 1980 to 1984 before she was assassinated by

Sikh extremists.

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi was the only child of

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of indepen-

dent India. She attended Visva-Bharati University, West

Bengal, and the University of Oxford, and in 1942, she

married Feroze Gandhi (d. 1960), a fellow member of the

Indian National Congress (Congress Party). She was a

member of the working committee of the ruling Congress

Party from 1955, and in 1959 she was elected to the largely

honorary post of party president. Lal Bahadur Shastri,

who succeeded Nehru as prime minister in 1964, named

her minister of information and broadcasting in his

government.

Upon Shastri’s sudden death in January 1966, Gandhi

became leader of the Congress Party—and thus also prime

minister—in a compromise between the right and left

wings of the party. Her leadership, however, came under

continual challenge from the right wing of the party, led by

a former minister of finance, Morarji Desai. In the elec-

tion of 1967, she won a slim majority and had to accept

Desai as deputy prime minister. In 1971, however, she won

a sweeping electoral victory over a coalition of conserva-

tive parties. Gandhi strongly supported East Bengal (now

Bangladesh) in its secessionist conflict with Pakistan in

late 1971, and India’s armed forces achieved a swift and