Indira Gandhi Born: India's Iron Lady Arrives

Indira Gandhi was shot by her own bodyguards at 9:20 in the morning on October 31, 1984, walking to an interview with Peter Ustinov in her garden at 1 Safdarjung Road in New Delhi. Two Sikh guards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, fired thirty-one bullets from point-blank range. She died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences hours later. The assassination was revenge for Operation Blue Star, the Indian Army's June 1984 assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest site, which Gandhi had ordered to flush out Sikh militants who had fortified the complex. The operation killed hundreds of people and damaged the Akal Takht, the seat of Sikh temporal authority. Sikhs worldwide viewed the attack as an assault on their faith. Gandhi had been warned repeatedly that her Sikh bodyguards posed a security risk and was advised to remove them from her detail. She refused, reportedly telling an aide that removing them would demonstrate a lack of trust in India's Sikh community. Her son Rajiv was sworn in as prime minister within hours of her death. Anti-Sikh riots erupted across India in the following days, concentrated in Delhi, where organized mobs burned Sikh businesses, homes, and gurdwaras. The official death toll was 2,733, though human rights organizations estimated the true number was significantly higher. Police were widely accused of standing aside or actively participating. Multiple commissions investigated the riots over the following decades. She was born on November 19, 1917, in Allahabad, the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, and she dominated Indian politics for nearly two decades as the country's only female prime minister.