To date, Rajiv Gandhi is the youngest Prime Minister of India who was assumed office at the age of 40. After his mother, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 by her bodyguards, Rajiv Gandhi was unwillingly thrust onto the centre stage of Indian politics.
August 20, 2021 marks Rajiv Gandhi’s 77th birth anniversary. With a passion for flying, he was never interested in politics the way his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi was.
Rajiv Gandhi holds a commercial pilot licence
Before completing his schooling at the residential Doon School, Rajiv Gandhi was a student of the Welham Boys’ Preparatory School in Dehradun. After his schooling, Rajiv Gandhi moved to Cambridge where he was enrolled at Trinity College. Soon he shifted to London’s Imperial College but was unable to finish his course. On his return to India, Rajiv Gandhi became a pilot with Indian Airlines after securing a commercial pilot’s licence from the Delhi Flying Club.
The meaning of Rajiv
The word Rajiv means Kamal (lotus), which is a remembrance of his maternal grandmother Kamala Nehru who was the wife of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The word “Kamala” means Goddess Laxmi.
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The first political election
A commercial pilot with Indian Airlines for 10 years, he was forced to enter politics before his brother’s death in 1980. Rajiv Gandhi’s first election win was from Amethi, a constituency his brother represented in Parliament. Former Congress President and Rajiv Gandhi’s son, Rahul Gandhi also contested and won three times from the same constituency before losing to BJP’s Smriti Irani in 2019’s Lok Sabha elections.
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Claiming the throne
After Indira Gandhi’s broad daylight assassination in 1984, Rajiv Gandhi not only became the Prime Minister of India but also the president of the Congress party. Under his leadership, Congress managed to secure a resounding victory of 414 seats in that year’s Lok Sabha elections which is the record for the highest number of seats a party ever won to date.
Assassination in Tamil Nadu
During a general elections campaign rally in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu in May 1991, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a suicide bomber of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).