Indira Gandhi
Prime Minister of India who ordered Operation Blue Star in June 1984 and was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards on 31 October.
Indira Gandhi, born in 1917, the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, was Prime Minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 to 1984.
In the 1970s she imposed the Emergency, and the Akali Dal led the largest campaign of resistance to it. In the early 1980s her government dealt with the Akali demands of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution through delay and repression, and in June 1984 she ordered Operation Blue Star, the army assault on the Harmandir Sahib complex during the gurpurab of Guru Arjan, in which the Akal Takht was destroyed and thousands were killed, many of them pilgrims.
On 31 October 1984 she was shot dead by two of her Sikh bodyguards, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh. Her death was followed by the organised massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and across India.
