Modern Era · South Asia · Politics

1984

Indira Gandhi assassinated

October 31, 1984

In her New Delhi garden, the Indian prime minister was shot by two of her own Sikh bodyguards, in revenge for her ordering troops into the Golden Temple at Amritsar months earlier. Days of anti-Sikh riots killed perhaps three thousand in Delhi alone. Her son Rajiv became prime minister. He too would die by assassination.