Indira Gandhi, one of the best-known women of the 20th
century, was Prime Minister of India, and daughter of former
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Also known as Indira Nehru
Gandhi, was born on November 19, 1917 to Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru and his young wife Kamala Nehru. She was their only
child. The Nehru family can trace their ancestry to the
Brahmins of Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi. Indira's grandfather
Motilal Nehru was a wealthy barrister of Allahabad in Uttar
Pradesh. Nehru was one of the most prominent members of
the Indian National Congress in pre-Gandhi times and would
go on to author the Nehru Report, the people's choice for
a future Indian system of government as opposed to the British
system. Her father Nehru was a well-educated lawyer and
was a popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement.
At the time of Indira's birth, Nehru entered the independence
movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi.
Indira Gandhi had a lonely childhood, with some of her most
vivid remembrances being the entry into her home of British
policemen. As her parents did not want to send her to any
of the British schools in India, Indira Gandhi's education
took place at a series of Indian schools and at non-British
schools in Europe, with a number of private tutorials interspersed
between periods at school.
Indira created the Vanara Sena movement for young girls
and boys which played a small but notable role in the Indian
Independence Movement, conducting protests and flag marches,
as well as helping Congress politicians circulate sensitive
publications and banned materials. In an often-told story,
she smuggled out from her father's police-watched house
an important document in her schoolbag that outlined plans
for a major revolutionary initiative in the early 1930s.
