Rajiv Gandhi Birth Anniversary: Interesting Facts About Youngest Prime Minister of India

Rajiv Gandhi, who served as the seventh Prime Minister of India from 1984 to 1989, was born on August 20, 1944. Named after his maternal grandmother Kamala Nehru, wife of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi was the last member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to hold the post of Prime Minister of India. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on May 21, 1991, in a public meeting while campaigning in Tamil Nadu’s Sriperumbudur for a Lok Sabha Congress candidate.

On the late leader’s birth anniversary, here’s looking at a few interesting facts about him:

• Rajiv Gandhi was a pilot before he had joined politics and hardly showed interest in following the footsteps of his mother (Indira Gandhi) and grandfather (Jawaharlal Nehru).
• Rajiv Gandhi remained apolitical till his brother Sanjay Gandhi’s death in 1980.
• Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister of India when he was 40. He became the youngest Prime Minister of the country and sworn-in on October 31, 1984, the same day his mother was assassinated by her own bodyguards.
• Rajiv Gandhi was also a keen photographer. After his death, his wife, Sonia Gandhi came out with the book “Rajiv’s World: Photographs by Rajiv Gandhi”. The book has photographs clicked by Rajiv over four decades.
• Rajiv Gandhi was perhaps one of the only Prime Ministers of India who frequently drove himself around. He is known to have driven himself around even during his election campaigns.
• Rajiv Gandhi met Antonia Maino while she was a waitress during his college days in the UK. The two would later marry and she would become Sonia Gandhi.
• Rajiv Gandhi joined Air India in 1970 and worked there till he got into politics in 1980.
• It was under his leadership that the Congress won its largest majority in the Lok Sabha, with a record 411 seats of the 542.
• He was nicknamed Mr Clean because of his fight against corruption.
• At the age of 40, Rajiv Gandhi became the youngest Prime Minister of India. He was sworn-in on October 31, 1984, the same day his mother got assassinated by her own bodyguards.
• He was posthumously awarded India’s highest civilian award, Bharat Ratna in 1991, by the Indian government.

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