Today, 31-10-2011, on the 27th death anniversary of former priime minister of India smt. Indira Gandhi, the country led by President Smt. Pratibha Patil fondly remembers her and pays its respects. Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, who served as the prime minister of India for three consecutive terms (1966-77) and a fourth term (1980-84) was assassinated on 31 October in 1984. In New Delhi this morning, Vice President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul paid floral tributes to the late leader at her memorial 'Shakti Sthal' on the banks of river Yamuna.

27 years ago, Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards - Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, who fired 33 bullets into her chest and abdomen, killing her at her own residence. Beant was killed in the gun fire. Satwant Singh was arrested and later sentenced to death along with conspirator Kehar Singh. The sentence was carried out on 6 January, 1989. The assassination which changed the history of India was said to have been motivated by Operation Blue Star, an attack on Sikh separatists holed up in Golden Temple complex in Amritsar.

At twelve years of age, Indira became the leader of a children’s group, whose purpose was to help end British control in India. In 1938, Indira finally joined the Indian National Congress Party, something she always longed to do. In 1942, she married journalist Feroze Gandhi. Soon after the couple was married, they were sent to prison on charges of subversion by the British. Noted for her charismatic authority and political astuteness, Gandhi adhered to the quasi-socialist policies of industrial development that were begun by her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, who became the prime minister after India won its independence in 1947.

As a minister, Indira Gandhi encouraged and started a family planning program. She also promoted the views of Nehru to establish India’s stability and security interests as independent from those of the nuclear superpowers, by authorizing the development of nuclear weapons in 1967. She was also the leader who transformed India’s chronic food shortages into surplus production of wheat, rice, cotton and milk through the Green Revolution.

However, Gandhi was also the only Indian Prime Minister to have declared a state of emergency in order to ‘rule by decree’ and the only Indian Prime Minister to have been imprisoned after holding that office. She became unpopular among the masses after implementing ‘emergency’ and the general feeling was that she used the emergency provisions to grant herself extraordinary powers.

On Nehru’s death in 1964, Gandhi was elected to Parliament in his place. After acting as Minister of Information and Broadcasting (1964-6), Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister on the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966. In 1971, her popularity made her win again by an enormous margin. The second female in the world to hold the office of prime minister, after Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, Indira Gandhi remains the world’s second longest serving female Prime Minister as of 2011.

As if she had a premonition, she said sometime before her death "If I die a violent death as some fear and a few are plotting, I know the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassin, not in my dying……!" The courage, belief and faith in her words shall always inspire the nation and will be remembered forever.