Decade that shaped Rajiv Gandhi's destiny

Rajiv Gandhi was born in Mumbai on August 20, 1944, at the house of Krishna Hutheesing, paternal aunt of his mother Indira Gandhi. Jawaharlal Nehru, then incarcerated in Ahmednagar Fort, abandoned his famous scientific temper for the time being after learning about the birth of the first of his two grandsons and wrote to Hutheesing to find a “competent astrologer” to draw up the baby’s horoscope.

This letter was to be dug up by the BJP six decades later in 2014 when then HRD Minister Smriti Irani faced criticism from opponents for consulting a palmist and diluting the “scientific temper” promoted by Nehru.

Assuming that a horoscope was drawn up for the infant, it would be interesting to see if it contained any forecast about the dramatic events that would unfold in Rajiv’s life soon after he turned 36.

Rajiv, who was working as a commercial pilot, got drawn into politics in the wake of his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi’s untimely death in 1980. Rajiv contested and won the byelection to Sanjay’s Lok Sabha constituency, Amethi.

The next dramatic turn in Rajiv’s life came three years later in 1984 when his mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was killed by her bodyguards. Rajiv got sworn in as PM on October 31, 1984, the very day his mother was assassinated. He was then a little over 40 years of age. Rajiv would meet his untimely end at the hands of an LTTE operative while campaigning in Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991.

The most eventful phase of Rajiv’s life was, thus, shaped by deaths, all in a matter of a decade. Sanjay’s death pushed him into politics since there was no one else to carry forward the legacy of the formidable Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty. Four years later, Indira Gandhi’s assassination catapulted him to the post of PM.

The abrupt end to Gandhi’s life (he was only 46) also shows the danger lurking behind the charmed life of the subcontinent’s political elite.

As PM, Rajiv introduced a number of reforms. His decision to lower the voting age to 18 from 21 and reserve seats for women in panchayats and urban local bodies had a lasting impact. The telecom reforms spearheaded by Sam Pitroda with Rajiv’s backing played a pivotal role in making India a leading player in the IT service sector.

From a record 404 seats in the 1984 General Election, the Congress was reduced to 197 seats when elections were held in 1989. Accusations hurled at Rajiv regarding receiving commission in the purchase of Bofors guns, cold feet developed by him in the Shah Bano case — his government diluted a Supreme Court order upholding Muslim women’s right to alimony and passed a law restricting the right of Muslim divorcees to alimony from their former husbands to only 90 days — apparently made Rajiv unpopular among the masses, not long after they voted him in with massive numbers.

His fall from grace was yet another drama that marked Rajiv’s short public life.