Jawaharlal Nehru was prime minister of free India from August 1947 till his death in May 1964. His daughter Indira Gandhi served two tenures as prime minister—from January 1966 to March 1977 and from January 1980 to October 1984, when she was assassinated. On her death her son Rajiv Gandhi, an airline pilot-turned-party functionary, was immediately sworn in as prime minister and was elected in his own right, riding a political sympathy wave generated by his mother’s assassination, in December 1984. He served a full term till December 1989, when his party was defeated in the elections.
