Rajiv Gandhi was born on August 20, 1944 in
Mumbai. Rajiv attended Cambridge University, where he met and married Sonia. Rajiv had no outstanding academic achievements or other distinctions, and appears to have had few ambitions. A pilot by profession, Rajiv was never interested in politics. The sudden death of Sanjay led Rajiv Gandhi into the field of politics. Thus he became heir to the political heritage of his mother,
Indira Gandhi and grandfather,
Jawaharlal Nehru. Later he took the oath as the Prime Minister of the country, on October 31, 1984 and served India till 1989.
Rajiv Gandhi could not contribute much towards solving problems in India, his vision and mission were more in line with that of a technocrat. A significant but controversial move made by him was sending a peace keeping force to Sri Lanka, to aid the government there control the militant Tamils, who were clamoring for a separate Tamil state. Rajiv's political sojourn was marred by a number of corruption charges, including the notorious Bofors scandal.
Rajiv Gandhi met a tragic end on May 21, 1991 at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, when in the course of a political campaign, he was killed in a bomb explosion initiated by a Tamil suicide bomber.
