Nehru–Gandhi family

The Nehru - Gandhi family is the most influential political family of India. The Nehru - Gandhi family has dominated the Congress Party during most of its history. Three family members had held the office of prime minister, a fourth member of the family gave up this office in May 2004.

The Nehru Brahmins are originally from Kashmir, known as Kashmiri Pandits. The foundations of their influence were laid by Motilal Nehru (1861-1931), who was a prominent lawyer and early activist in the Indian independence movement. Motilal was president of the Congress Party, his son Jawaharlal Nehru followed him to this office in 1929. Jawaharlal was then the most prominent political leader of the Indian independence movement. He was in close contact with the figurehead of this movement Mahatma Gandhi, who is not related to the Nehru - Gandhi family. This random name similarity with the highly respected in all walks of Indian leader of the Indian independence movement has been for the Nehru - Gandhi family of great political benefit. The positive sound of the name Gandhi has influenced millions of voters.

When India gained independence in 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru became prime minister, and remained so until his death in 1964. Nehru's sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit ( 1900-1990 ) was also a prominent politician of the Congress Party and served as leading diplomat in 1953, the General Assembly of the United Nations as President.

Nehru supported his only child, Indira Gandhi, where he could, and brought them into his cabinet. Indira had received through marriage to Feroze Gandhi (1912-1960), a parsing whose last name. In 1966, two years after her father's death and after a brief interlude under Lal Bahadur Shastri as Prime Minister, Indira took over the post of her father, whom she retained until her election defeat in 1977. In this first term as prime minister she brought her son Sanjay Gandhi in leading positions, but because of allegations of abuse of power and her son contributed to its electoral defeat in 1977. Sanjay, who had married a Sikh Maneka Gandhi, died in a plane crash in 1980.

Indira Gandhi came after the elections in 1980 returned to power and remained until her assassination in 1984 at the office. After the death of her favorite son Sanjay, she built her eldest son Rajiv Gandhi, who had until then shown little interest in politics and was the pilot for an airline, to her successor. This followed her then to her murder without problems in the Office of the Prime Minister. Rajiv Gandhi lost the elections of 1989 and thus also his office, but he had before his assassination in 1991 a good chance to gain the office of Prime Minister again. He left behind his wife Sonia Gandhi and his two children Rahul and Priyanka.

Arun Nehru, the cousin of Rajiv Gandhi had successively held two ministerial posts in the cabinet of Rajiv, but later moved to rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP ).

After Rajiv's death, the Congress party of PV Narasimha Rao, a longtime confidant of the Nehru - Gandhi family was out, but many loyalists in the party wanted a member of the Nehru - Gandhi family as party leader. Carefully, Sonia Gandhi went into politics and quickly became the eminence grise of the party until 1998 officially entered the political arena and the party leadership took over.

Although the Congress party lost the 1999 elections, but the party Sonia Gandhi had given a new impetus. 2004 won the Congress Party, surprisingly, the election in which even Rahul Gandhi, son of Rajiv and Sonia, won a seat in Parliament. Sonia unexpectedly renounced to the prime minister after she was attacked from different sides because of their Italian ancestry.

Sanjay Gandhi's widow Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun Gandhi has been pushed to Sanjay's death of Indira Gandhi of the Congress Party, as the ambitious Maneka, in contrast to Sonia politically did not want to submit to her mother, who - like Nehru - a secular, national policy for all citizen of India tried to operate regardless of their religion. Maneka and her son are now both in the competitive BJP, which operates a religiously based policies that address primarily the interests of the Hindus.

• Ganga Dhar Nehru Motilal Nehru ( politician and lawyer ) ( Father ) Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit ( politician ) - (daughter of Motilal ) Nayantara Sahgal ( writer and journalist )

• Indira Gandhi ( Prime Minister, 1966-1977 and 1980-1984 ) (daughter of Jawaharlal ) ∞ Feroze Gandhi ( politician) Rajiv Gandhi (Prime Minister, 1984-1989 ) (son of Indira ) ∞ Sonia Gandhi ( politician ) Rahul Gandhi ( politician) (son of Rajiv )
• Priyanka Gandhi ( politician ) (daughter of Rajiv )

• Varun Gandhi ( politician ) - ( Son of Sanjay )

• Shyam Lal Nehru ∞ Uma Nehru ( Member of Parliament in the House of Commons) Shyam Kumari ( Member of Parliament in the House of Lords)
• Anand Nehru Arun Nehru (Minister under his cousin Rajiv Gandhi )