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Rajiv Gandhi had greatness thrust upon him. The death of his brother Sanjay in a plane crash brought him into politics, the assassination of his mother Indira pitched him into the Prime Minister's chair and, finally, his death at the hands of a suicide bomber made him a martyr.
Until 1980, Rajiv was content being a pilot for the Indian Airlines. Educated at Doon School, Imperial College, London, and Cambridge University, where he met and married Sonia, Rajiv left the hurly-burly of politics to his mother and brother. Once drafted in, however, he tried to reform the bureaucracy and the economy. Rajiv's attempts to discourage separatist movements in Punjab and Kashmir backfired, and after his government got embroiled in several financial scandals, his leadership became increasingly ineffectual. He resigned as Prime Minister in November 1989.
Rajiv was killed by a suicide bomber of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam apparently as a vindictive act because the Indian troops he had sent to Sri Lanka in 1987 to help enforce a peace accord ended up fighting the LTTE.
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