Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum

The Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum, located in New Delhi, is dedicated to India’s first female Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Housed in her former residence, the museum showcases her personal belongings, photographs, and documents, offering insights into her life and political career.

Planning your visit

Indira Gandhi was assassinated in the garden of this house on 31 October 1984, shot by two of her own Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for Operation Blue Star, the army assault on the Golden Temple months earlier. Her official residence at 1 Safdarjung Road opened as a memorial museum shortly afterwards.

The rooms are preserved: her study, drawing room and bedroom, with personal effects, books and photographs. A crystal-covered path marks her final walk, ending at the spot where she was shot, and the sari she was wearing — bloodstained and bullet-torn — is displayed, as are the clothes her son Rajiv was wearing when he was assassinated by a suicide bomber in 1991.

The displays cover her political career, the independence movement she grew up inside as Nehru's daughter, and her premiership. The Emergency of 1975 to 1977, when she suspended civil liberties and jailed opponents, receives limited treatment, which is worth knowing.

It is a museum of a dynasty as much as an individual, and it sits within a short distance of other Delhi memorials to the same family. Allow an hour. Admission is generally free. Current availability is shown below.