Narendra Damodardas Modi is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current Prime Minister of India since 2014. He was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament for Varanasi. Modi, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is a Hindu nationalist and member of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India, which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned. Modi was appointed the general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee coordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned.

Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations.

Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists. During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In the Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency.

Among the people he met in this role were traded unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures. In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.

Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra(Journey for Unity). However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead of establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersinh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision.

Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections. In November of that year, Modi was elected BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections.

Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections, and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.

Manmohan Singh is an Indian economist and politician who served as the Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014. The first Sikh in office, Singh was also the first prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected after completing a full five-year term.

Born in Gah (now in Punjab, Pakistan), Singh's family migrated to India during its partition in 1947. After obtaining his doctorate in economics from Oxford, Singh worked for the United Nations during 1966–69. He subsequently began his bureaucratic career when Lalit Narayan Mishra hired him as an advisor in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Over the 70s and 80s, Singh held several key posts in the Government of India, such as Chief Economic Advisor (1972–76), Reserve Bank governor (1982–85) and Planning Commission head (1985–87).

In 2004, when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power, its chairperson Sonia Gandhi unexpectedly relinquished the premiership to Manmohan Singh. Singh's first ministry executed several key legislation and projects, including the Rural Health Mission, Unique Identification Authority, Guarantee scheme and Right to Information Act.

In 2008, opposition to a historic civil nuclear agreement with the United States nearly caused Singh's government to fall after Front parties withdrew their support. Although India's economy grew rapidly under UPA I, its security was threatened by several terrorist incidents (including the 2008 Mumbai attacks) and the continuing Maoist insurgency.

In June 1991, India's Prime Minister at the time, P. V. Narasimha Rao, chose Singh to be his Finance Minister. Singh told Mark Tully the British journalist in 2005 "On the day (Rao) was formulating his cabinet, he sent his Principal Secretary to me saying, 'The PM would like you to become the Minister of Finance'. I did not take it seriously. He eventually tracked me down the next morning, rather angry, and demanded that I get dressed up and come to Rashtrapati Bhavan for the swearing in. So that's how I started in politics".

Atal Bihari Vajpayee is an Indian politician who was the 10th Prime Minister of India, first term for 13 days in 1996 and then from 1998 to 2004. A senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) political party, he is the first non-Indian National Congress Prime Minister to serve a full five-year term. At age 93, Vajpayee is currently the oldest living former Indian Prime Minister.

A parliamentarian for over four decades, Vajpayee was elected to the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament of India) ten times, and twice to the Rajya Sabha (upper house). He also served as the Member of Parliament for Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, until 2009, when he retired from active politics due to health concerns. Vajpayee was one amongst the founder members of erstwhile Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which he had also headed. He was also the Minister of External Affairs in the cabinet of Morarji Desai. When Janata government collapsed, Vajpayee restarted the Jana Sangh as the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980.

On 25 December 2014, the office of President of India announced the Bharat Ratna award, India's highest civilian honour, to Vajpayee. The President of India conferred Bharat Ratna to Atal Bihari Vajpayee at his residence on 27 March 2015. His birthday, 25 December, was declared "Good Governance Day".

Inder Kumar Gujral was an Indian politician who served as the 11th Prime Minister of India from April 1997 to March 1998. Gujral was the third PM to be from the Rajya Sabha, the first being Indira Gandhi (January 1966 - March 1977) and the second H. D. Deve Gowda (June 1996 - April 1997) and followed by Manmohan Singh (May 2004 - May 2014).

Gujral became vice-president of the New Delhi Municipal Committee in 1958 and joined the Congress party (INC) in 1964. He was close to Indira Gandhi and became a member of the Rajya Sabha in April 1964. During the emergency of June 1975, Gujral was Minister of Information and Broadcasting, where he was in charge of the media during a time of censorship in India and was in charge of Doordarshan. He again was selected to the Rajya Sabha to serve until 1976. He also served as Water Resources Minister. Later, Gujral was appointed Ambassador of India to the Soviet Union by Indira Gandhi and stayed on during the tenures of Morarji Desai and Charan Singh.

Gujral resigned from the Indian National Congress party in the 1980s. Then he joined the Janata Dal. In the Indian general election, 1989, Gujral was elected from Jalandhar in Punjab. He served as Minister of External Affairs in Prime Minister V. P. Singh's eleventh cabinet of India.

Gujral became prime minister as the INC from outside supported consensus candidate between others that included Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav and his government.

Haradanahalli Doddegowda Deve Gowda is an Indian politician who served as the 11th Prime Minister of India from 1 June 1996 to 21 April 1997. He was previously the 14th Chief Minister of Karnataka from 1994 to 1996. He is a member of the 16th Lok Sabha, representing the Hassan constituency of Karnataka, and is the National President of the Janata Dal (Secular) party.

Gowda joined the Indian National Congress party in 1953 and remained a member until 1962. During that period, he was President of Anjaneya Cooperative Society of Holenarasipura and later became a member of the Taluk Development Board of Holenarasipura.

In 1962, Gowda was elected to the Karnataka Legislative Assembly from Holenarasipura constituency as an independent candidate. Later, he was elected from the same constituency to the Assembly for six consecutive terms from 1962 to 1989. He joined the Congress (O) during the Congress split and served as the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly from March 1972 to March 1976 and again from November 1976 to December 1977. During the Emergency (1975–77), he was imprisoned in the Bangalore Central Jail.

Gowda was twice the President of the state unit of the Janata Party. He served as a minister in the Janata Party Government in Karnataka headed by Ramakrishna Hegde from 1983 to 1988. He became President of the state unit of Janata Dal in 1994 and was the driving force behind the victory of the party in the 1994 State Assembly elections. He was elected from the Ramanagara sworn in as the 14th Chief Minister of Karnataka in December.

Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao was an Indian lawyer and politician who served as the ninth Prime Minister of India (1991–1996). His ascendancy to the prime ministership was politically significant in that he was the first holder of this office from a non-Hindi-speaking region, belonging to the southern part of India. He led an important administration, overseeing a major economic transformation and several home incidents affecting the national security of India.

He employed Dr Manmohan Singh as his Finance Minister to embark on historic economic transition. With Rao's mandate, Dr Manmohan Singh launched India's globalisation angle of the reforms that implemented the International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies to rescue the almost bankrupt nation from economic collapse. Rao was also referred to as Chanakya for his ability to steer tough economic and political legislation through the parliament at a time when he headed a minority government.

Rao's term as Prime Minister was an eventful one in India's history. Besides marking a paradigm shift from the industrialising, mixed economic model of Jawaharlal Nehru to a market-driven one, his years as Prime Minister also saw the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a major right-wing party, as an alternative to the Indian National Congress which had been governing India for most of its post-independence history.

Rao's term also saw the destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh when BJP's Kalyan Singh was CM that triggered one of the worst Hindu-Muslim riots in the country since its independence. Rao died in 2004 of a heart attack in New Delhi. He was cremated in Hyderabad. He was a versatile personality with interests in a variety of subjects (other than politics) such as literature and computer software (including computer programming). He spoke 17 languages.

The eighth Prime Minister of India, Chandra Shekar comes from a poor farming family. He was awarded a Bachelor of Arts (graduate) degree at Satish Chandra P.G. College. He attended Allahabad University, obtaining his master's degree in political science in 1951. He was known as a firebrand in student politics and started his political career with Dr Ram Manohar Lohia. After when he had completed his graduation, he became active in socialist politic.

Chandra Shekhar was a prominent leader of socialists. He played a vital role in the nationalisation of banks and ending of Privy Purse being given to royal families. He joined Congress in 1964. From 1962 to 1967, he was a member of the Rajya Sabha. He first entered the Lok Sabha in 1967. He came to be known as a 'young Turk' for his conviction and courage in the fight against the vested interests.

He was prime minister for seven months, the second shortest period after that of Charan Singh. He also handled the portfolios of Defence and Home Affairs during this period. His government included the preamble and fighting of the Gulf War of 1990–91. However, it could not introduce a full budget because Congress withdrew support during its formulation. In the spring of 1991, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi decided to precipitate a new election. Chandra Shekhar resigned the office of prime minister on 6 March 1991.

Chandra Shekhar died on 8 July 2007, a week after his 80th birthday. Politicians from across the spectrum of Indian parties paid tribute to him and the government of India declared seven days of state mourning. He was cremated with full state honours on a traditional funeral pyre at Jannayak that, on the banks of the river Yamuna, on 10 July. In August, his ashes were immersed in the river Siruvani.

Vishwanath Pratap Singh was an Indian politician and government official, the 7th Prime Minister of India from 1989 to 1990. Singh is known for trying to improve a lot of India's backward castes as a Prime Minister.

Indira Gandhi as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh appointed him in 1980 when Gandhi was re-elected after the Janata interlude. As Chief Minister (1980–82), he cracked down hard on dacoity, a problem that was particularly severe in the rural districts of the south-west Uttar Pradesh. He received much favourable national publicity when he offered to resign following a self-professed failure to stamp out the problem, and again when he personally oversaw the surrender of some of the most feared dacoits of the area in 1983.

V. P. Singh died after a very long struggle with multiple myeloma (bone marrow cancer) and renal failure at Apollo Hospital in Delhi on 27 November 2008.

Rajiv Ratna Gandhi was an Indian politician who served as the 6th Prime Minister of India from 1984 to 1989. He took office after the 1984 assassination of his mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to become the youngest Indian Prime Minister at the age of 40.

Gandhi was a scion of the politically powerful Nehru–Gandhi family, which had been associated with the Indian National Congress party. For much of his childhood, his maternal grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru was Prime Minister. Gandhi attended college in the United Kingdom. He returned to India in 1966 and became a professional pilot for the state-owned Indian Airlines. In 1968, he married Sonia Gandhi; the couple settled in Delhi to a domestic life with their children Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

For much of the 1970s, his mother Indira Gandhi was prime minister and his brother Sanjay Gandhi (earlier Sanjay) an MP; despite this, Rajiv Gandhi remained apolitical. After Sanjay's death in an aeroplane crash in 1980, Gandhi reluctantly entered politics at the behest of Indira.

The following year he won his brother's Parliamentary seat of Amethi and became a member of the Lok Sabha—the lower house of India's Parliament. As part of his political grooming, Rajiv was made a general secretary of the Congress party and given significant responsibility in organising the 1982 Asian Games.

In 1991, the Indian government posthumously awarded Gandhi the Bharat Ratna, the country's highest civilian award. At the India Leadership Conclave in 2009, the Revolutionary Leader of Modern India award was conferred posthumously on Gandhi.

Chaudhary Charan Singh served as the 5th Prime Minister of India. Historians and people alike frequently refer to him as the 'champion of India's peasants.'

Charan Singh was born on December 23, 1902, in a rural peasant family of village Noorpur, District Hapur (Erstwhile District Meerut), Uttar Pradesh (Erstwhile United Provinces of Agra and Oudh). Charan Singh entered politics as part of the Independence Movement motivated by Mohandas Gandhi. He was active from 1931 in the Ghaziabad District Arya Samaj as well as the Meerut District Indian National Congress for which twice the British jailed him. Before independence, as a member of Legislative Assembly of the United Provinces elected in 1937, he took a deep interest in the laws that were detrimental to the village economy and he slowly built his ideological and practical stand against the exploitation of tillers of the land by proprietors.

Between 1952 and 1967, he was one of "three principal leaders in Congress state politics." He became particularly notable in Uttar Pradesh from the 1950s for drafting and ensuring the passage of what were then the most revolutionary land reform laws in any state in India under the tutelage of the then Chief Minister Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant; first as Parliamentary Secretary and then as Revenue Minister responsible for Land Reforms.

During 1977 Lok Sabha Elections, the fragmented opposition united a few months before the elections under the Janata Party banner, for which Chaudhary Charan Singh had been struggling almost single-handedly since 1974. It was because of the efforts of Raj Narain that he became Prime Minister in the year 1979 though Raj Narain was Chairman of Janata Party-Secular and assured Charan Singh of elevating him as Prime Minister, the way he helped him to become Chief Minister in the year 1967 in Uttar Pradesh. However, he resigned after just 24 weeks in office when Indira Gandhi's Congress Party withdrew support to the government. Charan Singh continued to lead the Lok Dal in opposition until his death in 1987.

Morarji Desai was an Indian independence activist and served between 1977 and 1979 as the 4th Prime Minister of India and led the government formed by the Janata Party.

During his long career in politics, he held many important posts in government such as Chief Minister of Bombay State, Home Minister, Finance Minister and 2nd Deputy Prime Minister of India. On the international scene, Desai holds international fame for his peace activism and made efforts to initiate peace between two rival South Asian states, Pakistan and India. After India's first nuclear explosion in 1974, Desai helped restore friendly relations with China and Pakistan and vowed to avoid armed conflict such as the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971. He was also accused of scaling down the Indian covert operations agency, the R&AW.

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi was an Indian politician, stateswoman and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was the first and, to date, the only female Prime Minister of India. Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. She served as Prime Minister from January 1966 to March 1977 and again from January 1980 until her assassination in October 1984, making her the second longest-serving Indian prime minister after her father.

Gandhi served as her father's personal assistant and host during his tenure as Prime Minister between 1947 and 1964. She was elected Congress President in 1959. Upon her father's death in 1964 she was appointed as a member of the Rajya Sabha (upper house) and became a member of Lal Bahadur Shastri's cabinet as Minister of Information and Broadcasting. In the Congress Party's parliamentary leadership election held in early 1966 (upon the death of Shastri), she defeated her rival, Morarji Desai, to become the leader, and thus succeeded Shastri as Prime Minister of India.

As Prime Minister, Gandhi was known for her political ruthlessness and an unprecedented centralization of power. She went to war with Pakistan in support of the independence movement and war of independence in East Pakistan, which resulted in an Indian victory and the creation of Bangladesh, as well as increasing India's influence to the point where it became the regional hegemonic of South Asia. In 1999, Indira Gandhi was named "Woman of the Millennium" in an online poll organised by the BBC.

Lal Bahadur Shastri was the second Prime Minister of India and a senior leader of the Indian National Congress political party. Shastri joined the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. Deeply impressed and influenced by Mahatma Gandhi (with whom he shared his birthday), he became a loyal follower, first of Gandhi, and then of Jawaharlal Nehru. Following independence in 1947, he joined the latter's government and became one of Prime Minister Nehru's principal, first as Railways Minister (1951–56), and then in a variety of other functions, including Home Minister.

He led the country during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965. His slogan of "Jai Jawan Jai Kisan" ("Hail the soldier, Hail the farmer") became very popular during the war and is remembered even today. The war formally ended with the Tashkent Agreement on 10 January 1966; he died the following day, still in Tashkent, the cause of death was said to be a heart attack but there are various reasons to think that it was a planned murder by the CIA. Shastri was Nehru loyalist; Nehru was his mentor and was fond of Shastri. Although, he faced stiff opposition within the party, yet he became the PM because of his closeness to Nehru.

He was an Indian politician and economist who specialized in labour issues. He was the Prime Minister of India for two short periods following the deaths of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964 and Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966. Both his terms ended after the ruling Indian National Congress parliamentary party elected a new prime minister. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in 1997.

Nanda was born on 4 July 1898 in Sialkot in the Punjab Province of British India into a Punjabi Hindu family of the Khatri caste. (After the partition of British India into India and Pakistan in 1947, Sialkot became a part of the Punjab Province of Pakistan.) Nanda received his education in Lahore, Amritsar, Agra, and Allahabad.

Nanda worked as a research scholar on labour problems at Allahabad University (1920–1921) and became a Professor of Economics at National College in Bombay(Mumbai) in 1921. The same year, he joined the Indian Non-Cooperation Movement against the British Raj. In 1922, he became secretary of the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association where he worked until 1946. He was imprisoned for Satyagraha in 1932, and again from 1942 to 1944. He was honoured with "Proud Past Alumni" in the list of 42 members, from "Allahabad University Alumni Association", NCR, Ghaziabad (Greater Noida).

The first prime minister of independent India – Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the one who established the parliamentary government. He was prominent for his neutralist policies in foreign affairs and played a vital role among the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the 1930s and ’40s.

He was also a central figure in Indian politics before and after independence. He emerged as an eminent leader of the Indian independence movement under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi and served India as Prime Minister from its establishment as an independent nation in 1947 until his death in 1964. He is considered to be the architect of the modern Indian nation-state: a sovereign, socialist, secular, and democratic republic. He was also known as Pandit Nehru due to his roots with the Kashmiri Pandit community while many Indian children knew him as Chacha Nehru.