Indira Gandhi was the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. Her Nehru grandfather, Motilal, made his fortune as a brilliant barrister practicing in Allahabad, though the Nehrus were by origin Kashmiri Brahmins who had established them elves in Delhi in the seventeenth century. Intensely Anglophile, Motilal gave his children an English education. Jawaharlal was sent to school at Harrow, and then on to Trinity College, Cambridge. When he returned to India as a young man he was almost a stranger in his own country, and it was said that he dreamt in English for the rest of his life. Later he would describe himself as the last Englishman to rule India, and it was only half a joke.

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