Sushma Swaraj

Sushma Swaraj (born February 14, 1952, Ambala, Haryana, India—died August 6, 2019, New Delhi) was an Indian politician and government official who served in a variety of legislative and administrative posts at the state (Haryana) and national (union) levels in India. She served as the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of the Indian parliament) for five years (2009–14) and as minister of External Affairs (2014–19) in the BJP-led cabinet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Early life, education, and early career

Swaraj was born to a middle-class family in the Haryana city of Ambala. Her father, Hardev Sharma, was prominent in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a pro-Hindu organization from which the BJP was an offshoot. She attended college in Haryana, completed a law degree at Panjab University in Chandigarh, and in 1973 registered as an advocate (i.e., one who can practice law) in the Supreme Court of India. While a student, she was politically active notably as the leader of a pro-Hindu organization associated with the RSS that was strongly opposed to the government of then-prime minister Indira Gandhi. In 1975 she married lawyer and politician Swaraj Kaushal, who served a term (1990–93) as governor of Mizoram state.

Political career

In 1977, as a member of the Janata Party, Swaraj ran for office for the first time and was elected to a seat in the legislative assembly of Haryana state. She served two terms there (1977–82 and 1987–90), during which she also was minister of Labour and Employment (1977–79) and of Education, Food, and Civil Supplies (1987–90) in the state government. In 1984 she joined the BJP (which had been established by members from Janata in 1980) and was appointed secretary of the party. She advanced in the party ranks to become its general secretary.

Swaraj failed three times (1980, 1984, and 1989) in her bids to win a seat in the Lok Sabha, losing each time to a candidate from the Indian National Congress (Congress Party). In 1990, however, she was elected to the Rajya Sabha (upper house of parliament). She successfully contested a seat in the Lok Sabha six years later and also briefly was a cabinet minister (Information and Broadcasting) in the 13-day BJP-led government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee (May–June 1996). In 1998 she was reelected to the Lok Sabha and was briefly in charge of the same ministry (March–October) before resigning her seat to become the chief minister of Delhi (the first woman to hold that office), a position she held for less than two months (from mid-October to early December). After the BJP lost the 1998 Delhi assembly elections, Swaraj decided to return to national-level politics.

In the 1999 parliamentary elections, Swaraj ran for a Lok Sabha seat in the state of Karnataka in a spirited campaign against Sonia Gandhi (widow of Rajiv Gandhi), who by then was the leader of the Congress Party. Swaraj lost the contest by the relatively small margin of some 55,000 votes, but in 2000 she returned to parliament in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) electoral victory, having won a seat as a Rajya Sabha member. She was the minister of Information and Broadcasting (September 2000–January 2003) and both Health and Family Welfare and Parliamentary Affairs (January 2003–May 2004) in the NDA government.

Following the 2004 parliamentary elections, in which the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance emerged victorious, Swaraj (who had retained her Rajya Sabha seat) threatened to shave her head and don a white sari (a symbol of mourning) if Sonia Gandhi became prime minister. (Sonia, for unrelated reasons, chose not to run for the office.) Swaraj was reelected to her third term in the Rajya Sabha two years later and was appointed the deputy leader of the opposition in that chamber. She won her third term in the Lok Sabha in the 2009 parliamentary elections, scoring a notable victory margin of 389,000 votes, and in December of that year was appointed leader of the BJP opposition in the house.

She won by an even greater margin in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls as part of the BJP’s landslide victory and was given the important portfolios for External Affairs and for Overseas Indian Affairs in Prime Minister Modi’s cabinet. In this capacity she developed a reputation for her warm interactions with Indian citizens on social media. In late 2016 she suffered kidney failure. She underwent a successful kidney transplant but remained plagued with health issues that affected her capacity as a public servant. She opted not to run for reelection in the spring of 2019 and left Modi’s cabinet at the end of his first term. In August of that year she died of cardiac arrest.

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In 2020 she was posthumously awarded the Padma Vibhushan, one of India’s highest civilian honours.