Lal Bahadur Shastri

Champions of Hinduism: Lal Bahadur Shastri

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904 - 1966) Pg 1/3

Lal Bahadur Shastri was born on 2nd October, 1904 in Uttar Pradesh. His parents were Sharada Prasad and Ramdulari Devi. Shastriji’s surname was Srivastava but he dropped his surname as he did not want to be identified by his caste. Such a great was his understanding from the very early age. Lal Bahadur lost his father when he was only one. He went Varanasi for higher education, but he gave up college joined the non-cooperation movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi in 192l. He was just seventeen when he was first arrested, but was let off as he was too young.

After his release Lal Bahadur joined Kashi Vidhya Pith and earned his degree of SHASTI after mojoring in philosophy for four years. He joined the party of Lala Lajpatrai, to dedicate his life for the freedom of the country. In 1927 he got married with a simple ceremony and took only Charkha and few yards of Khadi in dowry.

In 1930 he joined Gandhiji’s civil disobedience movement and was jailed for two and half years. He was again arrested and jailed for one year in 1939 for participating in Satyagrah. He joined in ‘Quit India’ movement in August 1942, and went underground but was later arrested and jailed till 1945.

He held various important post such as Parliamentary secretary to Govind Vallab Pant in 1946, Minister for Police in 1947,General secretary of the Congress in 1947, after independence, Railway and Transport minister in 1952. He resigned from the post as a result of railway accident in 1956 and set a new standard of morality.

In later years Shastriji served as Minister for Transport, Minister for Commerce and Industry and also as Home Minister in the Central government, where he played key role in maintaining internal security during India-China war in 1962.

After the death of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964, Shastriji was unanimously elected as the Prime Minister. At this time India was suffering from food shortages and economic crises. During his short tenure in the office, his biggest achievement was to bring GREEN revolution to India. Though he was not fortunate to live long enough to see the results, but India became food-surplus-nation from food–shortage-nation, as a result of his ability to win the opposing views, and induce all leaders to work as one nation.

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