Lal Bahadur Shastri
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Lal Bahadur Shastri
Sahildeep Singh Raina , A leader of great stature "Daily Excelsior" 2/10/2016
A simple man with exemplary lifestyle, Lal Bahadur Shastri proved to be one of the heroes of the history of India. A great general in Gandhi’s army of peaceful soldiers of freedom. He became the symbol of India’s valor and self-respect.
Though diminutive in physical stature he was a man of great courage and will. He successfully led country during the 1965 war with Pakistan. To mobilize the support of country during the war he coined the slogan of “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan”. Lal Bahadur Shastri also played a key role in India’s freedom struggle. He led his life with great simplicity and honesty and was a great source of inspiration for all the countrymen. Lal Bahadur Shastri was born on October 2, 1904 at Mughalsarai, Uttar Pradesh. Though his family was poor, they lived a life of honesty and integrity. Lal Bahadur lost his father when he was only one.His mother Ramdulari Devi raised Lal Bahadur and her two daughters at her father’s house.
There is a very famous incident regarding Lal Bahadur Shastri’s childhood which took place when he was six years old. One day, while returning from school, Lal Bahadur and his friends went to an orchard that was on the way to home. Lal Bahadur Shastri was standing below while his friends climbed the trees to pluck mangoes. Meanwhile, the gardener came and caught hold of Lalbahadur Shastri. He scolded Lal Bahadur Shastri and started beating him. Lal Bahadur Shastri pleaded to gardener to leave him as he was orphan. Taking pity on Lal Bahadur, the gardener said, “Because you are an orphan, it is all the more important that you must learn better behavior.” These words left a deep imprint on Lal Bahadur Shastri and he swore to behave better in the future.
In 1930, Gandhiji gave the call for Civil Disobedience Movement. Lal Bahadur Shastri joined the movement and encouraged people not to pay land revenue and taxes to the Government. He was arrested and put in jail for two and a half years. In jail Shastriji became familiar with the works of western philosophers, revolutionaries and social reformers.
Lal Bahadur Sastri was the General Secretary of the Congress Party when the first general elections were held after India became Republic. Congress Party returned to power with a huge majority. In 1952, Jawahar Lal Nehru appointed Lal Bahadur Shastri as the Railways and Transport Minister in the Central Cabinet. Lal Bahadur Shastri’s contribution in providing more facilities to travelers in third class compartments cannot be forgotten. He reduced the vast disparity between the first class and third class in the Railways. Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned from Railways in 1956, owning moral responsibility for a railway accident. Jawaharlal Nehru tried to persuade Shastriji but Lal Bahadur Shastri refused to budge from his stand. By his action Lal Bahadur Shastri set new standards of morality in public life.
In the next general elections when Congress returned to power, Lal Bahadur Shastri became the Minister for Transport and Communications and later the Minister for Commerce and Industry. He became the Home Minister in 1961, after the death of Govind Vallabh Pant. In the 1962 India-China war Shastriji played a key role in maintaining internal security of the country.
After the death of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964, Lal Bahadur Shastri was unanimously elected as the Prime Minister of India. It was a difficult time and the country was facing huge challenges. There was food shortage in the country and on the security front Pakistan was creating problems. In 1965, Pakistan tried to take advantage of India’s vulnerability and attacked India. Mild-mannered Lal Bahadur Shastri rose to the occasion and led the country ably.
To enthuse soldiers and farmers he coined the slogan of “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan”. Pakistan lost the war and Shastriji’s leadership was praised all over the world.
In January 1966, to broker peace between India and Pakistan, Russia mediated a meeting between Lal Bahadur Shastri and Ayub Khan in Tashkent, Russia. India and Pakistan signed the joint declaration under Russian mediation. Under the treaty India agreed to return to Pakistan all the territories occupied by it during the war. The joint declaration was signed on January 10, 1966 and Lal Bahadur Shastri died of heart attack on the same night.
Few are those people who live for their country and die for their country and for them country is the first priority.
The man and the theories about his death
Jan 11, 2025: The Indian Express
Lal Bahadur Shastri died on January 11, 1966 in Tashkent, hours after signing the agreement to end the Indo-Pak war of 1965. Almost a half-century later, many still refuse to believe the official story that Shastri died after a heart attack.
Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister less than a fortnight after Shastri died. Here is the story of Lal Bahadur Shastri and his sudden — possibly mysterious — death.
Shastri was a byword for honesty and rectitude in public life
Born in Mughalsarai near Varanasi in 1904, Shastri dedicated his youth to the freedom struggle. Post-Independence, he quickly rose up the ranks of the Indian National Congress, the result of both his administrative capabilities and his integrity. Consider this:
As Railways Minister in 1956, Shastri twice offered his resignation after two train accidents that killed more than a hundred people each. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru rejected his offer the first time, but was unable to persuade Shastri to change his mind on the second occasion.
He spoke glowingly in Lok Sabha about Shastri: “No man can wish for a better comrade and better colleague in any undertaking — a man of highest integrity, loyalty, devoted to ideals, a man of conscience and a man of hard work.”
By the time of Nehru’s passing in 1964, Shastri was among his closest aides, and almost universally liked within the party. This propelled him to the prime ministership, despite there being question marks about Shastri’s ability to lead the country during tough times. “The capacity to listen patiently and to act decisively is the hallmark of democratic leadership. It is in the latter capacity that Shastri has still to be tested…,” The Indian Express wrote in an editorial.
Shastri passed the test with flying colours, championing a number of economic policies to boost agriculture, and successfully thwarting Pakistan’s attempt to seize Kashmir in August 1965. He authorised the armed forces to cross the international border in a retaliatory attack, and pushed for negotiations from a point of strength. It was at the culmination of these negotiations that Shastri met his untimely death.
The midnight tragedy in Tashkent, rumours of poisoning
At 4 pm on January 10, 1966 Shastri and Pakistan President Muhammad Ayub Khan signed the Tashkent Declaration, which sought to introduce a lasting framework to ensure peace between India and Pakistan. He died hours later.
According to the account of his biographer C P Srivastava, a former civil servant who was a part of Shastri’s delegation in Tashkent, the Prime Minister had a light meal late in the evening, prepared by the cook of the Indian ambassador in Moscow, and a glass of milk at around 11.30 pm.
He then went to bed, only to wake up coughing around 1.25 am. He called for his doctor, Dr R N Chugh. But by the time Dr Chugh arrived, Shastri was too far gone. He passed away at 1.32 am.
Many people at the time believed that Shastri was poisoned, a theory that was given credence by the bluish tint his body had taken when he arrived in India. This, however, was a result of the embalming process, Srivastava wrote in Lal Bahadur Shastri: A Life of Truth in Politics (1996).
“The colour of Shastri’s face at the time of death was normal, without any change. It was only after the embalming of the body that the face became blue,” he wrote.
That said, a post mortem examination was never carried out, which has given rise to a certain air of mystery around Shastri’s death. As to why no autopsy was carried out, Srivastava wrote:
“… [A] team of USSR doctors, as well as the prime minister’s own physician, Dr Chugh, had given a clear and categorical verdict as to the cause of death, as Shastri had a history of two previous heart attacks… there was no other circumstance pointing to the need for a postmortem examination”. He added that at the time, his family too did not ask for a post-mortem. Speculation continues
That said, Shastri’s family has since then asked for details around his death on several occasions. And multiple events around Shastri’s death, and since then, have fuelled conspiracy theories.
For instance, in the morning after Shastri’s demise, the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency, detained the butler working at Shastri’s villa in Tashkent. Ahmed Sattarov was interrogated, some say tortured, by the KGB, which reportedly suspected poisoning. The specifics of these interrogations are still not known to the public.
Many people have raised the question as to why the Indian government did not follow up on Sattarov’s detention, and the KGB’s reported theory. After all, there appeared to be some smoke there.
In 1977, the Janata government set up a parliamentary inquiry into Shastri’s death under Raj Narain. However, nothing much came of it. Notably, while the inquiry was on, Dr Chugh and his family were run over by a truck. Only one of his daughters survived.
In 2019, in response to a RTI enquiry, the Prime Minister’s Office refused to declassify the single file it claimed to have pertaining to the event.
