Lal Bahadur Shastri Biography
Lal Bahadur Shastri was born on 2nd October, 1904 in Ramnagar near Mughalsarai, Uttar Pradesh. His was the son of Sharada Prasad and Ramdulari Devi. His father was a school teacher, who later became a clerk in the Revenue Office at Allahabad. His father died when he was only a year old. He got his education from the East Central Railway Inter College in the Mughalsarai, Varanasi. He got the title of Shastri when had completed his graduation from the Kashi Vidyapeeth, Varanasi in the year 1926.
He had joined the non-cooperation movement against
British Government in 1921 by Mahatma Gandhi when he was
only seventeen years old. In 1930, Lal Bahadur Shastri
became the secretary of the Congress party and later the
president of the Allahabad Congress Committee. In 1930, he
was imprisoned for two and a half years for his
participation in the Salt Satyagraha movement. In during
Quit India Movement, he took part actively and was arrested
and imprisoned until 1946.
Following India's independence in 1947, he was
appointed as the Parliamentary Secretary of Pandit Govind
Vallabh Pant in Uttar Pradesh. He was also appointed as the
Police and Transport Minister in Pant’s Cabinet in 1947.
He was selected as the General Secretary of All-India
Congress Committee in the year 1951. Nehru appointed him as
the Minister of Railways and Transport in the Central
Cabinet in 1952. He resigned from the post in 1956 after a
railway accident. In 1957, when Congress came into the power
for second time, he became the Transport and Communications
Minister and then as Commerce and Industry Minister. In
1961, he became the Home Minister of India.
In 1964, after the death of the Jawaharlal Nehru, he
became the second Prime Minister of India. He led India
successfully in the war against Pakistan in 1965. Lal
Bahadur Shastri give the slogan of Jai Jawan Jai Kisan to
reverberates Indians during war period. His leadership was
admired all across the world. He played an important role to
promote Green Revolution and White Revolution in India for
the production of food and milk. The National Dairy
Development Board (NDDB) and The Food Corporation of India
was setup under his leadership.
The Indo-Pak war ended on 23 September 1965 with a
United Nations-mandated ceasefire. After the end of India
Pakistan war, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistani President
Muhammad Ayub Khan went for a meeting in the Tashkent where
both of them had signed the Tashkent Declaration on 10th of
January, 1966. He died on next day on 11th of January, 1966
after fatal heart attack.
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