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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