Lal Bahadur Shastri

Lal Bahadur Shastri

Lal Bahadur Shastri ( Devanagari लालबहादुर शास्त्री Lālbahādur Śāstrī; born October 2, 1904 in Moghalsarai , † January 11, 1966 in Tashkent ) was the second prime minister of independent India and an important participant in the struggle for independence.

Lal Bahadur dropped out of college to join Mahatma Gandhi's civil disobedience campaign in 1921. In 1926 he was given the additional name Shastri . He spent almost nine years in prison, most of them after the start of the Satyagraha movement between 1940 and 1946.

After independence he became Minister of Police, and from 1951 Secretary General of Lok Sabha , before returning to a ministerial post as Minister of Railways. He resigned from this post after the Ariyalur railway accident . After the following elections he returned to the cabinet as Minister of Transport, and in 1961 he became Minister of the Interior. On January 22, 1964, he rejoined the Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio . In a decree of the President S. Radhakrishnan of February 2, 1964 the functions of Shahstri were determined. He was to take over all functions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Atomic Energy and the Government Secretariat, which Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru gradually gave up.

Monument in Mumbai

Jawaharlal Nehru died in office on May 27, 1964, leaving a power vacuum . On May 27, 1964, Gulzarilal Nanda temporarily became Prime Minister of India. The main figures of the Congress party did not have enough support, so that the less noticed Shastri became prime minister on June 9, 1964 as a compromise candidate.

The main problem was Pakistan , first in the Indian-Pakistani border area, then in Jammu and Kashmir . The second Indo-Pakistani War began and Indian troops reached Lahore before a ceasefire was reached.

In January 1966, Shastri and Mohammad Ayub Chan met at a summit in Tashkent , mediated by Kosygin . Shastri signed a treaty with Pakistan on January 10, the Tashkent Declaration , but died of a heart attack the following day.

He was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna , the highest Indian order, and a monument was erected for him in Delhi .

Web links

Commons : Lal Bahadur Shastri  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Lal Bahadur Shastri Biography. In: iloveindia. (English).