Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri the 2nd Prime minister of India (1964-1966)

Lal Bahadur Shastri (2 October 1904 – 11 January 1966) - was the 2nd Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party.He was prime minister under the president S.Radha krishna,he was a great follower of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

Shastri joined the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. Deeply impressed and influenced by Mahatma Gandhi he became a loyal follower, first of Gandhi, and then of Jawaharlal Nehru. Following independence in 1947, he joined the latter's government and became one of Prime Minister Nehru's principal, first as Railways Minister (1951–56), and then in a variety of other functions, including Home Minister.

He led the country during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965. His slogan of "Jai Jawan Jai Kisan" ("Hail the soldier, Hail the farmer") became very popular during the war and is remembered even today. The war formally ended with the Tashkent Agreement of 10 January 1966; he died the following day, still in Tashkent, the cause of death was said to be a heart attack but there are various reasons to think that it was a planned murder by the CIA.

PERSONAL BACKGROUND

Shastri was born at the house of his maternal grandparents in Mughalsarai, Varanasi in a Kayastha Hindu family,that had traditionally been employed as Highly administrators and civil servants. Shastri's paternal ancestors had been in the service of the zamindar of Ramnagar near Varanasi and Shastri lived there for the first one year of his life. Shastri's father, Sharada Prasad Shastri, was a school teacher who later became a clerk in the revenue office at Allahabad, while his mother, Ramdulari Devi, was the daughter of Munshi Hazari Lal, the headmaster and English teacher at a railway school in Mughalsarai. Shastri was the second child and eldest son of his parents; he had an elder sister, Kailashi Devi

In April 1906, When Shastri was hardly one year old, his father, had only recently been promoted to the post of deputy tahsildar, died in an epidemic of bubonic plague. Ramdulari Devi, then only 23 and pregnant with her third child, took her two children and moved from Ramnnagar to her father's house in Mughalsarai and settled there for good. She gave birth to a daughter, Sundari Devi, in July 1906. Thus, Shastri and his sisters grew up in the household of his maternal grandfather, Hazari Lal. However, Hazari Lal himself died from a stroke in mid-1908, after which the family were looked after by his brother Darbari Lal, who was the head clerk in the opium regulation department at Ghazipur, and later by his son (Ramdulari Devi's cousin) Bindeshwari Prasad, a school teacher in Mughalsarai. Thus, the greatness of the traditional Indian joint family system, and the traditions of family responsibility and kinship, are deeply evident in Shastri's case, where the orphan child of a penniless widow was raised by his distant relatives in a manner which enabled him to become Prime Minister of India.

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Shastri's father, Sharada Prasad Shastri, was a school teacher who later became a clerk in the revenue office at Allahabad, while his mother, Ramdulari Devi, was the daughter of Munshi Hazari Lal, the headmaster and English teacher at a railway school in Mughalsarai. Shastri was the second child and eldest son of his parents; he had an elder sister, Kailashi Devi.Shastri married Lalita Devi from Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh in 1928.

Father-Sharada Prasad Srivastava

Mother-Ramdulari Devi

Sister-kailashi Devi

Spouse- Lalita Devi

Son-Anil Shastri,Hari Krishna Shastri,Hari Shastri,Sunil Shastri

Daughter-Suman Shastri,Kusum Shastri.

POLITICAL CAREER

Before Independence

1. In 1928 shastri become an active member of congress at the call of Gandhi ji.

2. In 1930Shastri participated in the Salt satyagraha

3. He was imprisoned for 2 and a half years for going against the British

4. In 1937, he worked as the organizing Secretary of the parliament Board of U.P.

5. In 1940, he was sent to prison for one year, for offering individual satyagraha support to the independence movement.

6. On 8 August 1942, Mahatma Gandhi issued the Quit India speech at Gowli Tank in Mumbai demanding that the British leave India. Shastri, who had just then come out after a year in prison, travelled to Allahabad. For a week, he sent instructions to the independence activists from Jawaharlal Nehru's home, Anand Bhavan.

7. Few days later of this moment he was again arrested till 1946.

8. He spent 9 years in totall jail .

After Independence

1. Following India's independence, Shastri was appointed Parliamentary Secretary in his home state, Uttar Pradesh.

2. In 15th august 1947, He became the transport and police minister under Govind Ballabh Pant’s chief Minister ship. As the transport minister he was the first to appoint women conductors.

3. After becoming police Minister he ordered them not to use lathis instead use jets of water to disperse crowd.

4. In 1951, Shastri was made the General secretary of the ALL INDIA CONGRESS COMMITEE under the prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru

5. In 1952, he successfully contested UP Vidhansabha from Soraon North cum Phulpur West seat and won getting over 69% of vote.

6. On 13th May Shastri was made Minister of Railways in the first cabinet of republic of India.

7. On June 9 1964 he was sworn as prime minister of India due to the death of Jawaharlal Nehru , he served for 2 years as prime minister,But unfortunately he died because of Heart attack in Pakistan.

DEATH

He died in pakistan after singing the tashkent pact .Indian citizens cannot digest that he died and thus raised many questions,His health was fit according to his personal doctor, R. N. Chugh, and he had no sign of heart trouble before. Shastri's sudden death has led to persistent conspiracy theories that he was poisoned.

The first inquiry into his death, conducted by the Raj Narain Inquiry, as it came to be known, however did not come up with any conclusions, and today no record of this inquiry exists with the Indian Parliament's library. There was no post-mortem made for Shastri, but the Indian government in 2009, claimed it did have a report of a medical investigation conducted by Shastri's doctor and some Russian doctors. Furthermore, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) revealed that there was no record of any destruction or loss of documents in the PMO having a bearing on Shastri's death.

It was maintained that Shastri had died of cardiac arrest but his family insisted he was poisoned.His son, Sunil Shastri, asked the government to unravel the mystery behind Lal Bahadur Shastri's death.Raising doubts about the dark blue spots and cut marks on the abdomen of his father's body after his death in 1966, Sunil asked how the cut marks appeared if a post-mortem had not been conducted.

When Shastri went to the USSR for the Tashkent talks, he wanted a promise from Ayub Khan that Pakistan would never use force in the future. But the talks did not proceed and followed Shastri's death on the next day.The Indian Government released no information about his death, and the media then was kept silent. The possible existence of a conspiracy was covered in India by the Outlook magazine.A query was later posed by Anuj Dhar, author of CIA's Eye on South Asia, under the Right to Information Act to declassify a document supposedly related to Shastri's death, but the Prime Minister's Office refused to oblige, reportedly citing that this could lead to harming of foreign relations, cause disruption in the country and cause breach of parliamentary privileges.Another RTI plea by Kuldip Nayar was also declined, as PMO cited exemption from disclosure on the plea.

The home ministry is yet to respond to queries whether India conducted a post-mortem on Shastri, and if the government had investigated allegations of foul play. The Delhi Police in their reply to an RTI application said they do not have any record pertaining to Shastri's death. The Ministry of External Affairs has already said no post-mortem was conducted in the USSR. The Central Public Information Officer of Delhi Police in his reply dated 29 July said, "No such record related to the death of the former Prime Minister of India Lal Bahadur Shastri is available in this district... Hence the requisite information pertaining to New Delhi district may please be treated as nil."This has created more doubts.

Later, Gregory Douglas, a journalist who interviewed former CIA operative Robert Crowley over a period of 4 years, recorded their telephone conversations and published a transcription in a book titled Conversations with the Crow. In the book, Crowley claimed that the CIA was responsible for eliminating Homi Bhabha, an Indian nuclear scientist whose plane crashed into Alps, when he was going to attend a conference in Vienna; and Lal Bahadur Shastri. Crowley said that the USA was wary of India's rigid stand on nuclear policy and of then prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, who wanted to go ahead with nuclear tests. He also said that the agency was worried about collective domination by India and Russia over the region, for which a strong deterrent was required.

AWARDS

He was the first indian to receive Bharat ratna the highest civilian honour.

"We believe in peace and peaceful development, not only for ourselves but for people all over the world."