Lal Bahadur Shastri Biography - Birth date, Achievements, Career, Family, Awards

Lal Bahadur Shastri was born on 02 October 1904 in Mughalsarai, Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh). His father's name was Munshi Sharda Prasad Srivastava and his mother's name was Ramdulari. His father was a teacher in primary school and for this reason everyone called him Munshiji. He later worked as a clerk (clerk) in the revenue department. Due to being the youngest in the family, the children used to call Lal Bahadur as little in love with the family.

Lal Bahadur Shastri died on 11 January 1966 (age 61) the same night after signing the Tashkent Agreement. The cause of his death was stated to be heart attack. But there were various speculations about his death. The people of his family said that he died not from the heart but from poisoning. This dispute was not known till date.

In Shastriji's family, along with many Kayastha families, it was the custom for children in that era to receive education in Urdu language and culture. This is because Urdu / Persian was the language of government for centuries, before being replaced by English, and older traditions persisted into the 20th century. Therefore, Shastri started education at the age of four under the patronage of Burhan Mian, a maulvi (a Muslim cleric) at East Central Railway Inter College, Mughalsarai. He studied there till the sixth grade. In 1917, Bindeshwari Prasad (now head of the household) was transferred to Varanasi, and the whole family moved there, including Ramdulari Devi and her three children. In Varanasi, Shastri joined the seventh grade at Harish Chandra High School. At this time, he decided to drop his caste-derived surname of "Srivastava" (which is a traditional surname for a sub-caste of Kayastha families).

After finishing his graduation in Sanskrit language, Lal Bahadur Shastri joined the Bharat Sevak Sangh and started his political life from here, taking a fast of service. Shastriji was a true Gandhian who spent all his life in simplicity and used it to serve the poor. He was actively involved in all the important programs and movements of the Indian freedom struggle and as a result he had to stay in jails many times. Among the movements he played an important role in the freedom struggle, the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1921, the Dandi March of 1930 and the Quit India Movement of 1942 are notable. Seeing England getting badly entangled in the Second World War, as soon as Netaji gave the Azad Hind Fauj the slogan of "Delhi Chalo", Gandhiji sensing the beauty of the occasion, "Leave India" to the British from Bombay on the night of 8 August 1942. And issued a "Do or Die" order to the Indians and under government protection, Yerwada went to the Aga Khan Palace in Pune.

On August 9, 1942, Shastriji reached Allahabad cleverly and shouted the Gandhian slogan of this movement, "Maro nahi maro" And unexpectedly made the claim of revolution fierce in the whole country. After running this movement while remaining underground for eleven days, Shastriji was arrested on 19 August 1942. Shastriji's political guides included Purshottam Das Tandon and Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant, besides Jawaharlal Nehru. After first coming to Allahabad in 1929, he started working with Tandonji as Secretary of the Allahabad unit of Bharat Sevak Sangh. His proximity to Nehruji grew while living in Allahabad. After this, Shastriji's stature continued to grow and ascending succession successively, he rose to the rank of Home Minister in Nehru's cabinet. And not only this, after Nehru's death, he also became the Prime Minister of India.

Shastri was known for his honesty and humility throughout his life. He was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, and a memorial "Vijay Ghat" was built for him in Delhi. Several educational institutions are named after him, including Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (Mussoorie, Uttarakhand). In 2011, on Shastri's 45th death anniversary, the Uttar Pradesh government announced the renovation of Shastri's ancestral home in Ramnagar, Varanasi and plans to convert it into a biographical museum. The Varanasi International Airport is named after him.