Lal Bahadur Shastri

The Story

Born in Mughalsarai in 1904, the young Lal Bahadur — whose family name was lost in poverty — gave up his family's caste surname in a school protest and took 'Shastri', the title of a scholar, after earning a degree in philosophy. Gandhi's call drew him into the freedom struggle in his teens, and he was imprisoned again and again during the movements of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.

After independence he rose through the ministries of railways, transport, and home — resigning over a railway accident to take moral responsibility, a gesture that became a legend of politics of Bhārat. When Nehru died in 1964, this quiet man was chosen as Prime Minister, and in his brief tenure he moved Bhārat: the food crisis met by the Green Revolution, and the 1965 war met by courage.

When the war with Pakistan broke out in 1965, he inspired the nation with 'Jai Jawan Jai Kisan' — honouring the defence of the border and the toil of the fields. He signed the Tashkent Agreement to restore peace, and died suddenly at Tashkent on 11 January 1966 — his death still a mystery, his name forever a byword for integrity.