Lal Bahadur Shastri (Dharti Ka LAL)
Born: October 2, 1904, Mughalsarai
Died: January 11, 1966, Tashkent
Education: Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth (1926)
Spouse: Lalita Shastri (m. 1928–1966)
Awards: Bharat Ratna
Children: Anil Kumar Shastri, Sunil Shastri, Hari Shastri, Kusum Shastri, Suman Shastri
Lal Bahadur Shastri (born 1904) succeeded Jawaharlal Nehru as Prime Minister of India in 1964. Though eclipsed by such stalwarts of the Congress party as Kamaraj (the Kingmaker) and Morarji Desai, Finance Minister in Nehru’s government, Shastri emerged as the consensus candidate in the midst of party warfare.
He had not been in power long before he had to attend to the difficult matter of Pakistani aggression, as represented by India, along the Rann of Kutch; and though a cease-fire under the auspices of the United Nations put a temporary halt to the fighting, the scene of conflict soon shifted to the more troubled spot of Kashmir.
While Pakistan claimed that a spontaneous uprising against the Indian occupation of Kashmir had taken place, India charged Pakistan with fomenting sedition inside its territory and sending armed raiders into Jammu and Kashmir from Azad Kashmir. Shastri promised to meet force with force, and by early September the second Indo-Pakistan war had commenced. Read the rest of this entry »
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