Tashkent
Uzbekistan
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Shastri Street
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Informations Tashkent Monument Lal Bahadur Shastri
Monument Shastri Shastri (Meaning Scholar) was not his caste but people started calling him and became part of his name.
Birth and early child hoodLal Bahadur was born on 2 October in the year 1904 in Ram Nagar,Ahmedabad Mughalsarai, UP. His father Sharada Prasad was a poor school teacher, who later became a clerk in the Revenue Office at Allahabad. When Lal Bahadur was three months old, he slipped out of his mother's arms into a cowherder's basket at the ghats of the Ganges. The cowherder, who had no children, took the child as a gift from God and took him home. Lal Bahadur's parents lodged a complaint with the police, who traced the child, and returned him to his parents. Lal Bahadur's father died when he was only a year and a half old. His mother Ramdulari Devi took him and his two sisters to her father's house and settled down there. Lal Bahadur stayed at his grandfather house till he was 10. Since there was no high school in their town, he was sent to Varanasi where he stayed with his uncle and joined School. While in Varanasi, Shastri once went with his friends to see a fair on the other bank of the Ganges. On the way back he had no money for the boat fare. Instead of borrowing from his friends, he jumped into the river and swam to the other bank. As a boy, Lal Bahadur loved reading books and was fond of Guru Nanak's verses. He revered Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the Indian nationalist, social reformer and freedom fighter. After hearing a speech of Mahatma Gandhi at Varanasi in 1915, he dedicated his life to the service of the country. He also dropped his surname, as it indicated his caste and he was against the caste system. During the non-cooperation movement of Mahatma Gandhi in 1921, he joined processions in defiance of the prohibitory order. He was arrested but let off as he was a minor. He then enrolled at the nationalist Kashi Vidyapeeth inVaranasi. During his four years there, he was greatly influenced by the lectures of Dr. Bhagawandas on philosophy. Upon completion of his course at Kashi Vidyapeeth in 1926, he was given the title Shastri ("Scholar"). The title was a bachelor's degree awarded by the Vidya Peeth, but it stuck as part of his name. He also enrolled himself as a life member of the Servants of the People Society and began to work for the upliftment of the Harijans at Muzaffarpur. Later he became the President of the Society.
MarriageIn 1927, Shastri married Lalita Devi of Mirzapur. In spite of the prevailing hefty dowry tradition, Shastri accepted only a charkhaand a few yards of khadi as dowry.
Political Career In 1930, he threw himself into the freedom struggle during Mahatma Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha. He was imprisoned for two and a half years. Later, he worked as the Organizing Secretary of the Parliamentary Board of U.P. in 1937. In 1940, he was sent to prison for one year, for offering individual Satyagraha support to the freedom movement. On 8 August 1942, Mahatma Gandhi issued the Quit India speech at Gowalia Tank in Mumbai, demanding that the British leave India. Shastri, who had just then come out after a year in prison, traveled to Allahabad. For a week, he sent instructions to the freedom fighters from Jawaharlal Nehru's hometown, Anand Bhavan. A few days later, he was arrested and imprisoned until 1946. Shastri spent almost nine years in jail in total. During his stay in prison, he spent time reading books and became familiar with the works of western philosophers, revolutionaries and social reformers. He also translated the autobiography of Marie Curie into Hindi language.
Part of Indian Government Following India's independence, Lal Bahadur was appointed Parliamentary Secretary in his home state, Uttar Pradesh. He became the Minister of Police and Transport under Govind Ballabh Pant's Chief Ministership. As the Transport Minister, he was the first to appoint women conductors. As the minister in charge of the Police Department, he ordered that Police use jets of water instead of batons to disperse unruly crowds. In 1951, he was made the General Secretary of the All-India Congress and Jawaharlal Nehru as the President. He was directly responsible for the selection of candidates and the direction of publicity and electioneering activities. He played an important role in the landslide successes of the Congress Party in the Indian General Elections of 1952, 1957 and 1962. In 1951, Nehru nominated him to the Rajya Sabha. He served as the Minister of Railways and Transport in the Central Cabinet from 1951 to 1956. In 1956, he offered his resignation after a railway accident at Mahbubnagar it led to 112 deaths. However, Nehru did not accept his resignation. Three months later, he resigned accepting moral and constitutional responsibility for a railway accident at Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu that resulted in 144 deaths. While speaking in the Parliament on the incident, the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, stated that he was accepting the resignation because it would set an example in constitutional propriety and not because Lal Bahadur was in any way responsible for the accident. Shastri's unprecedented gesture was greatly appreciated by the indians. In 1957, Shastri returned to the Cabinet following the General Elections, first as the Minister for Transport and Communications, and then as the Minister of Commerce and Industry. In 1961, he became Minister for Home. As Union Home Minister he was instrumental in appointing the Committee on Prevention of Corruption under the Chairmanship of K. Santhanam.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru died in office on 27 May 1964 and Lal Bahadur Shastri became Prime Minister on 9th June 1964.
War with Pakistan The problem for Shastri's administration was Pakistan. Laying claim to half of the Kutch peninsula, Pakistan sent incursion forces in August 1965, which skirmished with Indian tank divisions. In his report to the Lok Sabha on the confrontation in Kutch, Shastri stated: Under a scheme proposed by the British PM, Pakistan obtained 10%, in place of their original claim of 50% of the territory. But Pakistan's aggressive intentions were also focused on Kashmir. When armed infiltrators from Pakistan began entering the State of Jammu and Kashmir, Shastri made it clear to Pakistan that force would be met with force. Just in September 1965, major incursions of militants and Pakistani soldiers began, hoping not only to break-down the government but incite a sympathetic revolt. The revolt did not happen, and India sent its forces across the Ceasefire Line (now Line of Control) and threatened Pakistan by crossing the International Border near Lahore as war broke out on a general scale. Massive tank battles occurred in the Punjab .
Controversy About Shastri Death Was India's third prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, murdered?
Officially, the diminutive leader died of a heart attack in a dacha in Tashkent, hours after he signed a peace agreement with the Pakistani president, Ayub Khan, on 11 January 1966, some four months after the end of the second war between the two neighbours. But if you believe surviving members of Mr Shastri's family and an enthusiastic Delhi-based journalist, Mr Shastri was possibly poisoned.
What has added grist to the conspiracy mill is the Indian government's refusal to declassify a document it has in its possession pertaining to Mr Shastri's death. In response to a right to information request by the enterprising Anuj Dhar, a journalist and a self-proclaimed "declassification enthusiast", the prime minister's office said that making public that document could "harm foreign relations, cause disruption in the country and cause breach of parliamentary privileges". Totally non-controversial in his life, Mr Shastri has become controversial in death.
I did a little digging around and found that most of the better-known accounts of Mr Shastri's death have raised no doubts - death by heart failure. In his magisterial India After Gandhi, historian Ramachandra Guha writes Mr Shastri "died in his sleep of a heart attack". In her biography of Indira Gandhi, Katherine Frank writes that after he "went to bed in the early hours of the 11th January, Mr Shastri had a fatal heart attack".
The most vivid account is in my dog eared copy of the long out-of-print book India, The Critical Years by veteran Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar. He was part of the prime minister's travelling press corps to Tashkent.
Mr Nayar writes that the Indian prime minister was already a heart patient, having suffered two attacks. He had had a hectic day, holding talks with the Russian premier, Alexey Kosygin - the Russians having brokered the pact - and his officials and had had very little sleep.
"That evening," writes Mr Nayar, "I met by chance his personal physican Dr RN Chugh, who accompanied him. I asked him how Shastri was standing the strain. He looked up to the sky and said: 'Everything is in the hands of God'." Mr Nayar does not elaborate.
Mr Nayar then proceeds to describe the fateful night in Agatha Christie-like detail. Since he was to travel in the prime minister's airplane early next morning to Kabul en route to Delhi, he retired to bed early an hour before midnight. "I must have been dozing when someone knocked at my door and said: 'Your prime minister is dying.' A Russian lady was waking up all the journalists," writes Mr Nayar.
A group of journalists then sped to Mr Shastri's dacha from the hotel. On arriving, Mr Nayar found a grief-stricken Mr Kosygin standing on the verandah. "He could not speak and only lifted his hands to indicate Shastri was no more."
When Mr Nayar went in, he found Dr Chugh being questioned by a group of Soviet doctors through an interpreter. In the next room Mr Shastri lay still on his bed. The journalists emptied the flower vases in the room and spread them on the prime minister's body. Mr Nayar also noticed an overturned thermos flask on a dressing table some 10 feet away from Mr Shastri's bed and wondered whether the prime minister had struggled to get to open it to get water. "His slippers were neatly placed near the bed; it meant that he walked barefoot up to the dressing table in the carpeted room," Mr Nayar writes.
Mr Nayar then pieces together the events leading up to Mr Shastri's death - of how the prime minister reached the dacha around 10 pm after a reception, chatted with his personal staff and asked his cook Ram Nath to bring him food "which was prepared in the dacha by the Russians". It gets more interesting from here. "In the kitchen there was a Soviet cook helped by two ladies - both from the Russian intelligence department - and they tasted everything, including water, before it was served to Mr Shastri," Mr Nayar writes. Remember this was at the height of the Cold War and India-Pakistan hostilities and the security paranoia was extreme.
As Mr Shastri tucked into a frugal spinach and potato curry meal, he received a call from a personal assistant in Delhi and sought the reaction to the Tashkent agreement back home. Then he spoke to his family in Delhi. He asked his eldest daughter, Kusum, about how she had found the peace pact. "She replied, 'we have not liked it'," writes Mr Nayar. "He asked 'what about her mother?' She too had not liked the declaration, was the reply given." A crestfallen Mr Shastri, according to Mr Nayar, then remarked: "If my own family has not liked it, what will the outsiders say?"
Mr Nayar writes that the prime minister's wife did not come on the line to talk despite many requests - a contention that is disputed by many of his surviving family members. This upset Mr Shastri. "He began pacing up and down the room... For one who had had two heart attacks earlier, the telephone conversation and the walking must have been a strain," he writes. Then his staff gave him milk and some water in the flask. Around 1.30 am, his personal assistant Sahai, according to Mr Nayar, saw Mr Shastri at his door, asking with difficulty, "Where is the doctor?"
The staff woke up Dr Chugh, while the prime minister's staff, assisted by Indian security men, helped Mr Shastri walk back to his room. "If it was a heart attack - myocardiac infarction, and obstruction of blood supply to the heart muscles, as the Soviet doctors said later - this walk," writes Mr Nayar, "must have been fatal."
Mr Nayar writes - presumably from an eyewitness account by the personal assistant - that Mr Shastri began coughing "rockingly", touched his chest and became unconscious. Dr Chugh arrived soon after, felt the prime minister's pulse, gave an injection into the heart, tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but to no avail. More doctors arrived. They found Mr Shastri dead. The time of the death was 1.32 am.
Talk about foul play began as soon as the body arrived in Delhi. Mr Nayar says the prime minister's wife asked him why Mr Shastri's body had turned blue. He told her that when "bodies are embalmed" they turn blue. Mrs Shastri was not convinced. She asked about "certain cuts" on Mr Shastri's body. Mr Nayar told her he hadn't seen any. "Apparently, she and others in the family suspected foul play," Mr Nayar writes.
They still do. I went to meet Sidharth Nath Singh, the prime minister's grandson and a senior member of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, recently to hear the family side of the story. He told me that Mr Nayar's account of the telephone conversation that Mr Shastri had with his family members that night was inaccurate, and that he HAD spoken to his wife. Mr Singh, who was two years old when his grandfather died, says that one person was detained on "suspicion of poisoning Mr Shastri", but was released. Mr Nayar's book has no mention of this.
"Knowing the truth is important for our family. The truth has never been out," Mr Singh told me. Then he talked about the cold war politics of the day, and who would have gained from poisoning Mr Shastri who had served as prime minister for only 19 months: a foreign power, political rivals. Some of it sounds remotely credible; other bits outlandish. But Mr Singh and the nation deserve to know why the government is holding the paper about Mr Shastri's death back. How will it imperil our foreign relations? With whom? India has a notoriously stodgy reputation as far as declassifying historical documents is concered; the state almost encourages a statist historiography. The truth should be out and the controversy should be buried, once for and all.
Officially, the diminutive leader died of a heart attack in a dacha in Tashkent, hours after he signed a peace agreement with the Pakistani president, Ayub Khan, on 11 January 1966, some four months after the end of the second war between the two neighbours. But if you believe surviving members of Mr Shastri's family and an enthusiastic Delhi-based journalist, Mr Shastri was possibly poisoned. What has added grist to the conspiracy mill is the Indian government's refusal to declassify a document it has in its possession pertaining to Mr Shastri's death. In response to a right to information request by the enterprising Anuj Dhar, a journalist and a self-proclaimed "declassification enthusiast", the prime minister's office said that making public that document could "harm foreign relations, cause disruption in the country and cause breach of parliamentary privileges". Totally non-controversial in his life, Mr Shastri has become controversial in death. I did a little digging around and found that most of the better-known accounts of Mr Shastri's death have raised no doubts - death by heart failure. In his magisterial India After Gandhi, historian Ramachandra Guha writes Mr Shastri "died in his sleep of a heart attack". In her biography of Indira Gandhi, Katherine Frank writes that after he "went to bed in the early hours of the 11th January, Mr Shastri had a fatal heart attack". The most vivid account is in my dog eared copy of the long out-of-print book India, The Critical Years by veteran Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar. He was part of the prime minister's travelling press corps to Tashkent. Mr Nayar writes that the Indian prime minister was already a heart patient, having suffered two attacks. He had had a hectic day, holding talks with the Russian premier, Alexey Kosygin - the Russians having brokered the pact - and his officials and had had very little sleep. "That evening," writes Mr Nayar, "I met by chance his personal physican Dr RN Chugh, who accompanied him. I asked him how Shastri was standing the strain. He looked up to the sky and said: 'Everything is in the hands of God'." Mr Nayar does not elaborate. Mr Nayar then proceeds to describe the fateful night in Agatha Christie-like detail. Since he was to travel in the prime minister's airplane early next morning to Kabul en route to Delhi, he retired to bed early an hour before midnight. "I must have been dozing when someone knocked at my door and said: 'Your prime minister is dying.' A Russian lady was waking up all the journalists," writes Mr Nayar. A group of journalists then sped to Mr Shastri's dacha from the hotel. On arriving, Mr Nayar found a grief-stricken Mr Kosygin standing on the verandah. "He could not speak and only lifted his hands to indicate Shastri was no more." When Mr Nayar went in, he found Dr Chugh being questioned by a group of Soviet doctors through an interpreter. In the next room Mr Shastri lay still on his bed. The journalists emptied the flower vases in the room and spread them on the prime minister's body. Mr Nayar also noticed an overturned thermos flask on a dressing table some 10 feet away from Mr Shastri's bed and wondered whether the prime minister had struggled to get to open it to get water. "His slippers were neatly placed near the bed; it meant that he walked barefoot up to the dressing table in the carpeted room," Mr Nayar writes. Mr Nayar then pieces together the events leading up to Mr Shastri's death - of how the prime minister reached the dacha around 10 pm after a reception, chatted with his personal staff and asked his cook Ram Nath to bring him food "which was prepared in the dacha by the Russians". It gets more interesting from here. "In the kitchen there was a Soviet cook helped by two ladies - both from the Russian intelligence department - and they tasted everything, including water, before it was served to Mr Shastri," Mr Nayar writes. Remember this was at the height of the Cold War and India-Pakistan hostilities and the security paranoia was extreme. As Mr Shastri tucked into a frugal spinach and potato curry meal, he received a call from a personal assistant in Delhi and sought the reaction to the Tashkent agreement back home. Then he spoke to his family in Delhi. He asked his eldest daughter, Kusum, about how she had found the peace pact. "She replied, 'we have not liked it'," writes Mr Nayar. "He asked 'what about her mother?' She too had not liked the declaration, was the reply given." A crestfallen Mr Shastri, according to Mr Nayar, then remarked: "If my own family has not liked it, what will the outsiders say?" Mr Nayar writes that the prime minister's wife did not come on the line to talk despite many requests - a contention that is disputed by many of his surviving family members. This upset Mr Shastri. "He began pacing up and down the room... For one who had had two heart attacks earlier, the telephone conversation and the walking must have been a strain," he writes. Then his staff gave him milk and some water in the flask. Around 1.30 am, his personal assistant Sahai, according to Mr Nayar, saw Mr Shastri at his door, asking with difficulty, "Where is the doctor?" The staff woke up Dr Chugh, while the prime minister's staff, assisted by Indian security men, helped Mr Shastri walk back to his room. "If it was a heart attack - myocardiac infarction, and obstruction of blood supply to the heart muscles, as the Soviet doctors said later - this walk," writes Mr Nayar, "must have been fatal." Mr Nayar writes - presumably from an eyewitness account by the personal assistant - that Mr Shastri began coughing "rockingly", touched his chest and became unconscious. Dr Chugh arrived soon after, felt the prime minister's pulse, gave an injection into the heart, tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but to no avail. More doctors arrived. They found Mr Shastri dead. The time of the death was 1.32 am. Talk about foul play began as soon as the body arrived in Delhi. Mr Nayar says the prime minister's wife asked him why Mr Shastri's body had turned blue. He told her that when "bodies are embalmed" they turn blue. Mrs Shastri was not convinced. She asked about "certain cuts" on Mr Shastri's body. Mr Nayar told her he hadn't seen any. "Apparently, she and others in the family suspected foul play," Mr Nayar writes. They still do. I went to meet Sidharth Nath Singh, the prime minister's grandson and a senior member of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, recently to hear the family side of the story. He told me that Mr Nayar's account of the telephone conversation that Mr Shastri had with his family members that night was inaccurate, and that he HAD spoken to his wife. Mr Singh, who was two years old when his grandfather died, says that one person was detained on "suspicion of poisoning Mr Shastri", but was released. Mr Nayar's book has no mention of this. "Knowing the truth is important for our family. The truth has never been out," Mr Singh told me. Then he talked about the cold war politics of the day, and who would have gained from poisoning Mr Shastri who had served as prime minister for only 19 months: a foreign power, political rivals. Some of it sounds remotely credible; other bits outlandish. But Mr Singh and the nation deserve to know why the government is holding the paper about Mr Shastri's death back. How will it imperil our foreign relations? With whom? India has a notoriously stodgy reputation as far as declassifying historical documents is concered; the state almost encourages a statist historiography. The truth should be out and the controversy should be buried, once for and all.
(iv) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed that both sides will discourage any propaganda directed against the other country and will encourage propaganda which promotes the development of friendly relations between the two countries. (v) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed that the High Commissioner of India to Pakistan and the High Commissioner of Pakistan of India will return to their posts and that the normal functioning of diplomatic missions of both countries will be restored. Both Governments shall observe the Vienna Convention of 1961 on Diplomatic Intercourse.Trade Relations (vi) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed to consider measures towards the restoration of economic and trade relations, communications as well as cultural exchanges between India and Pakistan, and to take measures to implement the existing agreement between India and Pakistan. (vii) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed that they will give instructions to their respective authorities to carry out the repatriation of the prisoners of war. (viii) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed that the two sides will continue the discussions of questions relating to the problems of refugees and eviction of illegal immigrations. They also agreed that both sides will create conditions which will prevent the exodus of people. They further agree to discuss the return of the property and assets taken over by either side in connection with the conflict. Soviet Leaders Thanked (ix) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed that the two sides will continue meetings both at highest and at other levels of matters of direct