Lal Bahadur Shastri

Dr. RAMA CHANDRA GUPTA, M. A., Ph. D.

I

Lal Bahadur found both nature and circumstances unfavourable to him, when he first stepped into the world. Born in a kayastha family of minor government officials on October 2, 1904, in Mughalsarai, a railway colony seven miles from Banaras, it was not possible for him to hope for a bright future as Nehru did, because of an affluent family in which the latter was born and brought up. There could hardly be any match between aristocracy and poverty. While Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, saw an enviable wealth and luxury in his childhood, his successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri, had to eke out his painful existence during the same days in bitter and bleak poverty. And to add to the irony of his fate, his father, a poor school master, died when he was hardly a year and a half old. Lal Bahadur and his two sisters were brought up by his maternal grandfather.

Lal Bhadur’s childhood and early youth were extremely gloomy with fatherless struggle against the heavy odds of life. He had practically to learn to stand on his own feet and shoulder the heavy domestic responsibilities with a dogged determination, and at the same time become adept in combating with the icy and relentless nails of grinding poverty.

Lal Bahadur became interested in the political life of the country, when he was hardly seventeen and joined the Non-Cooperation Movement, launched by Gandhiji, interrupting thereby his school studies. But he entered into it with full fervour and energy, after having developed a keen insight into the problems of lifeand politics under the inspiring influences of various personalities and by dint of his hard training in the school of experience at the threshold of youth. Equipped with vast experience and the knowledge of philosophy, sociology, economics and history at Kashi Vidyapeeth, Lal Bahadur from Varanasi went forth to do battle with the British Government.

In the next fifteen years of his life, his contact with politics became wider, though not much deeper. In 1925, he first came in contact with a top level leader, Lala Lajpat Rai, who was then organising the Servants of the People Society and had naturally turned to the Kashi Vidyapeeth for recruits. Shastri joined the Society as a full-fledged member. He was asked to do Harijan work in Kumar Ashram in Meerut. He lived there with the Harijans, moved with them, and during the two years of his work he was able to persuade many caste Hindus to waive their objections to Harijan boys attending their schools. Unlike many Congressmen of those days, he started his career as a really constructive worker, doing it with the utmost enthusiasm and humility.

Lajpat Rai died in 1928 and Purushottam Das Tandon took over the presidentship of the Servants of the People Society. He asked Lal Bahadur to shift to Allahabad. From 1928 Allahabad became his home. Tandon found in him a faithful and devoted worker, carrying out his instructions to the letter, disposing of all work in double quick time.

Tandon was his first political preceptor, and Lal Bahadur proved himself a faithful disciple by his hard work and sincere, manner. He alone could come up to the exacting standards of Tandon. Whatever the likes and dislikes of Mr. Tandon might be, it was however true that he reposed full confidence in Lal Bahadur, and was mainly responsible for the latter’s gaining importance in the Congress Party.

The period between 1927 and 1931 was of a great ferment and unusual experiences for Lal Bahadur. One of the most remarkable incidents of this exciting period for him was the unfurling of India’s flag of independence in 1929 by Jawaharlal Nehru on the bank of Ravi. Since then Nehru became his idol whom he adored and obeyed as his most devout follower. Lal Bahadur was 25 years at that time.

The above event was followed by the 1930 Civil Disobedience Movement, announced with a thundering resolution passed at countrywide public meetings. The resolution called upon the people of India to observe January 26, 1930, as Purna Swaraj Day. Lal Bahadur’s patriotic spirit was fully awakened, and he immediately decided to plunge himself into the movement by organisinig a no-rent campaign in the Allahabad area. He was then the secretary of the Allahabad Congress Committee. He made a rousing speech in a village outside Allahabad, in which he exhorted the villagers to refuse to pay the rent. The Government reacted to it by arresting him. He was convicted and sentenced to two and a half years’ imprisonment.

From 1930 to 1945, Lal Bahadur’s life was one of continuous struggle against the British Government, and during this period he passed several years in prisons. After 1930, he was again jailed in 1932, 1934, 1941, and 1942–in all, seven times and spent a total of nine years behind the bars.

The events followed successively. The British Parliament passed a new Govt. of India Act, in 1935, according to which autonomy was granted to the provinces. In 1937, following the new reforms ushered in by the Act of 1935, the Congress fought the elections to the Provincial legislatures and captured large majorities in almost all of them. Lal Bahadur, on the recommendation of Babu Purushottam Das Tandon, also got a ticket of the Congress Party to fight the election. He won the election and became a member of the U. P. Assembly. Although as a member of the Assembly, he was just a -bencher, he could attract the attention of Pandit Pant, one of the supreme figures of the independence movement. Being impressed by his unquestionable sincerity and unimpeachable character, Pandit Govind Vallabh Pant, on becoming the Chief Minster of U. P. after the 1946 elections, appointed Lal Bahadur as his Parliamentary Secretary, along with C. B. Gupta. Pant relied on him to assess the political impact of the measures the State Government proposed to take. In 1947, he was asked by his political boss (Pandit Pant), under whom he served his political apprenticeship, to take charge of public security throughout U. P. Lal Bahadur then became Home Minister, in complete charge of Police and Transport departments. It was a period of stress and storm and the communal holocaust had unhinged many minds. It was a credit to Lal Bahadur that he refused to adopt a retaliatory policy.

As Police Minister, Lal Bahadur performed his duties with courage and sagacity and became extremely popular both among his colleagues and the public of Uttar Pradesh. But he was not to stay in U. P. for a long time. Destiny was smiling on him; and God wished him to play a greater role on the national stage.

He shot into all-India politics overnight. Nehru and Tandon never got on good terms. As Congress President, Tandon took Nehru to task for keeping rebels and renegades like Kidwai in the Cabinet. Nehru was forced not only to drop Kidwai’s name from the list of his colleagues, but he also resigned from the Working Committee of the Congress. This action of Nehru turned the situation in his favour. Tandon was well aware that without the active cooperation of Nehru, he could not pull on as Congress President. He, therefore, resigned the Presidentship and asked Nehru to take over.

When Nehru became the President of the Congress, he appointed Lal Bahadur as the General Secretary on the recommendation of B. C. Roy. B. C. Roy, then Chief Minister of Bengal, had suggested to Nehru that he should appoint Lal Bahadur as the General Secretary with a view to facilitating the work of the Working Committee. Nehru accepted the suggestion and appointed Lal Bahadur.

Gradually, Nehru began to develop greater and greater faith in Lal Bahadur, because he had proved himself a man of peace and compromise during the course of his past political life. Further, he had raised his position in the eyes of Nehru by conveying a hint to him that after Patel’s death, Pant was leaning more and more towards Tandon and that one day he would be completely with him. Under the circumstances, Nehru wanted such a man, who could resolve differences between Congress leaders without magnifying them. And that man was Lal Bahadur. No wonder, Nehru had him step into the shoes of Pant and other ‘Congress leaders just to read their minds. Whatever the case may be, it is a fact that Lal Bahadur, after taking over the charge of the office of General Secretaryship, yielded to Nehru completely.

As General Secretary, Lal Bahadur demonstrated his unrivalled abilities as an organiser and proved a glutton for work. He worked round the clock, toured the country intensively, addressed Congress workers all over, chalked out election strategy to suit the local requirements of each region, helped State Congress Committees to prepare their lists of candidates, and in the process, familiarised himself with the merits and abilities of Congressmen in the field and saw for himself at close quarters the new human material coming into the Congress since independence.

The successful organisation of the election campaign by Lal Bahadur made him an inevitable member of the inner body of the Congress organisation which guides the party’s parliamentary wings both at the Centre and in the states; and after a few years, on the Congress Parliamentary Board, his position was such that whether he was on the Board or not, no decision was taken without consulting him.

When the new parliament met, Lal Bahadur was persuaded to stand for election to the Rajya Sabha and was duly elected. Soon after, he was appointed Minister for Railways and Transport in the Nehru Cabinet. Thus, within about 15 years of his joining the U. P. Government as a junior Parliamentary Secretary, he became a relatively senior member of the Union Government and ministerial head of the largest State undertaking in the country.

As a Railway Minister, Lal Bahadur brought about many reforms in the railway system in order to improve the lot of the railway employees and tried his best to put the railways firmly on their rails, after the disorganisation they had suffered from the partition. But the thing that attracted the attention of the people countrywide was his assuming constitutional responsibility for the Ariyalur railway disaster in November, 1956 and his forthwith resignation as Railway Minister.

Incidentally, the railway disaster came in time. Lal Bahadur was relieved of his duties as Railway Minister and put in charge of the election campaign for the second time in succession. He was closely associated with preparing the Congress for the general elections–a rare experience and privilege, which was bound to stand him in good stead in later years.

In the second general elections, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Allahabad and served as Minister of Transport and Communications until March, 1958. In that month, he took over the important Commerce and Industry portfolio in a cabinet reshuffle, following the resignation of the Finance Minister, T. T. Krishnamachari, in the wake of a scandal involving the State-owned Life Insurance Corporation. In February 1961, when Pant’s health began to fail, Shastri was named acting Home Minister. On March 7, the old lion breathed his last, and his onetime disciple inherited the awesome powers and prerogatives of the Union Home Minister. As Home Minister from 1961 to 1963, he reached the fullness of his capabilities as the greatest moderating influence on Indian politics. Under the Constitution, the executive responsibility for many of the functions of the Horne Minister, especially the maintenance of internal security which is the most important among them, lies with the States. The Home Minister only looks after the main policy aspects.

But all kinds of political problems arise, whether of relations between the States or between communities, or internal problem relating to the administrative and political structure of a State, which the Home Minister has to approach with political firmness rather, than any executive powers entrusted to him by the Constitution. In many cases, these problems resolve themselves with management of the internal affairs of a State Congress, or the affairs of the Congress organisations of two neighbouring States; dealing with them frequently becomes a test of the Home Minister’s personal qualities, not his constitutional power–his ability to smooth tempers and to set fears at rest. In these tasks, Lal Bahadur succeeded admirably, assisted by his temperament, reputation and the knowledge of the Congress, which he acquired in successive party jobs.

But he had to leave that post, when the Kamraj Plan was brought into operation. Lal Banadur, along with five of his colleagues in the Central Cabinet, handed in his resignation to the Prime Minister, which the latter accepted on August 24, 1963. At the time of his exit from the Home Ministry, no one could imagine that one day he would replace Nehru as Prime Minister of India. But, when he was called to assist Nehru after his illness at Bhubaneshwar, it was felt in some political circles that of all the probable contenders, Shastri was the most suitable man to be the future Prime Minister. And the speed with which the possibility won acceptance was proof of the general belief that he would make no sudden departure or break from the traditions set by Nehru. He was seen as a continuation of the Nehru era, though in a modified form. When he handled the work of shaping Indian relations with Nepal, he pulled them out of a mess with speed and skill; during a brief intervention in the affairs of Kashmir, he showed himself capable of political daring, a gamble if it was needed. But that did not interfere with general expectation that this would be an influence in favour of stability, consolidation and progress not high adventure or split-making rigidity.

Of Lal Bahadur, it can be further said with confidence that he had no personal enemies. He had always shown himself to be without malice and unwilling to wound. His kindly, somewhat cherubic face, soft voice, placid temperament and transparent sincerity had all added up to his political personality as a mediator and bridge-builder. At the same time, he could be firm without malice. He did occasionally offer Nehru unpalatable advice as a point of duty, and he was largely instrumental in shaping opinion behind the decision to release Sheikh Abdullah.

When Jawaharlal Nehru died on May 27, 1964, the Congress Party chose Lal Bahadur as the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party without a contest. In doing so, the Congress made a wise choice because Lal Bahadur, as a Gandhian centrist, was acceptable to both the groups in the Congress, Left and Right.
It was for the sake of unity that both groups sank their differences and voted Lal Bahadur as the Leader. The Congress and the country expected many things from him, but, perhaps, providence did not wish him to live long and guide the destinies of the Indian people. He died on the 11th January, 1966 at Tashkent, after having signed there the historic Tashkent Declaration for thecause of peace in Asia and the World.

Lal Bahadur Shastri was an extra-ordinary hard-working man. He seemed to put in, in the course of a single day, what others could take many days to do. Anyone who knew him was struck with amazement at the amount of work that he could do in a single day. How he managed to do so much, and kept himself in constant touch with men and affairs all over the world all the time, is difficult for ordinary folk to understand. In work, La1 Bahadur was indefatigable as was Mr. Nehru. He was up at 5.30 a. m. After going through important files and newspapers, he was ready to meet people around 8 a. m. He indulged in no recreation. He hardly went to see a film. Rarely did he retire before 12 or 12.30 in the night.

Lal Bahadur was a man of great concentration of mind and attended to his manifold duties one after another in a very regular and methodical manner, without allowing himself to be ruffled by the enormity of the work or worried by its complicated nature. Being a very regular and methodical person, he was able to do much more than others. Everything about him was neat and tidy. There was no confusion in his mind.

The food he took was so simple that his attendants found it difficult to say what he ate, Lunch usually was a matter of something to eat and was over in a few minutes. He was a strict vegetarian, and he neither drank nor smoked. Although he remained neat and tidy, he did not bother much about his dress. In short, he was a man of very simple habits.

Also, there was a spirit of detachment in him, which was a very great quality. I doubt whether there are many who have this spirit to the extent he had. He had had his pangs and sufferings. He got over them in the spirit of the Bhagavad Gita, knowing that one should not worry for what was bound to happen or what was beyond man’s power. He was perfectly a man of action. He attended to his work in the spirit of the great scripture that says that “yoga is efficiency in action” (yogah karmasu kaushalam) and also that “all acts should be done without attachment” (yogasthah kuru karmani, sangam tyaktva Dhananjaya). So he did his day’s hard work, and then did not worry about it. He appeared–without, perhaps, knowing it–to follow Lord Krishna’s injunction: “Thy duty is to do thy tasks regardless of results” (karmanyevadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana). Many of us are more worried about the results than about the act itself. That dose not enable us to use our full capacity and energy, or put our mind and attention to the work in hand. It would be good, if we followed Lal Bahadur Shastri in this respect and worked hard, whatever the nature of the work we have undertaken may be.

His was a disciplined mind, and so he overcame the effects of good and bad deeds alike. This is what Yoga enjoins for the perfect state of mind. Yoga consists in the skill of doing one’s act in the right manner. Because Lal Bahadur remained free from all types of attachment, and did not feel unduly elated by agreeable experiences, nor unduly depressed by disagreeable experiences, he might be called a stable-minded person according to yoga. Explaining Buddhi Yoga, Lord Krishna says that the mental attitude of even mindedness or the spirit, in which an action is done, is a most important factor in the performance of action and, therefore, a person should always be mindful of the spirit which moves him to act.¹ According to Goethe, an eminent German thinker, “a man should not expect from life happiness, or care for the results of his activities. He is to engage himself for the realization of good, impelled as it were, by inner necessity. Whoever desires to be active must resemble that unreasonable sower in the parable who casts the seed without worrying as to how large the harvest will be, nor where it will come up.” Again in a letter written to one of his friends in 1782, he says, “All I can assure you is that in the midst of happiness, I live in a perpetual state of renunciation and that each day, with all my troubles and works, I see that it is not my will that is done, but the will of a higher power whose thoughts are not my thoughts.”

In the above sense, Lal Bahadur was perfectly an even-minded person, as he remained ungloved and unperturbed in the midst of trials of life. His was a life of constant dedication. He had seen many pits and pinnacles in life, and the hard hits of cruel fate could never deter the course of his life. “Hard and devoted work is equal to prayer” was one of Shastriji’s mottoes. Being brought up in the religious and philosophical traditions of India, he took things with a spirit of resignation and tried to lead completely a detached life. Although he was not a saint in the customary sense, he was more than a saint as far as his way of living and thinking went. Nothing could detract his attention from the work which he consciously took up in hand. Even the love and care of his own children and the members of his family could not check him from discharging his duty. For him, duty was more important than love or anything else in life.

Let me recall an incident from his past life in corroborate my statement. In 1930, Lal Bahadur was jail. At that time, one of his daughters fell seriously ill. But he would not go on parole, because, according to the jail rule, he was expected to give in writing that he would not partake in the Congress movement, while temporarily out. Although it was not his intention to do any such thing, it went against his grain and self-respect to give such an undertaking.

Thereupon, the jailor, who knew Lal Bahadur’s high integrity, allowed him to go on fifteen days’ parole without taking anything from him in writing. But, the day Lal Bahadur reached his home, his daughter died. He performed her last rites and immediately returned to jail, without availing of the fifteen days’ parole.

A year later, Lal Bahadur’s four-year old son had an attack of typhoid. He was running a high temperature. Lal Bahadur went on a week’s parole, of course without any written undertaking. When the period of parole came to an end, the child’s condition worsened. The jail authorities now insisted upon his giving a written undertaking not to engage in any political activity during the extended period of parole. Lal Bahadur flatly refused to give any such undertaking.

The child murmured through his fever-swollen lips: “Babuji, kindly do not go.” Tears rolled down Shastriji’s cheeks. Then he suddenly shook his head, as if coming out of a trance, grinned, paid a due respect to everyone and briskly walked out and marched frill to jail, without even looking behind. We can fully realise the agitation, which he could have in his mind at that time. But, he was duty-bound, and he would not allow his emotions to overpower him and come in his way.

That was the period in his life, when the family lived in abject poverty, literally not knowing where the next meal would come from. In fact, his daughter died, because he could not afford to pay the cost of medical treatment.

Many years later, in August 1964, addressing the secretaries of the Government of India, the Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, said that he knew what poverty was, and he painfully revealed the days when he lived on Rs. two and a half per month. As a Minister, when he lived in spacious bungalows, he refused to be corrupted by the affluence of his new status, and stuck to his simple way of life.

It must be admitted that Lal Bahadur possessed the peculiar capacity of not only absorbing the ideas, sentiments and aspirations, but sometimes also the passing moods of his countrymen. It was not merely his amazing vitality and devotion to work, but some inborn capacity which had made him, like Nehru, first an acknowledged leader both of the Congress and the Indian people, and subsequently the head of the administration of free India.

If we go through the pages of English history, we become aware of this peculiar attribute in a great Englishman, David Lloyd George, who saved Great Britain from the menace of German imperialism in the First World War. Although he was born in Manchester, he was a Welshman to his fingertips. He lost his father at an early age, but his career was dependent upon the affectionate upbringing of a charitable Welsh uncle. But that uncle had strength, ability and ambition, and impressed upon his nephew, David, that if he wanted to succeed in politics he should not only give, but absorb the ideas and aspirations of the people and even interpret their passing moods or fancies to those around him. The nephew followed the advice and became great.

The same was true of Lal Bahadur. He had an insight or an intuition, which enabled him to look deep into the minds and hearts of men, whether they were politicians or ordinary folk. He possessed a unique capacity of dealing with the mental and emotional processes of even an incongruous or heterogenous concourse; he always responded to the sentiments of the people.

Apart from this quality of integrating ideas and actions, Lal Bahadur had another quality, which he symbolised in his personality and which, to mymind, was more important than the above quality and his almost Buddha-like sacrifice of comforts. That was his humanism. I do not feel that he was aware or conscious of this quality of his character, but his thoughts and actions fully represented it. And his humanism was more positive and wide than that espoused by several European thinkers, like Berdaev, Maritain, Kant, Santayana or Russell. While the average European philosopher has been on the defensive against the disintegration of European society through the pull of the cash-nexus, unbridled competition, insecurity, lack of faith, aggrandisement and other traits of a moribund culture, Lal Bahadur felt for the survival and welfare of the whole community. He heard “the sad and still music of humanity” and his sympathies went to the peoples of all countries.

Lal Bahadur was a man of the poor people. Under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, he, from he very beginning of his youth, fought for the political liberation of his homeland. After the proclamation of independence, he applied all his energies to the service of the people. He sought to understand what lay behind those millions of eyes that stared at him, and felt extremely grieved to see there untold sorrow and unexpressed misery. He knew that India was a poor country, and her average man could not afford to procure even one meal in a day. He was also conscious of the fact that till the lot of the common man was improved, democracy in India would not be consolidated. This is equally true of every country in the world. As Lal Bahadur himself lived in dire poverty, struggling against want and misery for most of his life, it was but natural that he should have utmost sympathy for the downtrodden people of the world. Without wasting his energy in ideological controversies, he ceaselessly and quietly worked for the people and did whatever he could for the improvement of their lot. He was in favour of such a society which would meet the material requirements of the people by giving them a better standard of living without denuding them of what we had always held precious through the ages.

All his activities and ideas were a testimony of his great love for the common man. His sympathies for the poor and downtrodden people were more positive and realistic. He did whatever he could for the welfare of his own people as well as for establishing amity and goodwill among the peoples of the world. Under his dynamic leadership, India emerged as a strong and unified nation, replete with energy and life. Although he wore an unostentatious and simple look, he had ‘iron in his soul’. Indeed, in him were combined many great qualities–the humanism of Buddha erudition of Sankara, saintliness of Ramanuja and Madhva, simplicity of Vivekananda and Gandhi and, above all, the inspiring leadership of Nehru.

¹ References drawn from Sri Prakasa’s article on Nehru:  A Buoyant Personality