Lal Bahadur Shastri

“The leadership which democracy requires is a leadership that is itself democratic, a leadership of persuasion and friendly guidance, and not a leadership of force and domina­tion. It is the leadership, not of dictators nor of spell­binders, but of those who seek the collaboration of the led.”
–A. BARRATT

Few men in history were more widely loved when alive or more widely mourned on their death, than India’s Lal Bahadur Shastri. It was also his singular distinction in life to have achieved something extraordinary while he was true to type as the proverbial common man. Here was a rare being – one who, with no adventitious aids and utterly devoid of personal ambition, rose to great heights by sheer gravitation, as it were, and passed out of mortal ken, after having established himself as the undis­puted leader of his nation and as an apostle of goodwill and peace on the international plane.

If his rise to India’s premiership as Nehru’s successor, registered one of democracy’s greatest triumphs, his sudden death at Tashkent in the wake of an historic agreement, tended to highlight his supreme concern for international values and peace on earth. It is one of history revelations how a man so unambitious and so unassuming and of such mediocre gifts as Lal Bahadur could have at all touched greatness. If yet he did, that too with an effortless ease, it was all because of his simple life and selfless service. His was a life full of lessons to posterity.

The passing of Jawaharlal Nehru on May 27, 1964 set the world by its ears with intense curiosity about the succession – an issue which had long been debated in his own lifetime with his nonchalance, if not unconcern, in stubborn evidence. By a process of elimination it was generally believed that of all his colleagues, Mr. Lal Bahadur stood the best chance. And when Jawaharlal Nehru, in the wake of his near-collapse at Bhubaneswar, sought to summon Mr. Lal Bahadur to his aid from the vasty Kamaraj deeps, it seemed that the dice was rather purposefully loaded in his favour. When ultimately the Congress Parliamentary Party had to elect its leader for the “crown of thorns”, Mr. Lal Bahadur’s potential rivals were put to fight, by vox popupli (the voice of the people).

It was more than a mere political triumph: it was a moral victory for one who, in a party where every second man was controversial, with a sense of natural ease, rose above contention and made himself the most acceptable. He had a firm hold on the organisation, without ever passing for a boss. He had varied ministerial experience. At the centre, he worked in close, indeed intimate, colleagueship with Jawaharlal Nehru and enjoyed his confidence. Above all, more than anyone else in the offing, he was instinctively trusted to go the Nehru way, without deviating by a hair-breadth from the paths laid down by the departed leader. More than of the party, he was the choice of the people.

Few men achieved so much with more obvious limitations or less spectacular gifts. May be, in appearance he was not arresting, but he was

A square-set man and honest, and his eyes
An outward sign of all the warmth within.

And he was a man of deeper qualities than his urban appearance suggested. Without any loss of his modesty of bearing he carried himself not only with ease and dignity but with a natural graciousness that sprang from a kindly heart. While he was not brilliant, he had a quick grasp of things, a keen sense of understanding and a certain clarity of mind.

Mr. Lal Bahadur was never known to manoeuvre for any position or use his undoubted influence to satisfy personal ambition or humour private grudge. As in the case of the Canadian Premier Mackenzie King, things came his way. And having always succeeded in almost everything he had put his hand to and grown equal to his opportunities, he steadily advanced in stature.

Mr. Lal Bahadur had neither social advantages nor academic distinctions. Even for a politician, his integument was singularly thin. Glamour of any kind he had none while by the side of Nehru he was almost lamentably pedestrian. As a speaker he was mediocre and as a writer negligible. Cast in no heroic mould, he was seldom swayed by the vision beatific that seized one with a sense of frenzy over the gleam on the far horizons. He was emphatically not cut out for the role of a Colossus. Yet....

Seldom had nature and events made a man a nation’s leader out of more modest material or (as Omar Khayyam would have it) common substance. Least demonstrative of politicians, Mr. Lal Bahadur was plain to the point of homeliness; indeed, he was extraordinarily homespun. His greatest asset was his freedom from pretension. He, however, knew more than he professed to know. His mind was, if limited, very orderly and sound while his outlook was sober, even enlightened. His public spirit was unimpeachable and his personal integrity unassailable. He had a horror of intrigue; he loathed dusty strife. He worked for harmony all around. He was a born smoother. But he was conciliatory without being necessarily compromising, and he could put up a stiff when he felt he must. There was universal testimony to his higher qualities as a statesman. He was “balanced practical and entirely dependable,” like Sir Robert Peel in his day. His unruffled demeanour, imperturbability and cool brain were precious possessions which any Prime Minister in the world could envy.

If few had his generosity of mind in pouring oil on troubled waters–or administering soothing syrup to frayed nerves–fewer had his genius for handling tangled threads or unravelling difficult knots. Again and again Mr. Lal Bahadur proved to be the rescue man for the Congress party in a crisis and sometimes its very life-belt when it was in her waters. The greatest thing about him was the goodwill that he earned even beyond the party, by his self-effacing service to the country and his modesty and humility which became legendary even in his own day.

Few men in our annals had within recent years so handsomely risen to eminence with less self-propulsion or more detachment. There was, indeed in him, a touch of the noble Lord Grey of Fallodon whose political career was described by Herbert Sidebotham as “the expression not of ambitions, nor even of views, so much as of character”. His merits were more of the heart than of the head and his good nature was infectious. He was neither a demagogue nor a doctrinaire. His power of persuasion was compelling because his words were as serviceable as his motives are disinterested. He wanted nothing that the other man could share, out of the common good he worked for. If he, however, lacked the capacity to inspire the multitude to heroic deeds, he had a singular capacity to win their confi­dence by his devotion to the country and dedicated service.

Mr. Lal Bahadur, truth to tell, started on his Prime Minister­ship under one stupendous handicap. He came on the scene after a giant among men. Indeed, he had till then grown, so to say, under the shadow of a superman, with little inclination and less opportunity for taking any initiative. It was none too enviable a setting for the ascendancy of a political leader who found himself entrusted with the responsibility of negotiating a huge vessel, tossed on the high seas, to happy shores, smiling in secular sweetness and socialist plenty. He may not be a daring pilot but there was no more skilful a steersman.

It was the nation’s good luck that there was a man who could be trusted to keep his head cool and hand steady, in the roughest of weathers, as was evidenced during the dark days of the Indo-Pakistan conflict. With his horror of strife, he never wanted it or liked it. But when he felt he was dragged into it, he was resolved to carry his country through it with fortitude and courage. And he did carry the nation, so to say, on his shoulders, by his moving appeals to its better sense.

On one occasion he said: 

The supreme need of the hour is national unity – unity not of the word but of the heart.

On another:

This is a testing time ... Be united, feel the pride of belonging to a great nation, carry out your tasks with true dedication.

And he propounded too a most sensible doctrine when, addressing a mass gathering, he said:

It is not an army alone that fights a war but a whole people. The real strength of an army depends on the extent to which the nation is behind it.

If in her deadly conflict with Pakistan, India stood as one man, it was not a little due to the fact that she had at the helm of affairs a man who was the very soul of sincerity and who was never prepared to lower her flag or betray her interests. It was Mr. Lal Bahadur’s unique privilege to have upheld the cause of India in war and also led her in the field of peace. Tashkent was his crowning victory. It raised him to the level of an international statesman. But alas, ere he returned home with the laurels thickening on his brow, he died of heart attack too suddenly. It seemed that the very gods were jealous of him. There was, however, the consolation that Mr. Lal Bahadur died at the height of his fame.

There was universal sorrow because of the goodwill he so instinctively evoked wherever he went or was known. A devoted disciple of Gandhiji, a true friend of Jawaharlal Nehru, a great gentleman in public life in the line of Rajendra Babu and a dedicated servant of the nation and of humanity, Lal Bahadur left behind him an imperishable memory.