From Varanasi to Tashkent, how Mahatma Gandhi influenced Lal Bahadur Shastri

Years in the freedom movement

In 1915, Gandhi arrived in India after his successful exploits in South Africa, where he transformed from a promising, young lawyer to a leading civil rights campaigner over the course of two decades (1893-1914). At the time, his focus on non-violent methods garnered much public attention.

Shastri, only 11 at the time, was quite taken by Gandhi’s 1916 speech at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU). The prominent journalist D R Mankekar, in his book Builders of Modern India: Lal Bahadur Shastri (1973), wrote how Shastri could “never forget the day he first saw and heard the Mahatma”. Addressing an audience comprising Viceroy Lord Hardinge and several rulers of princely states, Gandhi denounced the acts of oppression perpetrated by the British government and the subservience shown by the Indian Princes to British rule.

“Lal Bahadur was thrilled. How could a man, so gentle, seemingly so weak, be so magnetic? He was amazed at Gandhi’s courage and his magic hold and influence on the masses. That day, Lal Bahadur realised that there could be no greater force than truth and justice,” Mankekar wrote.

But it was his second encounter with Gandhi that propelled Shastri to join the nationalist movement. After Gandhi called upon Indians to join the Non-Cooperation movement, he spoke in Benaras in 1921 at the invitation of Madan Mohan Malviya, who was founder and Vice Chancellor of BHU.

In the book Lal Bahadur Shastri: A Life of Truth in Politics (1996), C P Srivastava notes how Gandhi, in his speech, addressed the youth and exhorted all those who were 16 or older to stop attending government-aided or government-controlled institutions in spite of severe consequences.

Mahatma Gandhi pictured in Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh, in June 1925. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Shastri, who was 16 at the time and studying in high school, was torn between finishing his course in another three months and joining the movement led by Gandhi. When he announced his intention to quit his school (a government-aided institution), everyone in his family was bewildered except his mother Ram Dulari Devi, who told him: “Son, think deeply about the right course of action, then make up your mind and hold firmly to your decision.”

Shastri decided to heed his mother’s advice. “At that moment, he concluded, his supreme loyalty was to Mother India, his higher dharma was to serve his country, regardless of the sacrifice involved…. Next morning he withdrew his name from Harish Chandra High School and joined the Congress Party as a volunteer. From that day on he became a devoted follower of Mahatma Gandhi and dedicated himself to the Mahatma’s ethical principles of truth and non violence,” Srivastava wrote.

The Tashkent agreement

Even though Shastri stepped into the position of Prime Minister after Nehru’s 17-year-long stint at the helm, he quietly and gradually made his mark. One of the biggest challenges that he faced in office was the India-Pakistan war of 1965, which was fought over the status of Jammu and Kashmir. The conflict lasted 22 days before the United Nations intervened to force a ceasefire.

The Soviet Union decided to act as a third-party mediator. Negotiations between high-level representatives of both countries were conducted in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan (then part of the Soviet Union), which concluded with the signing of the Tashkent Declaration on January 10, 1966 — the historic agreement that formally ended the 1965 war.

Former bureaucrat L P Singh, who worked closely with Shastri during his prime ministerial tenure, recalled in Portrait of Lal Bahadur Shastri: A Quintessential Gandhian (1996) that Shastri considered peace and good relations between India and Pakistan essential “if India was to preserve her soul”.

“If relations between India and Pakistan remained strained, holding the potential of another armed conflict, India would take the path of military glory, and our unique heritage, the ideals of non-violence, truth and human brotherhood bequeathed to us by Gandhiji would be lost,” Singh quoted the former prime minister in his book.

The political scientist Sandeep Shastri (no relation to Lal Bahadur), in his 2019 book Lal Bahadur Shastri: Politics and Beyond, also mentions what Shastri told his aides in the hours leading up to the accord to reinforce his lifelong adherence to Gandhian values. According to the former prime minister, signing the Tashkent agreement was “the one greatest tribute he could pay to the Mahatma”, adding that a failure to work towards creating an environment “to foster peace, harmony and non-violence” would contradict the “values that the Mahatma stood for”.

On January 11, 1966, a day after signing the Tashkent agreement, Shastri died of a sudden cardiac arrest. But even in his last significant act as prime minister, he remained the “quintessential Gandhian”.