Knowledge nugget of the day: Lal Bahadur Shastri and Tashkent Declaration

Why in the news?

Lal Bahadur Shastri, the second prime Minister of India, was born on October 2, 1904, in Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Nagar (formerly known as Mughalsarai). It was on January 11, 1966, that he breathed his last in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, a day after signing the Tashkent Declaration reportedly due to cardiac arrest. However, his death remains surrounded by several controversies as no postmortem examination was carried out.

Key Takeaways:

1. Shastri came from humble origins in Uttar Pradesh, and his youth was dedicated to India’s struggle for independence. Post-independence, he served in the UP state government and the central government, before becoming Prime Minister in 1964 after the death of PM Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964).

2. His childhood name was  Lal Bahadur Shrivastava. However, being against the prevailing caste system, he decided to drop his surname. The title ‘Shastri’ was given after he completed his graduation at Kashi Vidyapeeth, Varanasi in 1925. The title ‘Shastri’ refers to a ‘scholar’ or a person, adept in the holy scriptures.

3. On August 15, 1947, he became the Minister of Police and Transport. It was during his tenure that the first women bus conductors were appointed. He was the one who suggested the use of jets of water instead of lathis to disperse unruly crowds.

4. In 1952, Lal Bahadur Shastri became the Union Minister for Railways and Transport in 1952. A serious accident occurred in August 1956 at Mehboobnagar of present-day Telangana, in which 112 lives were lost. Distressed at the tragedy, Shastri owned responsibility for the accident and submitted his resignation to the prime minister. However, PM Nehru did not accept it.

5. But another accident soon took place in November 1956, in Tamil Nadu’s Ariyalur that saw the death of 144 passengers. Shastri resigned again, accepting moral responsibility. In the biography Lal Bahadur Shastri: A Life of Truth in Politics, author and retired bureaucrat CP Srivastava (who also worked with Shastri) wrote “This was the first instance of a cabinet minister accepting moral responsibility for a mishap within his ministry and resigning from government.”

No man can wish for a better comrade and better colleague in any undertaking — a man of highest integrity, loyalty, devoted to ideals, a man of conscience and a man of hard work.

— Jawaharlal Nehru on Shastri

6. Within a year of his resignation, Lal Bahadur Shastri was back in the Union Cabinet and would go on to take the roles of the Home Minister and the Commerce and Industry Minister. In the former, he helped solve rows over the government’s official language policy. When southern states were apprehensive of Hindi domination, he assured that English would continue as an official language alongside Hindi.

7. He was sworn in as the PM on June 9, 1964, after the death of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on May 27, 1964. He remained in the office for 581 days till 1966. When the country faced major food shortages in mid-1960s, Shastri led from the front and introduced new ideas including fixing foodgrain price for producers – known as the minimum support price (MSP) – and setting up a Prices Commission, the body known as the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) now that recommends the MSP.

Tashkent Declaration

1. The 1965 war with Pakistan began when the Pakistan Army began to wage an undeclared war in Jammu and Kashmir in August of that year, believing India would not be able to fight back after its 1962 loss to China. On September 1, Pakistan launched an attack in the Akhnoor sector near Jammu.

2. In retaliation, the Indian Army launched an attack across the International Border in Punjab after Lal Bahadur Shastri gave a go-ahead for it. The United Nations also attempted to persuade the two nations to declare a ceasefire. Finally, Soviet Premier Aleksey Kosygin invited Shastri and Pakistan President General Ayub Khan to Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri shakes hands with Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin after the signing of the Tashkent declaration which summed up the result of Shastri’s meetings here with Pakistani President Ayub Khan towards peaceful negotiations between India and Pakistan. The picture was taken on 10 January only hours before the Indian leader Collapsed and died from a heart attack. United Press International (London Bureau)

3. It is here that the Tashkent Declaration for fostering long-term peace between the neighbours was signed on January 10, 1966, between Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistan’s General Ayub Khan, brokered by the Soviet Union. This brought an inconclusive war to an inconclusive end.

4. But the next day, Shastri passed away due to a heart attack. Srivastava, who was in Tashkent with him, wrote, “Since it was known that Shastriji had had two heart attacks earlier, one in 1959 and die other in June 1964, no one present in Tashkent at that time as a member of the Indian delegation had any reason to entertain any doubts about the report…”

5. In the epilogue, he responded to the speculation around his sudden death: “Some expressed the apprehension that Shastri was bullied and ‘forced’ by the Soviet leaders to sign the Tashkent declaration against his will. This is totally false. Shastri signed the Tashkent declaration freely and with a feeling of great achievement… It can be said that doubts have arisen because no postmortem examination was carried out.”

BEYOND THE NUGGET: Beyond “Jai Jawan Jai Kishan”

1. Shastri coined the slogan “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan”, during a public gathering in Uruva village in Allahabad district in 1965. It was in the background of acute food shortage in the country due to the ongoing war with Pakistan and the impact of the Indo-China war. “Jai Jawan” was for India’s soldiers protecting the country’s vast borders, while “Jai Kisan” was for the humble farmer, going through a crisis of her own.

2. Shastri’s short tenure saw India’s jawans thwarting the enemy at the border, while the kisans toiled on the fields to feed the country. For the prime minister, both were central pillars for the country’s well-being and security.

3. After the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests which catapulted India to nuclear-power status, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee added “Jai Vigyan”, or “hail science” to the slogan, underlining the importance of scientific development for India’s national well-being. Prime Minister Narendra Modi went one step further in 2019, adding “Jai Anusandhan”, or “hail research” to Vajpayee’s quote.

(Source: Lal Bahadur Shastri birth anniversary: Lesser-known facts about India’s second PM, Four things to know about Lal Bahadur Shastri: From ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’ to resignation over railway accident, Lal Bahadur Shastri: The third Prime Minister, towering figure)

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