Lal Bahadur Shastri

Lal Bahadur Shastri ( Devanagari लालबहादुर शास्त्री Lalbahadur Sastri, born October 2, 1904 in Moghalsarai; † January 11, 1966 in Tashkent) was the second Prime Minister of independent India and an important participant in the struggle for independence.

Lal Bahadur broke off his studies to join the campaign of civil disobedience of Mahatma Gandhi in 1921. In 1926 he was given the name Shastri. He spent nearly nine years in prison, most hereof after the start of the Satyagraha movement 1940 until 1946.

After independence, he became the Minister of Police, and in 1951 Secretary General of the Lok Sabha before again held a ministerial post as Railways Minister. After the railway accident at Ariyalur he resigned from this office. After the next elections, he came as Transport Minister back to the Cabinet in 1961 he became Home Secretary. On January 22, 1964, he resigned as Minister without Portfolio in the Cabinet again. In a decree of the President S. Radhakrishnan on 2 February 1964, the functions Shahstris were determined. He should take over all functions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the Ministry of Atomic Energy and the Government Secretariat, the Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru gave gradually.

Jawaharlal Nehru died in office on 27 May 1964 and left a power vacuum. On May 27, 1964, temporarily Gulzarilal Nanda Prime Minister of India. The main characters of the Congress Party did not have enough support so that the less attention Shastri as a compromise candidate on June 9, 1964 became prime minister.

The main problem was Pakistan, first in the Indian- Pakistani border region, then in Jammu and Kashmir. The second Indo- Pakistani war began and the Indian troops reached Lahore, before it came to a truce.

In January 1966 to Shastri and Muhammad Ayub Khan met at a summit in Tashkent, mediated by Kosygin. Shastri signed an agreement with Pakistan on January 10, the Tashkent Declaration, but the next day he died of a heart attack.

He was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest medal, and in Delhi, a monument was erected for him.