LAL BAHADUR SHASTRI?

BY ALI PETER JOHN

I was born at a time when I could and wanted to see only one face on the front page of The Indian Express which my totally broke and often drunken father used to read whether he had our in most cases I had to beg, borrow or even steal. The face I loved to see was of a handsome old man who I much later came to know was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. I didn’t know of any party or any policy or the game of politics, but I loved to see the face of this unused man about whom I was to know and learn a lot in the time to come…
But, before I could know anything more about him, I was in for a serious shock when I was in the ninth standard and had come home soon after the lunch break and as soon as I reached home, I saw Lekhraj a car mechanic crying like a child. I asked him what was wrong and he held me tight and said,“Chachaji chale gaye”and continued crying with others from my compound joining him in the crying. It was much later that I realised the truth about that handsome face of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had died. It was May 27,1964….
There was a lot of hue and cry all over the country and the one question everyone asked was,“After Nehru Who?
And before I as a boy could understand the importance of the question, the country had found the answer. A puny little man called Lal Bahadur Shastri was the answer and he was to be the successor to Nehru.

Shastri did in one year what many other Prime Ministers after him could not. The highlights of his short term was his paying all the attention to the farmers and the soldiers. His one line slogan, ‘Jay Jawan Jai Kisan’was the slogan of the country. The puny little man proved how very brave and courageous he was when he inspired the Indian soldiers to beat Pakistan to the ground in the Indo-Pak war which India won in the most significant and outstanding manner.
Shastri had become another man’s for courage.
There was a massive effort to bring about peace between India and Pakistan. The President of Pakistan General Ayub Khan had agreed to meet Shastri on neutral ground and were to have rounds of meetings in Tashkent and had entered some significant pact. But India and the world were in for a very big shock. Shastri went to bed one night and never woke up alive again…