OBITUARY Shastri Considered Kind Even By Adversaries

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30956, 12 January 1966, Page 6

OBITUARY Shastri Considered Kind Even By Adversaries

Even in India where political rivalry is often brutal, calumny a favoured weapon, and cynicism a common defence, Lal Bahadur Shastri, who died of a heart attack at Tashkent, Russia, yesterday, was reckoned even by his adversaries to be good, kind and tolerant.

Lal Bahadur was born in 1903 into a family of poor Kayasths, a caste lower than the Brahmins but equally dedicated to learning. This meant that though the family’s poverty was harsh it had to seem genteel.

It possibly left Shastri with a closer feeling for India’s common man than Nehru’s, whose background was aristocratic and well-to-do. Where Nehru saw the deprived Indian masses marching towards a vast but distant economic sunrise. Shastri thought rather of their present, desperate daily needs. His father, a minor Government official, died when . Lal Bahadur was less than two. Tn India, at that time, this was probably a less significant loss than it would be in New Zealand. Many Indian fathers died young and the Hindu family was always big enough to surround a child With indulgent love, Lal Bahadur was brought up very largely in the company of women—he had no brothers—and with Hindus it is among women that orthodox religion finds its most ardent supporters. Swam Ganges

Because he did not have money for ferry fare as a schoolboy, Lal Bahadur swam the Ganges twice a day with his books tied atop his head. This upbringing left him mildly conservative, in religion and to some extent in politics. He was vegetarian, ate sparingly, neither smoked nor drank, and wished he could live with the total simplicity of a villager. He has six Children and six grandchildren and liked playing ping-pong with the youngest. His wife, Lalita, whom he married in 1930, is a regular templegoer. The family lived in a village near Benares, the holiest Hindu city of North India. There Lai Bahadur went to college and studied religious philosophy. Shastri, which people now use, improperly, as his name, is in fact, the title of the degree he received. Share of Gaol Like other Indian youngsters of his time, Shastri answered Gandhi’s call to pas-

siive rebellion in the 19205. He did his share of civil disobedience and suffered his share of gaol. He went first into the local politics of Allahabad—Nehru’s city and operational base —and then into the wider field of the United Provinces, where Pandit Pant was ruler. He was an aide for both Pant and Nehru.

After independence, Lal Bahadur became a parliamentary secretary in the United Party Government and then general secretary of the Congress Party. He helped to pave the way for the party’s victories at the polls in 1952, and was rewarded with a place in the Cabinet. From 1947 to 1951 he was Minister for Police and Transport. He was named Minister for Railways and Transport in 1952. He is best remembered, perhaps, for his insistence on resigning, in scrupulous deference to the principle of ministerial responsibility, after a disastrous railway crash in 1956. But his real work at this time was done under cover, deep inside the party—picking candidates, reconciling rivalries, resolving conflicts, serving Nehru's private purposes. No Serious Enemies It is by now well known that Lal Bahadur was chosen as Nehru’s successor because he, and he alone, had made no serious enemies in the Congress hierarchy. He succeeded to the Prime Ministership in June, 1964. From his first day in office, Mr Shastri had to face India’s heap of woes—the tension with Pakistan, trouble on India’s border with China, and the threat always in the background of famine among his people. Yesterday his no-war declaration with Pakistan, relieved at least some of the tension on one front.