Portrait of Jagjivan Ram

Birthday profile

Jagjivan Ram

Jagjivan Ram, Indian politician, 4th Deputy Prime Minister of India (died 1986)

Born
April 5, 1908
Died
July 6, 1986
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1908

About Jagjivan Ram

Jagjivan Ram (5 April 1908 – 6 July 1986), popularly known as Babuji, was an Indian independence activist and politician who served as a minister with various portfolios for over 30 years, making him the longest-serving Union Cabinet minister in Indian history. He also served as the Deputy Prime Minister of India from January to July 1979. He played a pivotal role as the Defence Minister of India during the Indo-Pak War of 1971. As Union Agriculture Minister during two separate tenures, he contributed significantly to the Green Revolution and the modernization of Indian agriculture, particularly during the 1974 drought when he was entrusted with addressing a severe food crisis. He was instrumental in the foundation of the All India Depressed Classes League, an organisation dedicated to attaining equality for Dalits, in 1935 and was elected to Bihar Legislative Assembly in 1937, after which he organised the rural labour movement. In 1946, he became the youngest minister in Jawaharlal Nehru's interim government, the first cabinet of India as a Labour Minister and also a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, where he ensured that social justice was enshrined in the Constitution. He went on to serve as a minister with various portfolios till 1979 as a member of the Indian National Congress (INC). Though he opposed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the Emergency (1975–77), he left Congress in 1977 and joined the Janata Party alliance, along with his Congress for Democracy and later served as the Deputy Prime Minister of India (1977–79); then in 1981, he formed Congress (J). At his death, he was the last surviving minister of the Interim Government and the last surviving original member of the first cabinet of independent India. Jagjivan Ram passed his matriculation in the first division and joined the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in 1927, where he was awarded the Birla scholarship, and passed his Inter Science Examination.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Jagjivan Ram was born

Jagjivan Ram was born in 1908. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1908

  • Best-selling book"Mr. Crewe's Career" – Winston Churchill

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentChicago Cubs win World Series
  • Top headlineFord Model T goes on sale — $850
  • Technology milestoneFord Model T — affordable automobile for the masses
  • Defining fadAutomobile craze
  • World population~1.68B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderTheodore Roosevelt
  • U.S. population87.4M

1908 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Jagjivan Ram's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19082026
Population87.4M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.