Portrait of Lal Bahadur Shastri

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Lal Bahadur Shastri

Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indian and politician, Prime Minister of India (died 1966)

Born
October 2, 1904
Died
January 11, 1966
Zodiac sign
Libra
Birth year
1904

About Lal Bahadur Shastri

Lal Bahadur Shastri (2 October 1904 – 11 January 1966) was an Indian politician and statesman who served as the prime minister of India from 1964 to 1966. He previously served as home minister from 1961 to 1963. Shastri was born to Sharad Prasad Srivastava and Ramdulari Devi in Mughalsarai on 2 October 1904. He studied in East Central Railway Inter college and the Harish Chandra High School, which he left to join the non-cooperation movement. He worked for the betterment of the Harijans at Muzaffarpur and dropped his caste-derived surname of "Srivastava". Influenced by Mahatma Gandhi, he joined the Indian Independence movement in the 1920s. He served as the president of Servants of the People Society, founded by Lala Lajpat Rai and held prominent positions in the Indian National Congress (INC). Following Indian independence in 1947, Shastri led several union ministries under prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. As prime minister, Shastri promoted the White revolution, a national campaign to increase the production and supply of milk, by supporting the Amul milk co-operative and creating the National Dairy Development Board. Underlining the need to boost India's food production, Shastri also promoted the Green Revolution in India in 1965. This led to an increase in food grain production, especially in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. He led the country during the India–Pakistan war of 1965. His slogan "Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan" ("Hail to the soldier; Hail to the farmer") became very popular during the war. The war formally ended with the Tashkent Declaration on 10 January 1966; Shastri died the next day. Shastri's paternal ancestors were in the service of the zamindar of Ramnagar in Banaras, and Shastri lived there for the first year of his life. Among the first students of the new institution, Shastri graduated with a first-class degree in philosophy and ethics from the Vidyapith in 1925. The title was a bachelor's degree awarded by the institution but it stuck as part of his name.

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

The world when Lal Bahadur Shastri was born

Lal Bahadur Shastri was born in 1904. 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 1904

  • Best-selling book"The Crossing" – Winston Churchill

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Olympic Games in the Americas (St. Louis)
  • Top headlineRusso-Japanese War begins
  • Technology milestoneNew York subway opens
  • World population~1.64B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderTheodore Roosevelt
  • U.S. population81.8M

1904 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Lal Bahadur Shastri's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19042026
Population81.8M341 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.