Happy Birthday, Lal Bahadur Shastri! Cheers to modernity

Ever been to a birthday party where along with the birthday boy at the centre of everyone's attention, there's that other low-key person also having his or her birthday that few remember to wish?

Yes, a-w-k-w-a-r-d.

While everyone is wishing Mohandas Gandhi a very happy 154th, we should also raise a glass to Lal Bahadur Shastri, who would have turned 119th today.


Celebrating Shastri Jayanti doesn't mean us playing down the Mahatma.

But we have come to this column today not to bury Shastriji under the usual blizzard of Gandhi felicitations and photo-ops, but to praise him. Apart from 'competing' with the 'Father of the Nation' and 'Face on the Rupee,' Shastri was also Gandhi's disciple. So, we're pretty sure he wouldn't have minded the spotlight on MKG. But still, LBS deserves a bash of his own in these 'Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Vigyan' times, the vigyan bit coming in because of his prime ministerial push for the Green Revolution.

Lal Bahadur Shastri also was arguably the first leader who, despite not being an Anglophile, was future-facing, and understood that utopian ideas, like turning India into a vast network of villages, were, well, utopian.

If Lal Bahadur Shastri, an unconfirmed teetotaller, had his birthday 'alone' every October 2, it is very likely that we would have raised a glass today with the good stuff even as he would be sipping a stiff nimbu pani.