Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri birth anniversary

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The nation is celebrating the 153rd birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi on 2nd October 2022. 2nd October is also the birth anniversary of Lal Bahadur Shastri who served as the second Prime Minister of India.

Important facts

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri on their birth anniversary.

• He urged everyone to purchase khadi and handicrafts products as a tribute to Gandhi.

• The Prime Minister also shared some glimpses from his gallery at the 'Pradhan Mantri Sangrahalaya' in Delhi, which depicts Shastri's life journey and achievements.

About Mahatma Gandhi

• Birth - 2nd October 1869 in Porbandar (Gujarat)

• Brief Introduction - Lawyer, politician, social activist and writer who became the leader of the nationalist movement against the British rule of India.

• In South Africa (1893–1915), he successfully fought racist rule with a new method of mass movement, which he called satyagraha.

• He returned to India from South Africa on 9 January 1915.

• The Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 was the first Satyagraha movement led by Gandhi in India.

• In 1918, he went to Ahmedabad to organize a Satyagraha movement among cotton mill workers.

• In 1919, he decided to launch a nationwide satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act (1919).

• The Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place on April 13, 1919. Seeing the spread of violence, he called off the movement (April 18, 1919).

• The non-cooperation movement was adopted in the Congress session in Nagpur in December 1920.

• He was shot dead by Nathuram Godse on 30 January 1948.

His Social Work

• He worked for the upliftment of the untouchables and gave them a new name 'Harijan' which means child of God.

• His symbol of self-reliance, the spinning wheel, became a popular symbol of the Indian independence movement.

• He was instrumental in preventing Hindu-Muslim riots as tensions escalated before and during the country's partition.

• Hind Swaraj, My Experiments with Truth (Autobiography) are popular books written by him.

About Lal Bahadur Shastri

• He was born on October 2, 1904 in Mughalsarai, a small railway town seven miles from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.

• He was the second Prime Minister (1964-66) of India and a senior leader of the Indian National Congress.

• He led several insurgent campaigns in the Civil Disobedience Movement and spent a total of seven years in British prisons.

• He was a minister in various departments in the Union Cabinet from 1951 to 1956.

• He resigned from the post of Railway Minister, taking responsibility for a railway accident in which many people lost their lives.

• He was the first person to be awarded the Bharat Ratna (1966) posthumously.

• He led the country during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. He gave the slogan "Jai Jawan Jai Kisan".