Tuesday 1st March we were walking around the Fort area of Mumbai where we spotted this statue. It stands on a traffic island on the busy Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Marg.
The statue pays hommage to Lal Bahadur Shastri, an Indian politician and Statesman. He was born on the 2nd October 1904 in Mughalsarai and died on the 11th January 1966 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan aged 61.
The life sized statue, five feet and two inches, depicts Shastri as if walking along holding a book in his left hand. He is also wearing his preferred style of clothing, the dhoti.
It stands on a multi layered plinth, on one section, on all four sides, there is a rifle crossed with a farming implement and the words, Jai Jawan Jai Kisan, underneath
During his career he served as India's Home Minister from 1961 to 1963. He then became India's second Prime Minister following the death of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964. Soon afterwards India was attacked by Pakistan and at the time there was a shortage of grains.
In 1965 while making a speech Shastri coined the phrase "Jai Jawan Jai Kisan", which translates as "Hail the Soldier, Hail the Farmer". He was urging the soldiers to defend India and the farmers to produce more grains.