World: A MAN OF SILK & STEEL

Freely translated, Lal Bahadur Shastri means "Graduate Brave Jewel." He was born in 1904, the second son of a minor tax collector in the vil lage of Mughal Sarai, near the holy city of Benares. His father died when he was an infant. The child belonged to the Kayasth caste, who were disdained as quislings by other Hindus because they became clerks and officials under the Moslem rule of the conquering Mogul emperors. Their reputation for shrewdness is so great that an Indian saying runs, "If you meet a Kayasth and a serpent, kill the Kayasth first."

Lal Bahadur showed little of his caste's supposed brilliance, although he cared enough about an education to walk eight miles a day to school, sometimes taking a short cut by swimming the Ganges River, carefully strapping his books to his head before entering the water. He made his first total commitment at 16, when Mahatma Gandhi spoke to students in Benares. From Gandhi, says Shastri, "I learned of the moral aspect of life—to serve your country without love of power and authority, if possible." To fight for freedom, the lad quit high school three months before he was due to graduate, and, in all, was arrested eight times by the British, serving a total of nine years in jail. In 1932, when police refused to let Indian nationalists hoist their flag on the clock tower of Allahabad, he rode by in a cart, disguised in the veils of a Moslem woman, suddenly leaped off and sprinted up the tower stairs, raising the flag before the police could stop him.

Repaid Loyalty. In his home state of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous and the birthplace of Jawaharlal Nehru, Shastri became the protege of the Hindu traditionalist leaders, Puru-shottamdas Tandon and Pandit Pant. With independence in 1947, he rose through the state government to become Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh.

When Prime Minister Nehru broke with the conservatives in 1951, Shastri abandoned one preceptor, Tandon, to join the other, Pandit Pant, in supporting Nehru. From that moment Lal Bahadur Shastri never left Nehru's side, and the grateful Prime Minister repaid the loyalty with a succession of Cabinet jobs.

In a nation where politicians affect superior airs, Shastri is modest and retiring. Among a people given to rhetoric and ritual, he is concrete and practical. In a land reverencing charismatic leadership and far-reaching intellect, he looks like a messenger boy and disparages his own brain. Above all, he is reassuringly rational. Though he fights corruption, he does so with intelligence and compassion, well aware that badly paid public servants will invariably be tempted by bribes.