Editing Lal Bahadur Shastri (section)

==Early years (1904–1920)==
Shastri was born on 2 October 1904 at the home of his maternal grandparents.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bellenoit |first1=Hayden J. |title=The Formation of the Colonial State in India: Scribes, Paper and Taxes, 1760-1860 |date=17 February 2017 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-49436-1 |page=182 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iEMlDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT182 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="britannica">{{citation |title=Lal Bahadur Shastri |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lal-Bahadur-Shastri |encyclopedia=britannica.com |date=23 June 2023 |access-date=17 April 2020 |archive-date=6 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150906033024/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lal-Bahadur-Shastri |url-status=live }}</ref> Shastri's paternal ancestors were in the service of the ''[[zamindar]]'' of [[Ramnagar, Varanasi|Ramnagar]] in , and Shastri lived there for the first year of his life. Shastri's father, Sharad Prasad Srivastava, was a school teacher who later became a clerk in the revenue office at [[Prayagraj]], while his mother, Ramdulari Devi, was the daughter of Munshi Hazari Lal, the headmaster and English teacher at a railway school in [[Mughalsarai]]. Shastri was the second child and eldest son of his parents; he had an elder sister, Kailashi Devi (b. 1900).{{sfn|Bakshi|1991|pp=1, 2}}{{sfn|Dhawan|1991|p=81}}

In April 1906, when Shastri was hardly 18 months old, his father, who had only recently been promoted to the post of deputy [[tehsildar]], died in an epidemic of [[bubonic plague]]. Ramdulari Devi, then only 23 years old and pregnant with her third child, took her two children and moved from Ramnagar to her father's house in Mughalsarai and settled there for good. She gave birth to a daughter, Sundari Devi, in July 1906.{{sfn|C.P. Srivastava|1995|pp=12–17}}<ref name="pmindia">{{citation |title=Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri |url=https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/former_pm/shri-lal-bahadur-shastri/ |publisher=[[Government Of India]] |work=pmindia.gov.in |access-date=19 May 2019 |archive-date=17 June 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190617080922/https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/former_pm/shri-lal-bahadur-shastri/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Thus, Shastri and his sisters grew up in the household of his maternal grandfather, Hazari Lalji.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Narayan|first=Narayan Agrawal|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Lwoae1jbcc0C|title=Lal Bahadur Shastri, Churn of Conscience|date=2006|publisher=Eternal Gandhi|isbn=978-81-231-0193-4|language=en}}</ref> However, Hazari Lalji himself died from a [[stroke]] in mid-1908. Thereafter, the family was looked after by his brother (Shastri's great-uncle) Darbari Lal, who was the head clerk in the opium regulation department at Ghazipur, and later by his son (Ramdulari Devi's cousin) Bindeshwari Prasad, a school teacher in Mughalsarai.{{Sfn|Chokkan|2020|p=9}}

This situation was fairly standard for the time, where the Indian [[joint family]] system was a thriving reality; the sense of family relationship and responsibility it fostered was the primary social security of the time. Nor should it be surmised from these circumstances that Shastri grew up in an under-privileged manner, or that his education and comforts were compromised. On the contrary, since he was a rank student, he received a better education than some of his cousins.{{sfn|C.P. Srivastava|1995}} Bindeshwari Prasad, on the limited salary of a school teacher, with many dependents, nevertheless managed to give a good education to all the children in his care.

In 1917, Bindeshwari Prasad was transferred to Varanasi, and the entire family moved there, including Ramdulari Devi and her three children. In Varanasi, Shastri joining the seventh standard at Harish Chandra High School.