Ravishankar Shukla (2 August 1877 — 31 December 1956) was a leader of the Indian National Congress, Indian independence movement activist, the Premier of the Central Provinces and Berar from 27 April 1946 to 25 January 1950, first Chief Minister of the reorganised Madhya Pradesh state from 1 November 1956 until his death on 31 December 1956, He was elected from Saraipali in Madhya Pradesh (now in Chhattisgarh). He also served as Member of Constituent Assembly of India from Central Provinces and Berar.
Born in a wealthy Kanyakubja Brahmin family, his father and grandfather were rich and scholarly. His ancestors belonged to district Unnao from Uttar Pradesh.
His father, Pandit Jagganath Shukla, came of a family which had resisted British rulers for three generations and his mother, Tulsi Devi, was industrious and a capable manager. Young Ravishankar's earliest years were passed in a scholarly atmosphere heavily charged with Indian classics, Shri Ramcharit Manas and Gita. He was admitted to Sunderlal Guru's Pathshala in Saugor. It was one of the six Pathshalas established by the British in Central Provinces.
Ravishankar continued his schooling at Rajnandgaon and subsequently at Raipur High School. He then shifted to Jubbulpore and joined Robertson College (whose premises then were what is today the Model High School in front of the High Court of Jabalpur) and completed the Intermediate in 1895 aged 18 years. The same year he shifted to Nagpur and joined Hislop College for the graduation course.
Early life and career (1897–1908)
When the 13th Congress session took place in 1897 in the nearby town of Amravati, one of his professors, Bhagirath Prasad, decided to attend it and took along with him his student Ravishankar Shukla. This was the first contact between Pt. Shukla and the Congress. Pandit Shukla graduated in 1899, aged 22 years.
Ravishankar married Bhawani Devi, then sixteen years of age, in June 1902. Six months after their marriage, the plague epidemic spread through the town of Jubbulpore. It was here that Bhawani Devi fell victim of the dreaded plague.
In 1904, he took along with him the Maharaja of Bastar to Congress session at Bombay, where he saw barrister Mahatma Gandhi for the first time, who had just arrived from South Africa.
In 1906 and the beginning of 1907, during his last days in Khairagarh, Pt. Shukla privately appeared for Law exams conducted by Calcutta University at Allahabad. After passing the exams, he came back to Rajnandgaon to start legal practice. Within a few years of starting his legal practice, Shukla was a great success as a pleader in the courts of Raipur.
Struggle for Indian independence (1909–1935)
In 1910, Shukla attended Congress session at Benaras as delegate. Here he met Mahamana Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and from then onward theirs would be a lifelong association. At the same time, the Kanyakubja Mahasabha session also took place in Benares. Pt. Shukla participated in this session as well. On his return from Benaras after the Congress he established the state Kanyakubja Sabha whose first session was held in Nagpur in March 1912. In subsequent years he organised Mahasabhas (public meetings) at Raipur and Jabalpur. By the year 1917 Pt. Shukla was acknowledged as the leader of his community throughout the Hindi region of Central Provinces and Berar and United Provinces.
Pt. Shukla had a strong conviction of the importance of the role of Hindi as a national language, for the pride of the country and the natural convenience it could bring to a child entering school vis-a-vis English as a medium of teaching. He always took the lead and constantly pursued the cause of Hindi as the national language. In 1916, the seventh session of Antar-Bhartiya Sammelan of Hindi at Jubbulpore was held, in which Pt. Shukla participated. After its success, he launched Central Provinces and Berar Hindi Sahitya Sammelan and held its first session at Raipur in 1918. In the fifth session of the Sahitya Sammelan, held at Nagpur in March 1922, he for the first time proposed to incorporate Hindi instead of English as Rashtriya Bhasha (National language).
A British Minister, Sir Montagu was sent to India in 1917 to assess the situation of unrest arising in India after the First World War. To express the public opinion before the British government, meetings were held all over the country. One such meeting, held in Raipur on 26 August 1917, was addressed by Pt. Shukla: there he called upon his countrymen to make sacrifices and to fight for our rights, otherwise he said we will always remain a colony of the British.
A special session of Congress was called at Calcutta in September 1920 under the presidency of Lala Lajpat Rai to assess the political situation in the country. Pt. Shukla went to Calcutta to attend the session and there he invited the Congress to hold its next session at Central Provinces and Berar.
When the British enacted the Rowlatt Act, it was a challenge to the Indian freedom movement. It was from this point that Mahatma Gandhi started his civil disobedience movement with truth and non-violence as principles. The Non-cooperation movement, as it would be known, created the atmosphere of a great revolution in the country. Pt. Shukla did not abandon his legal practice but would now devote most of his time and resources on the national movement. He gave up all his stylish clothes made using English yarn and got them all consigned to the fire, symbolic of emergence into a new era, and instead now the Shukla household would have only Khadi hand-woven, using cotton. In the year 1921 Pt. Shukla became a member of the All India Congress Committee.
Nagpur University was created in 1923. Before this all the colleges of the state were affiliated to Allahabad and Calcutta Universities. Sir Bipin Krishna Bose, the vice-chancellor of the University, appointed Pandit Shukla as the member of the executive committee of the University.
Raipur District Council and civil disobedience
Pandit Shukla had become a member of the Raipur District Council in 1921. He believed that through these local bodies the freedom struggle could best be fought. Alongside this he wanted to propagate education and an awakening for freedom among the masses. In 1922, the State Government handed over the management of schools to the District Council. Pandit Shukla established contacts with the teachers of these schools and to induce nationalism in them he organised teachers' conferences. There were 310 schools under the district council, and 900 teachers in these schools. Every year about 30,000 students were studying in these schools. These conventions of teachers worked to improve teaching methods, health, cleanliness, and patriotism. Pandit Shukla remained the president of Raipur District Council from 1927 to 1937.