Active Political Life
During the 1960s Sharma supported Indira Gandhi's quest for leadership of the Congress Party. He served in her cabinet as the minister for Communication from 1974–77. In 1971 and 1980 he won a Lok Sabha seat from Bhopal. Later on, he was given a variety of ceremonial posts. In 1984 he began serving as a governor of Indian states, first in Andhra Pradesh. During this time, his daughter Geetanjali Maken and son-in-law Lalit Maken, a young member of parliament and a promising political leader, were killed by Sikh militants. In 1985, he left Andhra Pradesh and became governor of Punjab during a time of violence between the Indian government and Sikh militants, many of whom lived in Punjab. He left Punjab in 1986 and took up his final governorship in Maharashtra. He remained governor of Maharashtra until 1987 when he was elected for a 5-year term as the eighth Vice-President of India and chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
Sharma was known to be a stickler for parliamentary norms. He is known to have broken down in the Rajya Sabha while witnessing the members of the house create a din on a political issue. His grief brought back some order into the proceedings of the house.
Read more about this topic: Shankar Dayal Sharma
Famous quotes containing the words political life, active, political and/or life:
“We in the South were ready for reconciliation, to be accepted as equals, to rejoin the mainstream of American political life. This yearning for what might be called political redemption was a significant factor in my successful campaign.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Whether we regard the Women’s Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.”
—Arianna Stassinopoulos (b. 1950)
“I have heard a good many pretend that they are going to die; or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I’ll defy them to do it. They have n’t got life enough in them.... Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)