Word: atal
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...plenty of reason to celebrate. India?s diplomatic victory was palpable, and even though it lost hundreds of men in the process, its military campaign to eject the intruders also looked set to succeed if diplomacy failed. So where once it looked like a sticky wicket for Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Pakistan?s Kashmir adventure may yet turn out to have been just the tonic for his embattled government as he faces Sonia Gandhi in September?s election...
...Gandhi's image as being above the rough-and-tumble of India's fractious coalition politics had suffered after she led the party in maneuvering to bring down the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in April, but failed to secure the necessary votes to take power herself. With few significant policy differences between the two major parties, September's election will be all about Sonia Gandhi. The Congress party has used the mythical power of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to rally jaded voters, while Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist party has vowed to make Gandhi's origins the centerpiece...
...DELHI: Throwing a few Christians to the lions may be a government reelection strategy in India. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Sunday visited the southern state of Gujarat, which has seen a wave of attacks on Christians -- but instead of simply calling for the attacks to stop, Vajpayee issued a call for a national debate over religious conversion. ?India?s constitution guarantees the right to propagate one?s religion,? says TIME New Delhi correspondent Maseeh Rahman. ?The reason Vajpayee is raising the conversion issue is to put the opposition Congress party on the defensive, because its leader, Sonia Gandhi...
...Pakistan and India pull back? Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said his country might reach an agreement not to be the first to use nuclear weapons. Domestic opposition to his party's nuclear jingoism is starting to emerge now that cooler heads assess how much sanctions, like the World Bank's postponement of an $865 million loan, may hurt. Even some in the Indian military are urging restraint. "I don't see a warlike situation building up on either side," says General V.P. Malik, chief of staff...
...with its five nuclear blasts. But despite the tests, the B.J.P. and its program are in fact much less volatile than they were a few years ago. The party has been forced to make a series of compromises in its climb to power. And its portly, affable Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, 71, is a scholarly moderate who last week, as he was garlanded with flowers by A-bomb celebrators, posed conspicuously with Muslim well-wishers...