Word: atal
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INDIA To Lower the Flames of Hatred With 817 people already dead in the worst intercommunal strife in a decade, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee belatedly visited the western state of Gujarat. The violence began in Godhra a month ago when a Muslim mob set fire to a train, killing 60 Hindu activists, provoking revenge attacks of murder, arson and looting. On the eve of the visit five Muslims died when their homes near Ahmedabad were torched. Vajpayee told victims that the failure of the local administration to prevent the violence would be investigated...
...Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has described the pogrom merely as "unfortunate." Pravin Togadiya, general secretary of the VHP, warns that he can see Hindu sentiment getting even more out of hand. Said one rioter in Ahmadabad, capital of Gujarat, as he watched his comrades pillage a cluster of Muslim homes: "We want to make sure the Muslims never come back." If there is one immutable law of nature, it is that violence begets violence, and hatred spawns more hate (think of the Middle East). India's long national nightmare may just be beginning...
...abducted teenage girls, or slaughtered cows, which are worshipped by Hindus. The mobs burned families in their houses, demolished mosques, raped wives and daughters. Community police insist they were powerless, but if history is a guide, many probably stood back approvingly. The government in New Delhi, led by Atal Behari Vajpayee and his staunchly pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), didn't send in the army to cool things down for several hours. By the weekend, more than 300 people had been murdered following the Godhra ambush - most of them Muslims...
...died a political death. At least the latter was not duplicitous. But that clarity has been fogged by the nature of the first BJP Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, a liberal at heart though not always in action. An attendant problem is the nature of the coalition that runs India now: most of its members do not share the Hindu ideology of the principal party and want a settlement of the dispute through the courts...
INDIA Late Compromise Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee consulted Hindu and Muslim leaders in an attempt to end simmering religious tensions after riots in the western state of Gujarat left more than 600 dead. The hard-line Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) finally agreed to await a court's verdict on the construction of a Hindu temple at a disputed site at Ayodhya. But Muslim leaders say the VHP's demand for access to an adjacent site could also trigger more sectarian violence...