Word: mahajan
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...DIED. Pramod Mahajan, 56, general secretary of India's opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); from gunshot wounds allegedly inflicted 12 days earlier by his brother Pravin, who reportedly told police he was tired of being ignored by his powerful sibling; in Bombay. After the BJP's surprise defeat in the 2004 general elections, Mahajan was seen as the great hope to revive the party; his death leaves India's struggling opposition in further disarray. Mahajan, said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was "a charismatic and youthful leader, full of promise and energy." Pravin has been charged with murder and is awaiting...
...temple in Ayodhya, but by talking economics. Finance Minister Jaswant Singh has announced a $2.7 billion handout to India's middle class by slashing taxes and import duties on foreign travel, cell phones and computers. "We don't want any agenda that is religious or divisive," says Pramod Mahajan, a key electoral strategist for the BJP. "We want to fight on economic, rational issues." The party, says Mahajan, is projecting Vajpayee as the only leader who can transform India into a prosperous nation. To make sure voters understand that there is no alternative to Vajpayee, BJP's top strategists also...
...upset the secular parties whose support it needs to stay in power, the BJP has also tried to reassure its right-wing base of its commitment to Hindu nationalism. Though the government has so far made little effort to build a Hindu temple at Ayodhya, the BJP's Mahajan says such plans remain part of his party's platform. "We will try to facilitate the construction of a temple through legal, constitutional means," he says. Muslim leaders complain that the BJP continues to promote a Hindu agenda by rewriting school textbooks to marginalize the place of Muslims in India...
...strike a chord with moderate voters, the Congress appears determined to harp on the theme that the BJP is still a party of religious extremists. Jaipal Reddy, a Congress spokesman, says his party will fight a campaign to "save the secular soul of the country." The BJP's Mahajan says his party would prefer not to bring religion into the election but warns, ominously, that the BJP will "have to respond" if the Congress makes religion an electoral issue. If the Congress succeeds in turning the heat on the BJP by making the elections a closer contest than expected...
...will deny what was going on. Indeed, most passionately defend it. Changoiwala's brother, Kanta Prasad, gushes that the relationships forged by families who traded with one another in the gray market gave "touch and feeling" to Calcutta's bourse that was "absolutely unique." Mention unofficial finance to Mahajan, the former exchange vice president, and he gets so excited that his arms flail like the rotors of a distressed helicopter. "Nobody ever failed to pay up," he coos. "It served Calcutta for 100 years. It was a beautiful system. It was something about which India should be proud...