[A published poet, Mr. Vajpayee dabbled in law, journalism and rebellion against British colonialism as a young man. A leader of the Hindu nationalist opposition to the once-invincible Indian National Congress party of Gandhi and Nehru, for most of his 50 years in politics he was virtually unknown outside India.]
By
Robert D. McFadden
 |
|
President
K.R. Narayanan of India, left, swearing in Mr. Vajpayee as prime minister
at
the presidential palace in New Delhi on March 19, 1998. Two months after he
was
sworn in, India detonated several nuclear bombs in underground tests.
Credit
John McConnico/Associated Press
|
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who as India’s prime
minister from 1998 to 2004 stunned the world by ending a decades-old moratorium
on nuclear weapons tests but nevertheless managed to ease tensions with
Pakistan and build closer ties to the United States, died on Thursday in New
Delhi. He was 93.
The Indian central government announced his
death but gave no further details. The Times of India said that Mr. Vajpayee, a
diabetic, was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New
Delhi on June 11 with kidney tract infection and other ailments and had
recently been placed on life support.
A published poet, Mr. Vajpayee dabbled in
law, journalism and rebellion against British colonialism as a young man. A
leader of the Hindu nationalist opposition to the once-invincible Indian
National Congress party of Gandhi and Nehru, for most of his 50 years in
politics he was virtually unknown outside India.
But for six years in his late 70s, Mr.
Vajpayee was the face of the world’s most populous democracy, a nation of one
billion whose ethnic, religious and regional conflicts had fomented massacres,
three wars with Pakistan and internal strife for a half-century after
independence from Britain in 1947.
India’s current prime minister, Narendra
Modi, said on Twitter that Mr.
Vajpayee’s death marked “the end of an era.”
By the time he became prime minister in a
pink sandstone palace that once housed Britain’s viceroys, Mr. Vajpayee was an
experienced, nuanced politician. He had served decades in Parliament, was
foreign minister from 1977 to 1980 and was even prime minister for 13 days in
1996, a tenure cut short when his squabbling coalition fell apart.
Two months after he was sworn in, India
detonated several nuclear bombs in underground tests. It had been 24 years
since the country’s only previous test, in 1974, and while its nuclear weapons
capability had long been assumed, the 1998 tests impressed on the world that
India had joined the circle of declared nuclear powers.
Pakistan responded quickly with its own
tests. Some nations invoked sanctions and condemned India for breaking its
moratorium, but Mr. Vajpayee defended the move as vital to Indian security.
Tensions between India and Pakistan
escalated. In 2001, Muslims with guns and explosives staged a deadly attack on
India’s Parliament. In 2002, a Muslim mob attacked a train carrying Hindu
pilgrims, and some 1,000 people were killed in retaliatory rampages.
Mr. Vajpayee denounced the violence and
distanced himself from the extremists. Hostilities eased, and a thaw began in
2003. Mr. Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan met and
established diplomatic and transportation links.
Mr. Vajpayee also went to China and began to
resolve a longstanding border dispute. As the Cold War ended, he moved
nonaligned India closer to the United States, welcoming President Bill Clinton
to India in 2000 and strengthening bonds with pledges of support for the United
States after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
In economic overhauls, Mr. Vajpayee
privatized state-owned industries, encouraged foreign investment, eased trade
restrictions and fostered an information-technology revolution that created a
million jobs. But critics said he had failed to lift tens of millions out of
unemployment and poverty and had largely neglected health and education
programs.
Mr. Vajpayee supported equal rights for
Muslims, Christians and others in his overwhelmingly Hindu nation. His
Bharatiya Janata Party had long tried to undermine India’s secular identity to
create a Hindu state. Mr. Vajpayee, a moderate, pushed back at militants in his
own coalition. He also championed women’s rights and the eradication of castes.
He resigned as prime minister in May 2004
after an upset by the Indian National Congress. In declining health, he retired
from active politics in December 2005.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born on Dec. 25,
1924, to a family of high-caste Brahmins in Gwalior, in central India. His
father, Shri Krishna Behari Vajpayee, was a secondary-school teacher. As a
youth he flirted with communism before shifting ideologically and joining the
National Voluntary Service, a right-wing paramilitary group that was the
guiding force behind Hindu nationalism. In 1942 he was jailed for 24 days for
anti-British activities.
He graduated from Victoria College in
Gwalior, earned a master’s degree in political science from Dayanand
Anglo-Vedic College in Kanpur and studied law in Lucknow. But with independence
and partition into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, Mr. Vajpayee became a
journalist, working for Hindu nationalist publications.
In 1951 he helped found Jana Sangh, a Hindu
nationalist party. He was first elected to Parliament in 1957.
Re-elected 11 times, he became a prominent
critic of the governing Congress party. In 1975, he and thousands of other
dissidents were jailed under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s emergency decrees
suspending civil liberties and elections. He became foreign minister in a new
coalition two years later.
In 1980 Mr. Vajpayee helped found the
Bharatiya Janata Party, which became the main opposition group and his primary
vehicle to power. He shared its view that India should enshrine Hindu culture,
but he passionately opposed discrimination against other religions. Critics
called it contradictory, but voters did not agree, and in the 1990s he became
one of India’s most popular figures.
While he never married, Mr. Vajpayee raised
as his own child Namita Bhattachariya, the daughter of a longtime friend. She
became a teacher and at times served as his official hostess.
Mr. Vajpayee wrote a reflective brand of Hindi
poetry. He published several volumes, including “Fire Is Immortal” and “Death
or Murder.”
India’s central government declared a
seven-day mourning period across the nation and said a state funeral would be
held on Friday afternoon.
