Vajpayee, Atal Bihari

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VAJPAYEE, ATAL BIHARI

VAJPAYEE, ATAL BIHARI (1924–), prime minister of India (1996–1998 and 1998–2004). A. B. Vajpayee was India's prime minister in the Bharatiya Janata Party–led coalition government of the National Democratic Alliance from March 1998 to April 1999. It fell in a vote of no-confidence in 1999 when the Dravida Munnetra Kazahgam (DMK) party refused to vote with its coalition partners. Vajpayee led the alliance to victory again in the general elections that followed in October 1999. He became prime minister when this coalition formed a government from October 1999 to May 2004. Vajpayee's coalition government lost the 2004 general elections to a Congress Party–led coalition government led by Sonia Gandhi, president of the party.

Vajpayee was born on 25 December 1924 in Gwalior, in what was then British India's Central provinces, now Madhya Pradesh. He attended college in Gwalior and Kanpur, and has a master's degree in political science. He first entered politics during the independence struggle as a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the extremist Hindu nationalist wing of the Hindu Mahasabha. He was a founding member of the Hindu right-wing Jana Sangh Party in 1951, a reconstituted version of the Hindu Mahasabha, which was banned from politics after one its members, Nathuram Godse, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. Vajpayee was a member of India's lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, and briefly of its upper house, the Rajya Sabha, since 1957. He was elected to Parliament at various times from constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Delhi.

Vajpayee became leader of the revamped Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and a coalition member of the Janata Party government led by Prime Minister Morarji Desai. This newly constituted alliance of parties under the banner of the Janata Party had ousted Indira Gandhi's Congress Party government in a national election following her twenty-two-month "National Emergency" rule that suspended the democratic process in India from June 1975 to March 1977. Vajpayee had been jailed by the Indira Gandhi government during the Emergency. After the defeat of the Congress Party, he became external affairs minister in the Janata Party government of Prime Minister Desai.

Following the victory of the BJP-led coalition over the Congress Party in March 1998, newly appointed prime minister Vajpayee immediately gave the go-ahead for a series of nuclear tests in early May 1998. Pakistan countered promptly with nuclear tests of its own. BJP rule also ushered in a wave of Hindu nationalism, pushed by more extreme Hindu parties, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and the Shiv Sena. There were attempts to redefine India as a Hindu state called "Hindutva," against the opposition of the more secular parties, groups, and leaders in India. However, Vajpayee appeared as the moderate face of Hindu nationalism, insisting that India remain a secular state.

Vajpayee's tenure as prime minister is best known for his efforts to bring about reconciliation with Pakistan through what came to be called "bus diplomacy." In February 1999 he took a well-publicized bus trip from Amritsar in Indian Punjab to Lahore in Pakistani Punjab and was greeted warmly by Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif. This gesture of Indian goodwill and reconciliation fell apart two months later, when Pakistan launched an attack on Kargil in Indian Kashmir. The peace initiative by Prime Minister Vajpayee collapsed. Relations appeared to suffer a further setback when the perceived mastermind of the Pakistani attack on Kargil, General Pervez Musharraf, overthrew Sharif's civilian government and imposed military rule. In early 2004, Vajpayee made further conciliatory gestures toward Pakistan, declaring that he would like to see peace between India and Pakistan during his lifetime.

Economic growth at averages of 6 to 8 percent of the gross national product continued under Vajpayee's BJP-led coalition government, drawing further on the reforms introduced in 1991 by Congress Party minister of finance, Dr. Manmohan Singh. Even during the global economic recession of 1998–1999, India's growth continued at 5.8 percent. However, the defeat of Vajpayee's government by the Congress Party is attributed largely to its excessive commitment to high-tech development in India and the welfare of the rising Indian middle class, and the neglect of the masses of India's rural poor.

Raju G. C. Thomas