NEHRU'S SUCCESSORS IN INDIA

After Nehru’s death on 27 May 1964, his successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri, led India in dealing with an unprecedented round of Hindu-Muslim violence occasioned by the theft of a holy Islamic relic in Kashmir. In August and September 1965, his government successfully resisted a new effort by Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir dispute by force of arms. India was victorious on the battlefield, and an agreement both nations signed at Tashkent in January 1966, essentially restored the status quo ante. Shastri died of a heart attack at Tashkent, while at the height of his power, and his successor, Indira Gandhi (Nehru’s daughter), pledged to honor the accords. India again went to war with Pakistan in December 1971, this time to support East Pakistan in its civil war with West Pakistan; Indian forces tipped the balance in favor of the separatists and led to the creation of Bangladesh from the former East Pakistan; in Kashmir, there were minor territorial adjustments. Domestically, Indira Gandhi consolidated her power, first dividing, and then converting the ruling Congress Party to her own political instrument. The party lost its accustomed majority in parliament in the 1967 elections, but she continued to govern with the support of other parties and independents, winning again in 1972. In June 1975, after her conviction on minor election law violations in the 1972 polls, which required her to resign, she continued in power by proclaiming a state of emergency. By decree, she imposed press censorship, arrested opposition political leaders, and sponsored legislation that retroactively cleared her of the election law violations. These actions, although later upheld by the Supreme Court, resulted in widespread public disapproval. Two years later, she held parliamentary elections in which she was defeated, forcing the CP into the parliamentary opposition for the first time. The state of emergency was lifted, and Morarji Desai, formerly Nehru’s deputy prime minister and the compromise choice of the winning five-party Janata coalition, became prime minister. But Janata did not last. Formed solely to oppose Mrs. Gandhi, the Janata coalition had no unity or agreed program, and it soon collapsed. Mrs. Gandhi’s newly reorganized Congress Party/I (“I” for Indira) courted Hindu votes to win a huge election victory in January 1980, and she regained office. Rajiv Gandhi immediately succeeded his mother as prime minister and, in parliamentary elections held in December 1984, led the CP/I to its largest victory. But during the next two years, Rajiv proved unequal to the task, and his popularity declined precipitously as the public reacted to government-imposed price increases in basic commodities, his inability to stem escalating sectarian violence, and charges of military kickbacks and other scandals. In October 1987, Rajiv Gandhi sent Indian troops to Sri Lanka to enforce an agreement he and the Sri Lankan president had signed in July, aimed at ending the conflict between the country’s Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority.In February 1983, India was beset by communal violence, a residue of the police excesses during the alleged emergency. Hindu mobs in the state of Assam (where direct central government rule had been imposed after student-led protests toppled the government the year before) attacked Muslims from Bangladesh and West Bengal, killing at least 3,000 persons. In October, Sikh factionalism triggered by her partisan maneuvering led to widespread violence by Sikh separatist militants in Punjab and to the imposition of direct rule in that state. A year later, with the Sikh separatist violence unchecked, she became herself one of its victims— assassinated by Sikh members of her own guard. After a rise in Indo-Pakistan tensions in 1986–87, Rajiv Gandhi and Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan signed a protocol in which both nations agreed not to attack the nuclear facilities of the other in 1988. And in September 1989, Rajiv agreed with Sri Lanka’s request to pull his 100,000 troops out of their bloody standoff with Tamil separatists by the end of the year. In elections later that fall, his Congress/I Party won only a plurality of seats in the Lok Sabha, and he resigned. Vishwanath Pratap Singh, formerly Rajiv’s rival in the CP and leader of the second largest party (Janata Dal) in the house, formed a government with the support of two other parliamentary groups. Despite an encouraging start, V.P. Singh’s government lost first its momentum, then its ability to command a majority in the parliament. He resigned on losing a confidence vote 11 months later and was succeeded, with Congress/I support, by longtime Janata and Congress leader Chandra Shekhar, who resigned after four months. During the election campaign that followed in the spring of 1991, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a disgruntled Sri Lankan Tamil while in Tamil Nadu. Congress/I rallied around longtime party stalwart P. V. Narasimha Rao, a former minister under both Rajiv and Indira Gandhi, drawing on a sympathy vote, to finish close enough to a majority to form a minority government. As prime minister, Rao—who was also Congress Party president— dealt sensitively with widespread Hindu-Muslim violence focused on a dispute over the land on which “Babur’s Mosque” sits at Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh. He and his finance minister were dynamic and innovative on economic reform, opening India to foreign investors and market economics, including rupee convertibility. And, despite frail health and advancing years, he brought new vigor to India’s foreign policy in light of the end of the Cold War. Rao lost his hold on power in 1996, however, after three cabinet members resigned amid charges of corruption and two elections weakened the Congress Party’s rule. In May 1996, President Shankan Dayal Sharma appointed Hindu nationalist Atal Bihari Vajpayee as prime minister, beginning a whirlwind of power struggles and political instability during which India changed governments four times in 11 months. Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government was short-lived, replaced in October by the H. D. Deve Gowda-led United Front, India’s first coalition government. The Congress Party withdrew its support for Gowda in April 1997, and the UF selected I. K. Gujral, foreign minister in the outgoing government, to replace him. Gujral, a compromise choice between the United Front and Congress Party, survived in office only seven months. In November 1997, Congress again withdrew its support from the UF government. General elections were held in early 1998 and the BJP emerged as the largest single party in Parliament. A. B. Vajpayee, the BJP leader, was appointed prime minister and succeeded in forming a coalition government. This coalition collapsed in April 1999, but in elections held in September– October, the country returned Vajpayee to office at the head of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. In May 1998, Vajpayee’s government surprised the world by exploding several underground nuclear devices. Pakistan responded by holding its own nuclear tests later in the month. This was a cause of great concern in the international community: two countries, historical enemies whose armies faced each other in Kashmir, were now nuclear powers. The tests brought economic sanctions against both India and Pakistan from the United States and other countries. Tensions eased somewhat in February 1999, however, when Vajpayee inaugurated the first ever bus service between India and Pakistan by traveling to Lahore to meet Pakistan’s prime minister. This resulted in the Lahore Declaration (signed 21 February 1999), by which India and Pakistan pledged to resolve their differences peacefully and work for nuclear security. Nevertheless, both countries continued to test medium-range missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads on targets throughout the region. Significantly, the Lahore Declaration made no mention of Kashmir. This hit the international headlines in the summer of 1999 when Pakistani troops and armed Islamic militants infiltrated the Indian-held Kargil region of Kashmir, bringing India and Pakistan close to full-scale war. Pakistan eventually withdrew from Kargil, after heavy fighting and casualties on both sides. This ill-fated military adventure contributed to the military coup in Pakistan in October 1999. Border clashes between Indian and Pakistani troops along the Line of Control in Kashmir are commonplace. On 24 December 1999, Kashmiri militants hijacked an Indian Airlines plane flying between Nepal and Delhi to Afghanistan, an incident India blamed on Pakistan. Following the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the United States lifted sanctions imposed on India following its 1998 nuclear tests, citing India’s support in the USled war on terrorism (India offered US forces the use of Indian airbases during the military campaign in Afghanistan, among other acts). India began to insist that Pakistan play a larger role in curtailing “cross-border terrorism” in Kashmir and India itself. On 13 December 2001, the Indian Parliament was attacked by 5 suicide fighters. Fourteen people died in the raid, including the five attackers. India blamed the attacks on two Pakistan-based organizations, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, which the United States also listed as terrorist groups. Following the attacks on Parliament, diplomatic contacts were curtailed, rail, bus and air links were severed, and close to 1 million troops amassed on India’s and Pakistan’s shared border, the largest military build-up since the 1971 war. The two nuclear-armed countries were on the brink of war. In January 2002, India successfully test-fired the Agni, a nuclear-capable ballistic missile off its eastern coast. In May, Pakistan test-fired three mediumrange surface-to-surface Ghauri missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads. In June, the United States and the United Kingdom undertook a diplomatic offensive to avert war, and urged their citizens to leave India and Pakistan. In October, India announced its troops had begun withdrawing from Pakistan’s border, but Pakistan stated it wanted proof of the pullback before starting its own. On 27 February 2002, a group of Muslims in the town of Godhra in the state of Gujarat attacked and set fire to two train cars carrying Hindu activists returning from the disputed holy site of Ayodhya. The Hindu Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) group was threatening to build a temple on the site in Ayodhya where activists tore down a 16th century mosque in 1992. Fifty-eight Hindus were killed in the 27 February attack. Starting the following day, Hindus attacked Muslims in Gujarat, leaving hundreds dead and tens of thousands displaced. In three months of communal violence, approximately 2,000 individuals were killed, mostly Muslims. An upsurge in violence marked the run-up to state elections held in Indian-administered Jammu-Kashmir in September– October 2002. More than 800 people were killed in the violence. The elections were fought among pro-India parties, with separatists boycotting the elections. The elections resulted in an upset for the National Conference; it was the first time the party had been voted out of office since independence. The NC won 28 seats out of 87 in the State Assembly. The People’s Democratic Party, which firmly stood against human rights abuses in Kashmir, emerged as victor, along with the Congress Party. India has 7 million troops amassed on the Line of Control in Kashmir. As of the end of 2002, more than 61,000 people had been killed in the conflict in Kashmir. On 19 March 2003, the US-led coalition launched war in Iraq. The war has been seen to have set a precedent for authorizing pre-emptive strikes on hostile states. The notion that India and Pakistan might adopt such a policy toward one another has caused international concern. In April 2003, spokesmen from both India and Pakistan asserted that the grounds on which the US-led coalition attacked Iraq also existed in each other’s country.