India Vote Signals Return of Gandhis

Congress party officials said the new coalition, which includes communists, would likely move more slowly than the BJP-led government on privatization of state-owned industries, although they noted that it was a Congress government that launched India's economic liberalization in 1991.

"We will accelerate reforms, but we will pursue disinvestments with safeguards," party spokesman Abhishekh Singhvi said in an interview. "We will not disinvest just for the sake of selling and raising money, but to get rid of inefficiency and losses. Our big focus will be on employment and agriculture."

On foreign policy, Singhvi said that while "it is important to maintain continuity," the party favored a return to "the doctrine of nonalignment" that defined Indian foreign policy during the Cold War. "The doctrine is all the more important in a . . . world where one country is a supercop," he said. "Will we advocate becoming a part of the U.S. bloc? Obviously not. We are open to trade but will not fall at somebody's feet."

Vajpayee's party rose to prominence in the early 1990s as the embodiment of a philosophy of cultural nationalism known as Hindutva -- literally, Hinduness. Soon after coming to power in 1998, Vajpayee and the BJP-led government cemented their nationalist credentials by detonating a nuclear device, prompting Pakistan to do the same. BJP politicians, though not Vajpayee himself, were subsequently accused of fomenting anti-Muslim violence in the state of Gujarat in 2002.

Despite the party's links to Hindu extremists, Vajpayee has cultivated a moderate image that has only been enhanced by his peace overtures to Pakistan. That, coupled with his gentle demeanor and dry sense of humor, won him broad support in India, especially among young people. The pragmatic demands of coalition politics, meanwhile, spurred the BJP to soften its emphasis on Hindu nationalism.

In state elections last fall, the BJP decided to stress development issues over cultural themes. The results were so positive that the government decided to call early national elections, which began on April 20.

Going into the parliamentary contests, BJP strategists sought to capitalize on Vajpayee's popularity as well as what they called the "feel-good factor," which was symbolized by India's success in attracting service jobs outsourced from the United States and other developed countries. Congress and its allies, meanwhile, emphasized the continuing poverty in the countryside as well as the dislocations wrought by globalization and economic reform; one campaign ad featured youths staring disconsolately at a locked factory gate.

In the end, it was that bleak message that resonated with voters.

"The ground reality and the results have called the bluff of the artificial atmosphere of feel-good that the NDA had created," Ahmed Patel, Gandhi's political secretary, told reporters. Patel was referring to the National Democratic Alliance, the formal name of the BJP-led coalition.

Although exit polls had indicated a tightening race in recent days, BJP officials acknowledged that they were totally unprepared for the outcome. "There was an invisible undercurrent in the Indian electorate against the NDA that none of us could gauge," Sushma Swaraj, a minister in Vajpayee's government, told reporters at the BJP headquarters this afternoon. "The results are totally against our expectations. We will have to sit in the opposition."

Swaraj added, however, that the election results were "not a verdict for Sonia Gandhi to become prime minister either. . . . We should not conclude that people of India have accepted a foreigner as prime minister. My mind still does not accept Sonia Gandhi as the prime minister."

Special correspondent Rama Lakshmi contributed to this report.