A TENUOUS HOLD ON POWER

By BRUCE W. NELAN BY BRUCE W. NELAN.

More than 300 million Indians stood in line to cast their ballot in the general elections held from April 27 to May 7. Now that virtually all their votes have been counted, it is clear enough what most Indians were against: the Congress Party, the political juggernaut of Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru that has ruled India for all but four years since 1947, when the country gained independence from Britain. Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao is out, and the party, burdened with an image of corruption and lassitude, lost almost half its seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament. Less clear is what Indians voted for. It is possible, in fact, that they have produced a government that will last no longer than the balloting did.

A new Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, was sworn in last week, but only because his party and its allies took the largest single bloc in the 545-member chamber. Vajpayee faces an uphill struggle to hold on to power, however. He must survive a constitutionally mandated vote of confidence before May 31, and his alliance is 74 seats short of a majority. Though buying political loyalty is not unheard of in India, recruiting that many politicians so quickly would be difficult even under normal circumstances--and these are hardly normal.

Almost every other party in the country is lining up to defeat Vajpayee in the confidence vote and topple his government. The phalanx of opposition arises because Vajpayee, though a moderate, heads the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which pursues such hard-line policies as abolishing special constitutional provisions for Muslims and other minorities, making India a declared nuclear-weapons state and taking a tougher line against separatists in Kashmir. Most Indians remember that it was a Hindu nationalist who assassinated Gandhi in 1948 and that it was Hindu nationalists who touched off the worst anti-Muslim rioting in decades when they demolished a 16th century mosque at Ayodhya in 1992. There is real fear that a B.J.P. government could shatter India's secular tradition and tear its society apart.

Congress Party politicians predict Vajpayee's government will be "an eight-day wonder." Congress has pledged its support to a loose coalition of communist, leftist and lower-caste parties called the National Front-Left Front. Leaders of that group claim that it already has the backing of more than 300 members of parliament, enough to win a confidence vote. Says S. Jaipal Reddy, spokesman for the Janata Dal party: "The fall of the B.J.P. government is as certain as death."

If Vajpayee falls, the Front is ready, after hectic negotiating, to name its Prime Minister: H.D. Deve Gowda, chief minister of the southern state of Karnataka, who was chosen because of his relative obscurity and presumed inoffensiveness to all the power brokers. If he gets in, the coalition that made him, having achieved its one common aim, is likely to break apart. And that could mean Indian voters will soon be lining up at the polls again.

--By Bruce W. Nelan. Reported by Maseeh Rahman/New Delhi

With reporting by MASEEH RAHMAN/NEW DELHI