Gandhi

THOSE WHO hoped recent elections would usher India into a period of political calm and stability have been disappointed -- again. The new lower house of parliament will be even more splintered. No fewer than 39 parties will divide the 543 seats, making frequent quarrels and stalemates a foregone conclusion.The main Hindu nationalist movement, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is trying to form a government. Since its 179 seats fell short of a majority, it needs to form and maintain a coalition with willing minor parties.

The inconclusive election of November 1989 continues to visit instability on India. But there is little reason to expect an election now to produce a majority mandate. President Ramaswamy Venkataraman was forced by Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar's abrupt resignation either to call new elections or find someone who could command the confidence of this parliament. Neither option was promising.After the fall of Rajiv Gandhi's Congress Party government in 1989, V. P. Singh formed a minority government of Hindu fervor and left-wing support.

WASHINGTON -- Trying to prove that money from foreign sources flowed illegally into Democrats' coffers, Republicans produced copies yesterday of a wire transfer of a half-million dollars from a Japanese bank to an Asian-American who, with no assets of his own, made a sizable donation to the Democrats last year.On the third day of hearings by the Senate committee looking into campaign finance abuses, a Republican senator told the story of Yogesh K. Gandhi, a U.S. resident who gave $325,000 to attend a fund-raiser featuring President Clinton in May 1996.

The baseball commissioner's job is to save the club owners from themselves. They don't tolerate that.George claims the mantle of Harry Truman who came from behind in '48. It's really that of Harry Truman hounded from office as a bumbling failure in '52.Some other guy named Berger wants to tear up Baltimore County schools. Don't blame me.And to think that Gandhi formed his ideas for nonviolence in South Africa.

"THE BEST THING about being dead,'' Gandhi was saying to the new guys, ''is you get free Caller ID.'' It wasn't like that in the old days. In the old days, he was saying, everyone wanted a piece of you, and there was no way to protect yourself.''You'd pick up the phone and it's insurance agents, marketing types, swampland salesmen, religious fanatics -- ''''Hey, Mahatma,'' said Mrs. Roosevelt, ''shut up and deal.''Nothing like a game of pinochle to get the juices flowing. At The Villas Off Mortal Coil (''Condos for Eternity'')

America has had its share of dynastic families over the past 200-plus years: the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, the Adamses.But all of them pale in comparison with the Nehrus, the family that led India almost without a break through the first four decades of its existence as an independent state, and that still retains a strong emotional hold on a nation that includes one-fifth of the world's population.That one family, beginning with patriarch Motilal Nehru, an Indian freedom fighter and early supporter of Mahatma Gandhi, and ending (for now)

The Arab world is quaking for democracy. Tunisia has led the surge; Egypt, Bahrain and Libya follow in its footsteps. Arab revolutionaries must learn from the events that have unfolded in every struggle for one's unalienable rights in the past, from that of Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. Reports continue to pour in ascribing violence to governments under siege. Libyan armies have even bombed certain parts of their own capital. Revolutionaries must consider the government's resort to violence as a weakness.

Address: blog.outer-court. com / quiz / What's the point?: This site, which is not affiliated with Google, but which is affiliated with a blog about Google, uses Google's image search to create a game. It shows you a sampling of images, and you have to guess the search term. What to look for: An off switch! OK, there isn't one, but it's so addictive you'll want one. Correct answers bring the player the bonus prize of quotes from people ranging from Oscar Wilde to Gandhi, so you will feel literate at the same time.

NEW DELHI, India -- In a somber address to the nation yesterday, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee made his strongest condemnation of the recent attacks on Christian places of worship in India and the killings of an Australian missionary and his two young sons as "a blot on our collective consciousness.""Such violence violates our tradition and culture of tolerance," he said on the 51st anniversary of the assassination of India's pacifist leader, Mohandas K. Gandhi. "It goes against everything that Gandhiji and our savants have taught us."

NEW DELHI, India -- Rajiv Gandhi's assassin dressed for her suicide mission in the party colors of her famous target, an orange shirt and green pants. And she carried a floral bouquet as an added prop, insurance that she would get close enough to the target to blow him to bits.Three sticks of high-powered, nitro-based explosives were strapped to her back, tucked into pockets in a homemade denim belt fastened around her waist, under her loose-fitting clothing, with hook and loop fasteners.