Rajiv Gandhi

INDIANS ARE using a strange new phrase these days to describe the dangerous situation in which they find their once supremely idealistic country. It is "the criminalization of politics."One hears it everywhere, too fashionable a phrase perhaps but nevertheless all too apt. One Congress Party adviser, Kuldip Narang, traces the criminalization to the end of the charismatic period of Indian politics, which stretched from Mahatma Gandhi to Rajiv Gandhi. "The whole question of charismatic leadership, which has failed India, is responsible for this criminalization of politics," he told me during a long discussion here one day.That same day, commentator Dinesh Singh wrote in the Times of India that the "general deterioration in the law-and-order situation in the country" could be traced to the breakdown in party politics.

IMAGINARY HOMELANDS:ESSAYS AND CRITICISM,1981-1991.Salman Rushdie.Granta Books/Viking.` 432 pages. $24.95. Two years ago, the world's toughest book critic took on Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses." In a scenario familiar to literary editors, free-lancer Ayatollah Khomeini savaged his subject so excessively that he turned his hated novelist into a household name.But even an ayatollah can't work miracles. He couldn't turn a serious, Indian-born British intellectual into a household voice.

NEW DELHI -- The high drama in India following the biggest upset in Indian politics has raised troubling questions about the stability of the new government and its ability to take hard decisions on key challenges. The country's first non-Hindu prime minister, Manmohan Singh, a Sikh economist, must steer an unwieldy coalition government while real power rests outside, with the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi. India has no experience of being led by a prime minister who openly acknowledges that he is a stand-in for the person with the popular mandate.

NEW DELHI, India -- On the eve of the ceremonial cremation of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's body, his widow rejected yesterday his political party's request that she step into the vacuum created by his assassination.Less than a day after Indian Congress Party senior leaders dramatically offered her its presidency, Sonia Gandhi issued a -- brief statement saying that she was "deeply touched" by the request but that "the tragedy" of her husband's killing "does not make it possible for me to accept."

NEW DELHI, India -- The long-entrenched elders of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's political party moved quickly yesterday to continue his family's political dynasty by nominating his Italian-born wife as its new leader.Sonia Gandhi's appointment capped an emotional day in India'scapital, one in which her husband's body was brought back to receive full state funeral honors.The choice of Mrs. Gandhi, 45, as her assassinated husband's successor was immediately criticized by political analysts as the latest example of senior leaders' inability to reform the Congress Party, a once-dominant but now deeply troubled organization.

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)

India, the world's most populous democracy, could best be described as a fragile mosaic perennially threatened by disintegration. From tomorrow until next Sunday, its more than 400 million voters will choose a new government to deal with the country's social and political ferment.The coming general elections underscore a central paradox of Indian democracy. In this wildly heterogeneous country, elections serve to maintain the union by satisfying its disparate elements. But the democratic process also accentuates the very forces -- communalism, casteism, separatism and religious divisions -- that could shatter Indian society.

An article in yesterday's editions of The Sun incorrectly reported that Monday was the 31st anniversary of the death of Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru. In fact, Nehru died 27 years ago.NEW DELHI -- Indian police said yesterday that they have arrested a suspected accomplice in the assassination last week of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.The police said the woman was being questioned but declined to provide details about the interrogation.They said the woman, identified as a 30-year-old, Sri Lankan Tamil named Vasanthi, was taken into custody Sunday night at a bus stop in the southern city of Cuddalore, roughly 90 miles south of where Mr. Gandhi was murdered by a bomb blast at a campaign rally.

THE ONCE-in-a-lifetime tsunami that swept away the lives, homes or livelihoods of millions from Southeast Asia to Africa now offers unprecedented opportunities for reconciliation in several embittered regions racked by years, even decades, of bloody strife. It may be naively optimistic to hope that - after the world's aid pours in and the rebuilding begins - the greater need for unity will lessen the hatred festering behind the long-running civil wars in Sri Lanka and Indonesia and rising government frictions with Thai Muslims.

NEW DELHI, India - Manmohan Singh was sworn in as India's 13th prime minister yesterday, making history as the country's first Sikh to hold the position. Another kind of history was made as well: For the first time, the Indian National Congress, which led India on its own for 37 of the country's first 45 years, will lead a coalition government. Singh, an economist and former finance minister, will be the country's first prime minister to hold a doctorate. He is credited with saving India from a balance-of-payments crisis and potential economic collapse in 1991, and with beginning many of the economic changes that have helped transform India's quasi-socialist economy into a growing global force.