HINDU LEADER NAMED INDIA'S PRIME MINISTER.

Byline: John F. Burns The New York Times

After days of confusion arising from an inconclusive election, India's president chose a Hindu nationalist party Wednesday to lead the next government. The party has pledged to make India a declared nuclear-weapons state, adopt tougher policies on Pakistan and Indian-ruled Kashmir and abolish long-established legal protections for Muslims.

Confronted with no clear winner in the election and with dithering by a group of center-left parties that had vowed to keep the Hindu nationalists from power but failed to come up with a credible governing plan, President Shankar Dayal Sharma appointed Atal Bihari Vajpayee as prime minister.

Vajpayee, 70, has a reputation for being more moderate than the Bharatiya Janata Party, or Indian People's Party, the generally hard-line Hindu group that he leads.

Vajpayee's swearing-in today will mark a watershed for India. By opening the door to the Hindu nationalists, Sharma signaled at least a temporary break in the tradition of moderate secularism that has prevailed in Indian governments for most of the period since independence in 1947.

The shock was greatest for the Congress Party, embodiment of the secular tradition in more than four decades, but reeling now after losing half its seats in its worst election performance.

But for the Hindu nationalists, who have never governed in New Delhi, the leap from the rightist fringes of Indian politics was far from secure.

Even as his supporters raced through New Delhi in jubilant celebrations, Vajpayee faced a daunting and potentially impossible task.

He must broaden the Hindu nationalist bloc in the new Parliament, which is at least 75 seats short of a majority, into a force that can survive a parliamentary confidence vote that Sharma, the president, has said must be held no later than May 31.

If the Hindu nationalists lose the vote, they will be forced to resign, giving way to either a new government based on the coalition of center-left parties that were outflanked by Sharma's summons to Vajpayee on Wednesday, or possibly to a new election.

The determination to oust the Hindu nationalists was reflected in the comments of a senior Congress Party official, V.N. Gadgil, who told reporters as Vajpayee returned from the president's palace that the Hindu nationalists' stint in power would be ``an eight-day wonder.''

At a news conference Wednesday evening, Vajpayee began the process of reaching out to potential allies among the more than a dozen parties that had pledged to back a center-left government.

While reaffirming his party's hard-line policies on nuclear weapons and Kashmir, he sent reassuring signals to India's 120 million Muslims and others in this diverse country who fear that the nationalists could revert to old excesses in the name of asserting the rights of India's 700 million Hindus.

Using the party's initials, he said: ``The BJP believes in the policy of cooperation, and not confrontation. We will treat all citizens alike and on an equal footing, and there will be no discrimination on the basis of religion, region, class or caste.''

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Photo

Photo: Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Has reputation as moderate