Shekhar Named to Head New Government in India : Asia: The veteran dissident and avowed socialist becomes prime minister after others turn down the job.

Veteran dissident Chandra Shekhar was named India’s new prime minister Friday, ushering in an era of political uncertainty after waves of religious rioting and suicides that have left hundreds dead and polarized Indian society.

The 63-year-old professed socialist was appointed to the post just after noon by President Ramaswami Venkataraman, who was forced to select Shekhar after Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh lost a parliamentary vote of confidence Wednesday and all other potential leaders among the opposition refused the job.

Shekhar, an ambitious rival in Singh’s left-leaning People’s Party, was sworn in today as India’s eighth prime minister since independence.

Jubilant as he emerged from Venkataraman’s imposing red sandstone palace in the heart of the capital after Friday’s announcement, the new prime minister said he will wait until after the swearing-in to state his government’s priorities. Then the bearded Shekhar, who has projected himself as a champion of the poor and oppressed in the decades that he has openly aspired to India’s top office, was carried on the shoulders of chanting supporters to his nearby home, escorted by a brass band.

But there was little celebration elsewhere in India, which has been racked by large-scale sectarian bloodletting over a Hindu fundamentalist plan to build a temple on the site of a 16th-Century Muslim mosque in the city of Ayodhya.

According to a presidential communique issued soon after the appointment, it was mainly that backdrop of violence that persuaded the president to select Shekhar rather than “plunge the country into a general election at this time.”

Yet, Shekhar brings to power what many analysts say is the smallest and most fragile minority government in Indian history. Officially, he has the loyalty of just 60 or so members of the 542-seat Parliament--the ones he took with him when he broke from Singh’s party earlier this week to destroy Singh’s government and pave his own way to power.

He has picked up some support outside his faction. But it is only through the support of India’s long-ruling Congress-I party, which controls 195 seats and remains the largest single party in Parliament, that Shekhar convinced the president that he has the majority required to rule.

The president has ordered the new prime minister to prove his majority on Nov. 20, when Parliament is scheduled to reconvene.

Venkataraman had offered the prime ministership to leaders of the Hindu fundamentalist Indian People’s Party and to Congress-I leader Rajiv Gandhi. The fundamentalists declined the offer because they alone favor new elections. And Gandhi, the third generation of Congress Party rulers, specifically cited his lack of a popular mandate in declining the job. He was turned out of office a year ago in elections viewed as a bitter repudiation of his five years as prime minister.

Although Gandhi will not have the office, most independent analysts in the capital said he and his party will, in effect, be running the country.

“This (Shekhar’s government) has got to be the shortest tail being wagged by the biggest dog in the history of parliamentary democracy,” a senior Western diplomat said.

Gandhi has assured the president that his party will try to support Shekhar for at least a year to ensure the stability of the new government.