India Government

The government arrested former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her top advisers at a huge political rally Wednesday after they defied a ban on protest and called for the overthrow of the government. Bhutto had threatened that 100,000 marchers would storm the Parliament building. But the march, scheduled to begin in Rawalpindi 10 miles from the capital, was disrupted before it began. Police barricaded the route, fired tear gas into the crowd and beat protesters.

A day after about 100,000 police and paramilitary troops turned the heart of India's capital into an armed camp and fought thousands of anti-government Hindu activists with tear gas and bamboo batons, the city turned Friday to a more important matter: cricket. Televisions and radios in homes, sari shops, doctors' offices and squalid street stalls were carefully tuned to the daylong cricket match in Bangalore that pitted India's finest against England's all-stars.

Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao brought four experienced men into his Cabinet in a major reshaping of his government to tackle one of the country's worst crises. Rao said he has dropped 14 of his ministers, who handed in their resignations en masse a day earlier, but will not say who they are until President Shankar Dayal Sharma accepts the resignations.

As calm returned to Bombay, the government announced Saturday that it will order an investigation of Hindu-Muslim rioting that erupted earlier this month, claiming more than 500 lives. Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao also prepared to reshuffle his Cabinet and accepted the resignation of all 59 ministers Saturday, according to ministers who asked not to be identified. They said the embattled Rao asked for and received the resignations at a dinner he hosted for the ministers at his residence.

Eight bombs exploded in Srinagar, the summer capital of India's Jammu and Kashmir state, and authorities stepped up security on the eve of the anniversary of an extremist leader's execution. Police said Srinagar will be under curfew through today, the sixth anniversary of the death of Mohammed Maqbool Butt, a leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, which has campaigned against Indian rule.

Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh won a power struggle with his deputy, ending a crisis that had paralyzed his minority government for three days. Singh's victory came with the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal's son, Om Prakash Chautala, as head of government in Haryana state. Chautala was forced to quit the post in May after 12 people died in repeated election violence there.

New Delhi assumed control Friday of Jammu and Kashmir state after the resignation of its unpopular chief minister, but Muslim radicals said the change would not affect their bloody campaign to end Indian control of Kashmir. There were no reports of serious new violence or casualties in the state's northern region, although police said minor bombings and arson persisted.

Indian Prime Minister V. P. Singh faces a no-confidence motion Wednesday that most analysts expect him to lose. Singh lost his parliamentary majority when a coalition partner withdrew in protest over the use of troops against fundamentalists intent on tearing down a 16th-Century mosque and replacing it with a temple to the Hindu warrior god Rama. If Singh's government does fall, it may be replaced by a caretaker administration or a new coalition including former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.