Former Indian PM Vajpayee dies after illness at age 93

NEW DELHI — Former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a Hindu nationalist who set off a nuclear arms race with rival Pakistan but later reached across the border to begin a groundbreaking peace process, died on Thursday after a prolonged illness. He was 93.

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where Vajpayee had been hospitalized for more than two months for treatment of a kidney infection and chest congestion, announced his death.

Vajpayee, a leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, had suffered a stroke in 2009.

A onetime journalist, Vajpayee was in many ways a political contradiction: He was the moderate leader of an often-strident Hindu nationalist movement. He was a lifelong poet who revered nature but who oversaw India’s growth into a swaggering regional economic power. He was the prime minister who ordered nuclear tests in 1998, stoking fears of atomic war between India and Pakistan. Then, a few years later, it was Vajpayee who made the first moves toward peace.

Vajpayee’s supporters saw him as a skilled politician who managed to avoid fanaticism, a man who refused to see the world in black and white.

But his critics considered him the leader of a fanatic movement — a movement partially rooted in European fascism — that sought power by stoking public fears of India’s large Muslim minority.

The one thing both sides could agree on was his honesty. Vajpayee was that rare thing in politics: a man untainted by corruption scandals.

One of India’s longest-serving lawmakers, Vajpayee was elected nine times to the powerful Lok Sabha, or lower house of Parliament. He also served two terms in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house.