Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has declared victory in India’s national elections, saying voters have given the Congress party-led coalition a “massive mandate”.

Chinese cheerleaders and Tibetan protesters greeted the Olympic flame today amid a massive security clampdown for the latest leg of the international torch relay in India, home to the world’s largest Tibetan exile community.

AS much of the world marked September 11 by remembering the 2001 attacks on the United States, India celebrated it as a day of peace — the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Gandhi’s philosophy of peaceful resistance.

Hindu priests who take care of the memorial of Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi conducted a purification ceremony at the shrine after a visit by US President George Bush, reports said today.

India’s former President KR Narayanan, the first “untouchable” from the caste system to occupy the country’s highest office in a validation of its democratic roots, died today. He was 85.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, eager to bolster Europe’s business ties with India, will argue today that the West should embrace the booming nation’s emergence as an economic powerhouse, rather than fearing it as a job-stealing threat.

A trust set up with revenues from Richard Attenborough’s Oscar-winning Gandhi is helping provide aid to hundreds of poor and forgotten Indian actors.

The ruling party won a sweeping victory today in state elections in western India – a landslide that could boost Hindu supremacists in national politics and challenge the nation’s secular traditions.