Protests engulf India as Hazare is sent to jail

Agencies/New Delhi

Supporters of Anna Hazare shout slogans and wave the Indian national flag outside Chhatrasal Stadium in New Delhi yesterday after police detained the veteran anti-corruption campaigner as he prepared to push ahead with a banned hunger strike

Police arrested anti-corruption hunger-striker Anna Hazare and detained 1,400 of his supporters yesterday in a crackdown that provoked outrage in the world’s biggest democracy. Hazare, 74, was taken to Tihar jail after plain-clothed police picked him up at an apartment in New Delhi yesterday morning shortly before he was due to start his “fast unto death” in a public park. About 1,400 people rallying in protest at Hazare’s arrest were held by police and taken to a sports stadium where a large crowd gathered outside, sparking a tense stand-off with officers. Corruption has become a key issue of public discontent in India, and Hazare has emerged as a prominent national figure for his campaign to demand changes to a new anti-graft law currently before parliament. “Will this movement be stopped by my arrest? No, not at all. Do not let it happen,” Hazare said in a message yesterday morning predicting the day’s drama. “This fight for change which has begun, we will take it forward on the path of non-violence as long as there is life in the body. Thank you. Victory to Mother India!” he added. Home Minister P Chidambaram denied the government was quashing dissent, saying protest organisers had refused to guarantee to obey police orders that the rally would be limited to 5,000 people and could only last three days. “This government is not against peaceful protest,” he stressed. Further demonstrations erupted in Tamil Nadu capital Chennai, Hazare’s home state of Maharashtra and elsewhere after the frail devotee of Mahatma Gandhi was taken to the capital’s Tihar jail. “Anna Hazare refused to provide an undertaking to a special executive magistrate (to follow police orders on the protest),” Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said. “He has been taken to the jail for seven days but he can always submit a plea for his release.” Supporters said he started his fast in jail, but police declined to confirm the reports. Corruption has rocketed up the agenda in fast-developing India after a series of scandals, notably a telecom licence scam that is thought to have cost the country up to $39bn in lost revenue. The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP accused authorities of an “absolutely undemocratic” act in arresting Hazare as protests in the national parliament forced business to be adjourned for the day. “It’s a bizarre and thoughtless act on the part of the government,” party spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy said, describing the police action as an “instigation to aggression.” Many observers believe the crackdown reflects concern that Hazare may become a figurehead for a broader protest movement against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government, which is also grappling with an economic slowdown and high inflation. Zoya Hassan, a politics professor at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, said that Hazare’s detention was a “violation of basic liberties.” “It’s a bumpy road ahead,” she said. “The civil society activists have significant middle-class support and they have ample media support. The detention will cause a lot of unrest.” In June, police halted another anti-corruption hunger strike in Delhi when officers broke up a protest by yoga guru Swami Ramdev that had attracted national headlines. In April, Hazare staged a 98-hour hunger strike that pushed the Congress-led government into allowing him and his supporters to help draft the new anti-corruption law, called the Lokpal bill. The bill, since introduced in parliament, would create a new ombudsman tasked with investigating and prosecuting politicians and bureaucrats, but Hazare wants the prime minister and higher judiciary to come under scrutiny. Arguing that his recommendations had been ignored, Hazare had planned to begin a second hunger strike yesterday. Hazare, a life-long bachelor who wears simple, white home-spun cotton, is a social conservative who dreams of an India centred around self-sufficient villages - much like his hero Gandhi. The strict traditionalist has also adopted the hunger strike, used to great effect by Gandhi against British colonial leaders, as his weapon in campaigns to pressure officials. The question for many is whether Hazare and his movement will grow across the fast-urbanising nation of 1.2bn people whose increasingly assertive middle class is fed up with constant bribes, poor services and unaccountable leaders. Those arrested yesterday included Kiran Bedi, one of India’s first female police officers and a widely respected figure for her anti-graft drive. She tweeted from detention that she had refused an offer of bail. Critics of Hazare say he is taking democracy hostage. “When you have a crowd of 10,000 people, can anyone guarantee there will be no disruption? ... The police is doing its duty. We should allow them to do it,” Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told CNN-IBN television. The prime minister used his Independence Day speech on Monday to criticise Hazare, and Congress spokesman Manish Tewari said Hazare was surrounded by “armchair fascists, overground Maoists, closet anarchists.”Anti-corruption champion shares jail with graft accusedCall it irony. Anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare yesterday found himself in the same prison that is already home to politicians, officials and business executives accused in two major corruption cases. While Hazare is in the Tihar jail block which houses former chief of Commonwealth Games Organising Committee Suresh Kalmadi, his key aide Arvind Kejriwal will share the jail premises with former telecom minister A Raja, accused in the telecoms scam. According to Tihar Director General Neeraj Kumar, Hazare reached the jail at around 3.40pm and was kept in Jail Number 4. His close aide Manish Sisodia and three others are in the same jail block. “Arvind Kejriwal is in jail number one with four others,” Kumar said. He, however, clarified that Hazare has not been kept near Kalmadi’s ward. “He is in a ward far way from Kalmadi. We have already done their medical examination,” he told reporters. Kalmadi, accused of irregularities during the CWG, is in jail for the past three months. “Anna Hazare is fasting. He refused to drink even water,” Deputy Inspector General R N Sharma said. Sharma also said both the jails accommodate over 2,000 prisoners.