Anti-corruption activist arrested in India, begins fast in jail

NEW DELHI — Indian police jailed the country’s leading anti-corruption campaigner and detained thousands of his supporters Tuesday, hours before the veteran activist was due to begin an indefinite hunger strike to demand tougher laws against graft.

As public anger rose, the government later made a dramatic U-turn and decided to release the 74-year-old Anna Hazare on Tuesday evening. But Hazare refused to leave Delhi’s high-security Tihar Jail unless he was given written permission to resume his fast in a park in central Delhi. Supporters said he was continuing his hunger strike in jail.

 

Anti-corruption activist arrested in India, begins fast in jail - The Washington Post

 

Hazare, a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, is the face of a nationwide social movement against rampant corruption that has gathered pace this year after a string of high-profile scandals. He has become a major thorn in the side of the Congress party-led government, in a confrontation that has become increasingly bitter in recent weeks.

Dressed in homespun white cotton and a white cap, Hazare smiled and waved at supporters as he was driven away early Tuesday from his lodgings in the Indian capital in a police vehicle, after earlier being denied permission to stage his protest. Later, hundreds of candle-holding, flag-waving protesters shouted slogans and pushed against the iron gates of Tihar Jail

 

Anti-corruption activist arrested in India, begins fast in jail - The Washington Post

 

“He will not come out of prison unless the government gives him a written and unconditional permission to fast in the park,” fellow activist Manish Sisodia told reporters after being released from Tihar Jail, to cheers and applause from the assembled crowd. “He is continuing his hunger strike inside the jail.”

Earlier, police said 1,400 protesters had been detained in Delhi. Activists said 20,000 had been detained across the country, but many had been released.

Around 3,000 are still being held at a sports stadium in eastern Delhi, they said.

The arrest of Hazare, and hundreds of his fellow activists, has shifted the focus of the debate from corruption to the right to protest in the world’s largest democracy. By late afternoon, senior government officials were admitting privately that events had been mishandled.

Political analyst Kuldip Nayar said the way the government had flip-flopped showed they were panicking. “They could not handle the public anger,” he said. “Today’s events will only embolden the movement because people will now say, ‘Look, the government is a paper tiger.’ ”

The government said it had been forced to detain Hazare and his supporters to maintain law and order in the capital. But opposition leaders and activists said the mass detentions were reminiscent of the days of the British rule over India or the imposition of emergency rule under Indira Gandhi in 1975.

“The second freedom struggle has started,” Hazare said in a video statement recorded before his arrest and issued on YouTube. “The protests should not stop. The time has come for no jail in the country to have a free space.”

The anti-corruption movement aims to energize the country’s democracy against graft and has drawn considerable support from India’s often-apathetic middle class.