POLICE HAVE arrested India’s leading anti-corruption campaigner in New Delhi hours before he was to begin a fast to death against continuing sleaze in government.
More than 1,200 followers of Anna Hazare (74) were also detained for protesting against a proposed anti-corruption law to be imminently tabled in parliament.
Dressed in his trademark white homespun cotton shirt, white cap and spectacles, Mr Hazare was driven away by plainclothes police, waving victoriously to hundreds of supporters outside his Delhi residence.
“The second freedom struggle has started . . . This is a fight for change,” he said in a pre-recorded message broadcast on YouTube reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi’s struggle against the colonial administration for India’s freedom.
“The protests should not stop. The time has come for no jail in the country to have a free space,” he added, evoking Mahatma’s spirit in his non-violent opposition to the British which led to Indian independence 64 years ago.
In a worrying sign for prime minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress Party-led administration, beleaguered by massive corruption scandals, spontaneous protests against Mr Hazare’s arrest erupted across India, with hundreds of his supporters being arrested in major cities, including India’s financial capital, Mumbai.
Interior minister P Chidambaram said the detentions were carried out because Mr Hazare and his protesters had not observed conditions laid down by the police for the demonstration.
“Nowhere in the world are protests allowed without conditions” he said. “We are not prohibiting a peaceful democratic protest; we are trying to find a reasonable set of conditions under which protests can take place,” Mr Chidambaram added somewhat unconvincingly.
Mr Hazare has become a serious challenge to Mr Singh’s government in its second term as it reels from graft cases involving his ministers and the growing perception that it is out of touch with millions of Indians. They have been hit by near-double-digit inflation, rise in food prices and the near absence of official accountability.
The scandals, including a telecoms bribery scam that is estimated to have caused the government a $39 billion loss, and gross financial mismanagement surrounding last years Commonwealth Games, has stifled Mr Singh’s reform agenda.
Several of his ministers and MPs are in jail charged with corruption and his popularity is at an all-time low, according to numerous recent countrywide polls.
Such gargantuan corruption has not only dented investor confidence, but has also prompted most leading Indian businessmen and entrepreneurs, fearful of greedy, crooked politicians and officials, to invest aboard instead of domestically.
Tapping into the nationwide discontent over corruption, Mr Hazare began a fast three months ago to lobby for a parliamentary bill creating a special ombudsman to bring politicians, bureaucrats, judges and even the prime minister under its purview.
A former army solider, Mr Hazare rose to nationwide fame for lifting his village in the western state of Maharashtra out of grinding poverty by empowering locals and fighting the regressive and corrupt administration.