TENS OF thousands of protesters took to the streets across India yesterday in support of the jailed anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare, who has captured the country’s imagination by defying the graft-ridden federal government with his proposed fast until death.
Massive crowds kept a torchlight vigil for the second successive night outside the high-security Tihar jail in New Delhi, where the 74-year old activist was interned on Tuesday morning as he prepared to begin his fast in a city park against uninhibited government corruption.
Alarmed by growing countrywide support for Mr Hazare, prime minister Manmohan Singh’s panicky Congress Party-led government released him on Tuesday night, proposing to fly him out of the city in an air force aircraft to an undisclosed destination.
But the doughty campaigner opted to stay in jail, refusing to leave until the authorities met his demands. He plans to proceed with his indefinite public hunger strike in Delhi in support of what he perceives to be a watered down anti-corruption law introduced recently in parliament.
Aides say he has refused meals in jail but has been drinking water.
“He will continue to sit in the jail unless he is allowed to fast unconditionally” said Prashant Bhushan, a lawyer closely backing Mr Hazare, as the stand-off between him and the government continued late into the night.
Mr Hazare believes the proposed anti-corruption legislation, which exempts the prime minister and the judiciary from its scope, to be a “cruel joke” and has described his fight against graft as the “second war of independence”.
The unprecedented nature of yesterday’s countrywide support for Mr Hazare has piled pressure on Mr Singh’s government at a time of public outrage over a succession of multi-million-dollar scandals involving senior ministers, MPs and officials.
A visibly perturbed Mr Singh told parliament earlier in the day that Mr Hazare’s arrest was justified by his refusal to accept police restrictions limiting his planned fast to three days.
“The path [Hazare] has chosen is totally misconceived and fraught with grave consequences for our parliamentary democracy,” Mr Singh said, amid repeated cries of “shame, shame” from opposition MPs.
The prime minister said using a public fast to try to shape the anti-corruption law constituted a direct challenge to the government.
“The question is who drafts the law and who makes the law,” Mr Singh said adding that legislation was the “sole prerogative” of parliament and not activists.