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.
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 his 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 demanding that Hazare be released immediately.
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.
Political analyst Kuldip Nayar said the way government officials 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.’ “
