A 73-year-old Gandhi devotee who has promised to fast until death unless the government toughens its anti-corruption laws piled pressure on India's graft-tainted administration on Thursday. Anna Hazare began a hunger strike in New Delhi on Tuesday, which has caught the nation's attention at a time when anger over bribes and official misconduct is on the boil.
The use of methods made famous by Mahatma Gandhi, who pioneered civil disobedience and fasting as a form of protest, and frail Hazare's physical resemblance to India's father of the nation have helped galvanise support. Hundreds have signed up to join his fast, others have staged public rallies and candlelit vigils, and his leadership has encouraged people to vent their frustration in public about rotten bureaucrats and ministers.
"We need to send these thieves (ministers) to prison and, if needs be, to hang them!" Hazare told a cheering crowd as he sat cross-legged on stage at his make-shift camp in the Jantar Mantar area of New Delhi. "People often say to me the following: you are a devotee of Gandhi and you call for ministers to be hanged. I say to them that sometimes you need to resort to violence."
"The man who can't be ignored", as The Times of India dubbed him, is being given blanket coverage by the national media, with some commentators even drawing parallels with recent upheaval in Egypt and north Africa. "So, is Jantar Mantar the new Tahrir Square?" asked news magazine Tehelka on its Twitter account, referring to the square in Cairo where the movement began to overthrow the Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak. A Facebook campaign in support of Hazare, called "India Against Corruption," had gathered nearly 100,000 members by Thursday evening. His main demand is that members of civil society should sit on a committee drafting the Lokpal (Ombudsman) Bill which would give teeth to existing anti-corruption laws enabling the prosecution of public officials.
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