India's anti-corruption icon arrested ahead of protest fast

And yesterday, police arrested him as he was about to begin a hunger strike over the country's endemic corruption, bringing out protesters in his support across the country and pushing India's government ever closer to a fully blown crisis.

Dressed in his trademark white shirt, white cap and spectacles in the style of Gandhi, Mr Hazare was driven away in a car by plainclothes police early yesterday, only hours before he was due to start his "fast to death" protest aimed at forcing through tougher anti-corruption laws.

In April, he used a four-day fast to force the government to draft legislation to create an anti-corruption watchdog. He had planned to begin the new public fast to press for a stronger bill.

Police moved in after organisers refused to limit the number of fasting days and participants.

"Protests are perfectly permissible and welcome, but it must be under reasonable conditions," home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.

Mr Hazare vowed to carry on regardless, but was arrested before leaving for the protest site in a New Delhi park.

"The second freedom struggle has started. This is a fight for change," he said in a pre- recorded message broadcast on YouTube. "The protests should not stop. The time has come for no jail in the country to have a free space."

Police rounded up at least 1,200 protesters in New Delhi and more than 3,000 in Mumbai, but many were later released. Across Maharashtra state, where Mr Hazare's village of Ralegan Siddhi is located, hundreds of people temporarily blocked roads in protest.

In a country where the memory of Gandhi using non-violent protests in the independence battles against colonial rule is embedded in the national consciousness, the crackdown shocked many people.

It also comes as Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi is in the United States being treated for an undisclosed condition.

"If the government stops protests or not, what it can't stop is the anger, which ultimately means bad news for Congress when people go to the polls," said MJ Akbar, an editor at the news magazine India Today.

"People expect (prime minister Manmohan] Singh to be strong on corruption, not to be strong on those who protest against corruption."

The hunger strikes have catapulted the issue of corruption to the top of the political agenda and inspired others to fast in solidarity, as the gulf between India's rich and poor, the vast majority of its 1.2 billion people, has widened despite two decades of economic growth.

The government is battling allegations stemming from the murky sale of mobile phone spectrum licences and the hosting of last year's Commonwealth Games, which together lost the country as much as 25 billion, according to government auditors. The main opposition BJP party is also bogged down in a bribery scandal involving the granting of mining contracts in southern India.

Mr Singh and the Congress party have hardened their stance against Mr Hazare in recent days, fearing that the wave of protests could spiral.

Critics of Mr Hazare say he is taking democracy hostage. The prime minister used his Independence Day speech on Monday to criticise him, and Congress spokesman Manish Tewari said he was surrounded by "armchair fascists, overground Maoists, closet anarchists".

Mr Hazare became the unlikely thorn in the side of the Congress-led coalition when he went on a hunger strike in April and won concessions from the government. He lobbied for a bill creating an ombudsman to bring crooked politicians, bureaucrats and judges to book.

He called off that fast after the government promised to introduce the bill, but renewed his campaign after the draft was condemned as toothless.

POVERTY ACTIVIST WHO FLOGGED VILLAGE DRUNKS

ANNA Hazare is a former soldier who served as a volunteers during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. Posted to the Pakistani border, he narrowly escaped death when the other soldiers in his unit were wiped out in an air attack, an incident that he has said led him to ponder the meaning of existence.

He rose to fame for lifting his village of Ralegan Siddhi in the western state of Maharashtra out of grinding poverty, using a philosophy of agricultural self-reliance that Gandhi might recognise.

During a campaign against alcoholism, Hazare flogged a number of villagers found to be drunk. He has also forced the Maharashtra state government to amend the law concerning prohibition so that if a certain number of women in a village vote for it, it can be enacted locally.

He has taken a firm stance against the caste system, and his social activism has also forced out senior government officials and helped create the right to information act for all Indian citizens.

One of his most recent campaigns has demanded an amendment to the electoral law to incorporate the option of None Of The Above in the electronic voting machines used during elections.