Mind your own business, India tells US

New York: India had no patience on Friday for some patronising advice the US gave New Delhi on how to deal with 74-year-old veteran social activist Anna Hazare who plans to go on a hunger strike — unto death if necessary — in Delhi on August 16 to press for a Lokpal Bill with teeth to fight corruption. [caption id=“attachment_60196” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“India on Friday was in no mood to be lectured by the US government which has its hands full with putting out its own fires. AFP Photo”]  [/caption] US State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, irritated India’s External Affairs ministry by pontificating on how India should exercise “democratic restraint” in dealing with Hazare who carried out a successful fast in April, striking a chord with millions of Indians and forcing the government to make concessions on the anti-graft Jan Lokpal bill. “We support the right of peaceful, non-violent protest around the world. That said, India is a democracy, and we count on India to exercise appropriate democratic restraint in the way it deals with peaceful protest,” Nuland told a press conference. India is particularly sensitive about such advice coming from the US because the Asian Centre for Human Rights released a report in July saying custodial deaths in Indian prisons and police lock-ups had spiked by 41.66% over the last decade. US human rights activists also fingered India’s paramilitary for confronting terrorism and local insurgencies in a way that trampled on the rights of Indian citizens. India on Friday was in no mood to be lectured by the US government which has its hands full with putting out its own fires. “We have seen the needless comments by the US State Department spokesperson on handling of peaceful protests in India. Freedoms of speech and expression, as well as, of peaceful assembly, are enshrined in the Constitution of India and exercised by citizens of this country of 1.2 billion people,” an Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson responded tartly. Hazare is the champion of a Jan Lokpal Bill that demands the Prime Minister, senior judges and bureaucrats all be governed by an independent ombudsman to battle corruption. Manmohan Singh’s government is resisting the demand to include the Prime Minister and judges in the ombudsman’s remit. The Indian government is under intense pressure as Hazare’s fast comes on the back of Independence Day when Indian security forces are stretched thin; insurgents from Kashmir to the North-Eeast inevitably use the national holiday to send a violent message to New Delhi. The government is also weathering the storm from Swami Ramdev’s mass hunger strike in New Delhi where it sent a phalanx of police in with batons and tear gas to break up the protest.