Jun 05, 2011
A statement by Patkar, who is part of civil society group National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), said that the group condemned the “sudden and unwarranted” attack on peaceful protesters at Ramlila Maidan.
It said the protesters were seeking stringent measures to combat the vice of corruption and in a democracy people have a right to assemble and protest peacefully.
“We do understand there are and would be differences between approaches and ideologies of various groups, striving to achieve a corruption-free State and society. However, we equally condemn Government’s undemocratic manner of dealing with the peaceful agitation of the people,” the statement said.
Earlier, Patkar had described Ramdev’s agitation as an “expensive” one while criticizing the government on giving different treatments to the yoga guru and Anna Hazare.
“Such expensive agitations show a different face of protest. We are also against corruption, but such an expensive agitation… By spending crores,” Patkar, herself a veteran of Gandhian way of protests, had said.
The NAPM, it said, has always taken a position that the struggle against corruption must be linked with wider struggles “against corporatisation, communalism, capitalism, criminality, consumerism” in order to be sustainable and equitable and added the campaign led by Ramdev “is certainly questionable on some of these fronts”.
But, the national atmosphere against corruption needs to be addressed “if the national anger and anguish are to not spiral out of control, which is already happening in many districts,” it said.