Within hours of the news of the assault breaking, protesters were on the streets. The reaction of India’s political elite merely fuelled the anger. No parliamentarians joined the marchers. Instead, the government invoked colonial-era laws to ban demonstrations, shut metro stations and deployed thousands of policemen to guard the president’s residence, the parliament building and the homes of senior ministers. Central Delhi became a citadel, defended by khaki-clad men with lathis, the iron-tipped bamboo staves also inherited, like the attitudes of the ministers and top bureaucrats, from former imperial overlords. Finally, after a week, the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress party, made brief televised speeches expressing concern and sympathy, which were dismissed as too little, too late by protesters. The anger grew.
Delhi gang-rape: how India"s other half lives
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