Protest held against Sonia Gandhi's UN visit

NEW YORK: Even as United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi was holding meetings at the UN headquarters here, a couple of hundred people held a peaceful protest nearby against her representing India at the world body's first observance of Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary as International Non-Violence Day.

A highlight of the two-hour protest Tuesday was a dramatisation in which one person dressed up as Sonia Gandhi was shown knifing another person dressed up as Mahatma Gandhi.

"It symbolised how Sonia Gandhi was destroying the sacredness and sanctity of the Mahatma's name," a spokesperson of the protesting groups, Sathya Dosapati, said. "We are not against any individual or party, however," he added.

The protest was organised by the recently floated Forum for Saving Gandhi Heritage based in New York and supported by some other groups.

A few protestors were also present at Union Square Park in downtown Manhattan, where some of them fasted near the statue of Mahatma Gandhi. They raised their anti-Sonia placards when the Indian Consul General Neelam Deo came to garland the statue to observe the Mahatma's birth anniversary.