Writer-activist Arundhati Roy has launched a scathing attack on social activist Anna Hazare, the leader of the ongoing anti-corruption movement. She has questioned his secular credentials and further said that the 74-year-old Hazare "supports Raj Thackeray's "Marathi Manoos xenophobia." The article has drawn a barrage of online response. Most are sharply critical of her views.

While his means may be Gandhian, Anna Hazare's demands are certainly not. Contrary to Gandhiji's ideas about the decentralisation of power, the Jan Lokpal Bill is a draconian, anti-corruption law, in which a panel of carefully chosen people will administer a giant bureaucracy, with thousands of employees, with the power to police everybody from the Prime Minister, the judiciary, members of Parliament, and all of the bureaucracy, down to the lowest government official. The Lokpal will have the powers of investigation, surveillance, and prosecution. Except for the fact that it won't have its own prisons, it will function as an independent administration, meant to counter the bloated, unaccountable, corrupt one that we already have. Two oligarchies, instead of just one.