SONIA GANDHI ATTENDS UN EVENTS DESPITE PROTESTS
By Parveen Chopra, New York, October 3, 2007 (IANS)

Sonia Gandhi, chairperson of India's ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), took part in a few events here commemorating, for the first time, Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary as the International Day of Non-Violence. Even as she was holding meetings at the UN headquarters, 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.

On Tuesday, she addressed an informal plenary session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) where she underlined that the Mahatma's methods of non-violent action were as relevant in today's fast-paced and globally interlinked world as they were in his times. Srgjan Kerim, president of the 62nd UNGA, Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, and N. Dlamini Zuma, minister of foreign affairs of South Africa, also addressed the meeting.

Thereafter, Pranab Mukherjee, Indian external affairs minister, chaired a round table discussion on the relevance of the Gandhian method of non-violence in the current international context. Anand Sharma, minister of state for external affairs, accompanied him. The participants included UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha Rose Migiro and several heads of delegations to the UNGA.

The panellists included eminent thinkers and Gandhians such as Amartya Sen, Reverend Jesse Jackson Senior and Ela Gandhi. Senior journalist Dileep Padgaonkar was the moderator. Sonia Gandhi joined the panellists and other dignitaries at lunch following the round table discussion.

In the evening, Sonia Gandhi inaugurated a photographic exhibition titled "Gandhi and Global Non-violent Awakening" at the UN premises. Separately, a documentary film "Mahatma - The Great Soul" was screened at the Dag Hammarskjöld Auditorium at the UN premises.

Protest held against Sonia Gandhi's UN visit

When she 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, told IANS. "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.