Tibetan protester sets himself on fire ahead of China President's visit to Delhi

New Delhi:  A Tibetan exile lit himself on fire and ran shouting through a protest in the Indian capital on Monday, just ahead of a visit by China's president and following self-immolations in the Himalayan region against Beijing's rule.

The protester apparently had doused himself with something highly flammable and was engulfed in flames when he ran past the podium where speakers were criticizing China and the visit by President Hu Jintao.

Fellow activists beat out the flames with Tibetan flags and poured water onto him. He was on fire perhaps less than two minutes, but some of his clothing disintegrated and his skin was mottled with black, burned patches by the time he was driven to a hospital.

The man, identified as Jampa Yeshi, sustained burns on 85 percent of his body and his condition was critical, a senior police officer said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Protesters initially prevented police from taking him to the hospital, but officers eventually forcibly took him away.

Yeshi, 27, escaped from Tibet in 2006 and had been living in New Delhi for the past two years, activists said.

Hu is expected to arrive in India on Tuesday for a five-nation economic summit.

While activists had been whispering on Monday morning that something dramatic was expected at the protest, organizers insisted they were not behind the self-immolation.

"We have no idea how this happened, but we appreciate the courage," said Tenzing Norsang, an official with the Tibetan Youth Congress. He called on the international community to talk about Tibet at the summit.

"If you care about peace you should raise the issue of Tibet," he said. "Hu Jintao is responsible for what is happening there."

The New Delhi protest comes amid a series of self-immolations inside Tibet. About 30 people - many of them monks or nuns, and often in their teens or early 20s - have lit themselves on fire over the past year, calling for the return to Tibet of the Dalai Lama and to protest Chinese rule over their homeland. The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet amid a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, has blamed China's "ruthless policy" for the self-immolations. China accuses the Dalai Lama of stirring up trouble.

At the site of the protest, a large poster of Hu - with a bloody palm print over his face - said: "Hu Jin Tao is unwelcome" at the summit.

More than 600 demonstrators marched across New Delhi to a central plaza near the Indian Parliament to protest Hu's visit. Some carried posters saying "Tibet is burning" or "Tibet is not part of China."

China says Tibet has always been part of its territory. Tibetans say the Himalayan region was virtually independent for centuries.

Monday's was the second self-immolation in India in recent months. Last year, a young Tibetan exile set himself on fire outside the Chinese Embassy. That man suffered minor burns.

"This is what China faces unless they give freedom to Tibet," said Tenzin Dorjee, a young onlooker.

Hu will be attending a summit this week of the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, who form a grouping known as BRICS.

Police in New Delhi are bracing for protests by the tens of thousands of Tibetan exiles who live in India. Security around the summit location has been tightened, and roads leading to the hotel will be closed to the public a day ahead of the meeting.

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Hindus in Russia tense ahead of final verdict on Gita ban

Moscow:  India's diplomatic efforts to resolve a controversy relating to Russian state prosecutors' bid to get a Russian interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita banned and branded extremist literature will be put to test again with a high court in the Siberian city of Tomsk set to deliver its final verdict on Tuesday.
Anxiety and frustration has gripped Hindus in Russia as they feel there was a state-sponsored effort to proscribe "Bhagavad Gita As It Is", written by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Prosecutors have gone in appeal against a Tomsk lower court's dismissal of their plea December 28 last.
Indo-Asian News Service(IANS) had brought the case to global notice in December when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in Moscow for a summit meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, resulting in an uproar back home in India. Parliament was rocked for two days over the Russian prosecutors' attack on their supreme religious text and philosophical treatise.
This led to External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna making a statement in parliament on the Tomsk city case that was filed in June 2011 and the Indian government mounting a diplomatic effort at the "highest levels" with the Russian government to get the matter resolved.
"Anxiety is mounting. The appeal by the state prosecutors is coming up for a final hearing on March 20 at the higher court in Tomsk," Bhakti Vijnana Goswami, the international chief of ISKCON, told IANS over the phone. He is currently on international tour and was somewhere in West Asia.
"This is the final hearing in the state prosecutors' appeal beginning on Tuesday. The verdict in the case may be pronounced either on Tuesday or Wednesday," ISKCON devotee Sadhu Priya Das told IANS from Moscow.
The appeal came up for hearing March 6 and, after hearing the prosecutors, the court fixed March 20 to hear the Hindus on their defence before the verdict is delivered.
Tomsk region prosecutor general Vasily Voikin, in his appeal, demanded that a Russian interpretation included in 'Bhagavad Gita As It Is' be banned.
"The prosecutor has demanded that a Russian translation of a comment in this book, earlier published in English, be banned as extremist, not the canonical text of the scripture," Tomsk region deputy prosecutor general Ivan Semchishin argued.
"The bid to ban the Russian translation of the Bhagavad Gita has been misunderstood," Tomsk region prosecutor general Alexander Buksman said.
"It's important to discern gems from the chatter in this very case; the society's perception of this issue is that prosecutors are standing against the concepts of this religion (Hinduism). However, the problem is that the Russian translation has paragraphs that could be seen as promoting extremism; prosecutors started the case for that reason," Buksman said.
"The prosecutor (Voikin) is now maintaining his claims in an appeal court for that very reason," Semchishin added.
However, Hindus have dismissed the prosecutors' claim, saying these were "twists" being given for public consumption.
"The prosecutors have based their appeal on the lines of the same arguments they placed before the lower court -- that the book is extremist and spread hatred against non-believers," Mikhail Frolov, the advocate for Hindus in the case, told IANS from Moscow. He pointed out to Semchischin's remarks that the prosecutor is maintaining his claims on Bhagavad Gita in the appeal too.
"In reality, the prosecutors are seeking a ban on Bhagavad Gita. They do not want to see the tradition related to commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita," Mr Goswami said.
Interestingly, Krishna devotees in Russia held a conference on Bhagavad Gita in Tomsk on March 1, ahead of the appeal in the case coming up before the higher court. Scholars, a majority of them Russian, came out strongly in support on 'Bhagavad Gita As It Is' and condemned the prosecutors' attempts to ban it.
In another effort to drum up support, a group of 20 Russian scholars on India wrote an open letter to Kremlim duo, Dmitry Medvedev and president-to-be Vladimir Putin, to take personal interest relating to the controversy and get the prosecutors' attempts to get Bhagavad Gita ban dropped.
"The book does not contain any signs of extremism and does not incite hatred on ethnic, religious or any other grounds. On the contrary, the book written in the commentary tradition of Bengali Vaishnavism, one of the most popular branches of Hinduism, is considered sacred by a section of believers," the scholars said.
The scholars warned that the trial "discredits Russia's cultural and democratic credentials in the eyes of the civilised world and is driving a wedge in Russian-Indian relations."

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Car makers race ahead on friendly Budget

Indian car makers heaved a sigh of relief and saw their shares soar after the federal budget did not hike taxes on diesel cars, in a boost for diesel-focused manufacturers such as Mahindra and Mahindra and Tata Motors.

Carmakers in India had feared a tax on diesel vehicles or a reduction in the fuel's generous subsidy , which has boosted sales as overall demand slows on high interest rates and rising petrol prices in Asia's third-largest economy.

"This budget was very, very good for the auto industry," said Vineet Hetamasaria, auto analyst at PINC Research in Mumbai. "Everyone was expecting taxes, and they didn't come."

Shares in Tata Motors jumped as much as 2.6 per cent to their highest-ever price after Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's budget speech in parliament on Friday.

Market leader Maruti Suzuki's stock rose as much as 4.6 per cent to its highest level since January 2011.

Mukherjee also announced a hike in import duty to 75 per cent from 60 per cent for assembled SUVs and multi-utility cars costing more than $40,000. An announced increase in excise tax for cars made in India to 27 per cent would only have a small impact on car costs, analysts said.

Shares in Mahindra & Mahindra, India's leading SUV manufacturer, whose entire model range runs on diesel, rose as much as 6.1 per cent.

Diesel car sales have accelerated to account for about 40 per cent of new purchases in India, compared with less than 20 per cent a few years ago. The diesel model of Maruti Suzuki's popular new Swift hatchback has a waiting list longer than six months.

A rush to buy vehicles before the budget drove car sales in February to their highest-ever total.

Cutting the subsidy, which makes the fuel about 50 per cent cheaper than petrol, is a political hot potato due to diesel's extensive use in India's vast agricultural industry.

Fuel retailers and environmental groups had instead called for an extra excise duty of 81,000 rupees on diesel cars, asserting that they account for 15 per cent of the fuel's consumption. Industry groups say the amount is less than 5 per cent.

Clarity in the government's stance on the fuel should kickstart investment plans by India's car makers, who were unwilling to splurge on new plants to meet the surging demand until the ambiguity over diesel was resolved.

Overall car sales in India will likely only post marginal growth in the fiscal year that ends this month, but are expected to grow by more than 10 per cent in the coming fiscal year, driven by increased salaries and a rapidly growing middle class.

Copyright @ Thomson Reuters 2012

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