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Hindu nationalists want foreign goods out of India

NEW DELHI: Hindu nationalists have launched a campaign to drive foreign consumer goods out of India, and denounced the policies of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, who opened up the country's market in 1991.

About 100 protesters, led by the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), or Forum for National Awakening, smashed bottles of the U.S. soft drink Pepsi and shouted slogans. Organisers handed out pamphlets headed "Declaration of War" and urging: "Pepsi leave India".

They demonstrated beside a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, the nation's spiritual father, who 53 years ago to the day launched the Quit India movement, which culminated with India's independence from Britain in 1947.

"Today is symbolic," Murli Manohar Joshi, former president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), told Reuters. "It is symbolic of the dangers to India and the need to protect India's political and economic independence."

The SJM has links with the BJP, India's main Hindu opposition party.

The Hindu nationalists say their longstanding campaign against foreign consumer goods was boosted by the cancellation last week of a big U.S. power project led by multinational Enron Corp ENE.N in the western state of Maharashtra.

The BJP and its radical right-wing governing partner in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena party, said the $2.8 billion plant -- India's biggest foreign investment -- was too costly and was clinched behind closed doors without competitive tenders.

"Enron was a step in the right direction," Joshi said.

BJP president L.K. Advani said last weekend that his party opposed foreign consumer goods but welcomed investments in areas needing sophisticated technology, including power.

The BJP plans to make the issue of foreign goods a major plank in its drive to capture power in general elections, due by early 1996.

G.S. Sharma, an SJM member and organiser of the protest, said he was disappointed by the small turnout. "It rained the whole night," he said by way of explanation.

Joining the protesters was George Fernandes, a fiery socialist from the Samta Party who played a crucial role in forcing Coca-Cola KO.N to leave India in 1977 when the U.S. firm refused to divulge the recipe for its flagship soft drink.

Coke returned in 1993, while Pepsi PEP.N first entered India in 1990 to challenge the country's own soft drinks makers.

"We are targeting Pepsi first," SJM activist Anook Agarwal said. "But other products will follow like Coke, Colgate, Palmolive, and Procter & Gamble PG.N."-Reuter