{"id":12520,"date":"2019-12-28T15:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-12-28T06:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/dec\/28\/indians-protesting-secularism-modi-muslims"},"modified":"2019-12-28T15:00:02","modified_gmt":"2019-12-28T06:00:02","slug":"my-family-are-among-those-protesting-it-shows-how-much-indians-value-secularism-mari-marcel-thekaekara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=12520","title":{"rendered":"My family are among those protesting. It shows how much Indians value secularism | Mari Marcel Thekaekara"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That there are so many young people in the demonstrations against Modi\u2019s attempts to ostracise Muslims offers hope<\/p>\n<p>Newspapers have been screaming headlines about India\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/dec\/22\/bjp-citizenship-amendment-act-indians\" title=\"\">countrywide protests<\/a> against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which was recently passed by parliament, and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC). Both seek to make India\u2019s approximately 200 million Muslim people \u2013 14% of India\u2019s population \u2013 second-class citizens.<\/p>\n<p>But for me the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/dec\/20\/india-largest-protests-in-decades-signal-modi-may-have-gone-too-far\" title=\"\">protests<\/a> were up close and personal. My 32-year-old son and daughter-in-law were roughed up by a handful of police while filming a huge protest rally in Bengaluru.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/dec\/28\/indians-protesting-secularism-modi-muslims\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That there are so many young people in the demonstrations against Modi\u2019s attempts to ostracise Muslims offers hopeNewspapers have been screaming headlines about India\u2019s countrywide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which was recentl&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":808,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[62,433,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india","category-narendra-modi","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/808"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12521,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12520\/revisions\/12521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}