{"id":29570,"date":"2021-03-10T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T03:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/mar\/10\/indian-theatre-festival-forced-to-close-after-hindu-vigilantes-object-to-satirical-plays"},"modified":"2021-03-10T12:00:13","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T03:00:13","slug":"indian-theatre-festival-forced-to-close-after-hindu-vigilantes-object-to-satirical-plays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=29570","title":{"rendered":"Indian theatre festival forced to close after Hindu vigilantes object to satirical plays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bajrang Dal hardliners in Madhya Pradesh threaten violence over plays \u2018disrespectful to the Indian flag\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Rightwing Hindu vigilante groups in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have forced the cancellation of an annual theatre festival, after threatening violence over satirical plays they accused of being \u201canti-national\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The annual theatre festival organised by the Indian People\u2019s Theatre Association in the small town of Chhatarpur became the object of abuse and violent threats by Bajrang Dal, a hardline Hindu group linked with the ruling Hindu nationalist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/feb\/20\/hindu-supremacists-nationalism-tearing-india-apart-modi-bjp-rss-jnu-attacks\">Bharatiya Janata party<\/a> (BJP).<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/mar\/10\/indian-theatre-festival-forced-to-close-after-hindu-vigilantes-object-to-satirical-plays\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bajrang Dal hardliners in Madhya Pradesh threaten violence over plays \u2018disrespectful to the Indian flag\u2019Rightwing Hindu vigilante groups in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have forced the cancellation of an annual theatre festival, after threatening&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"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":[71,457,62,61,878,877,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-freedom-of-speech","category-india","category-south-and-central-asia","category-stage","category-theatre","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\/29570","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\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29571,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29570\/revisions\/29571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}