Days ahead of US President Donald Trump\u2019s visit to India, an influential Indian-American lawmaker said it is important for India to retain its standing as a secular democracy that sets it apart from other countries in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Referring to the Indian government\u2019s revocation of Jammu and Kashmir\u2019s special status last year and the controversial Citizenship Act , congressman Ami Bera said democratic institutions around the world are being tested even as there was \u201cpush back on some of this\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bera, a four-time Democratic Party lawmaker and chair of the subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and non-proliferation, told a small group of reporters: \u201cIndian citizens are the ones that ultimately will control the outcome of where India heads\u2026We can offer that what we admire about India\u2026is it\u2019s vibrant secular democracy and we would hate to see India lose or tarnish any of that reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
George Holding, the Republican co-chair of the India Caucus, and Bera were on a two-day visit to India to demonstrate bipartisan support for the bilateral relationship and to discuss key issues such as the situation in Afghanistan and maritime security with Indian interlocutors. Foreign secretary Harsh Shringla was among the officials they met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bera described the protests against the CAA as \u201cdemocracy in action\u201d. The tools of democracy in India \u201cremain vibrant\u201d and the country has an independent judiciary \u201cwhich seems to be ruling on the constitutionality of some of these issues\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Days ahead of US President Donald Trump\u2019s visit to India, an influential Indian-American lawmaker said it is important for India to retain its standing as a secular democracy that sets it apart from other countries in the region. Referring to the Indian government\u2019s revocation of Jammu and Kashmir\u2019s special status last year and the controversial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80394,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80392\/revisions\/80394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}