Over 2000 protesters from many different Indian American communities joined together outside the SAP Center in San Jose on September 27 to counter Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of "Digital India" and Hindutva. They raised many issues with Modi's leadership, ranging from forced conversions to Hinduism, Internet surveillance, arrest of political bloggers, harassment of human rights activists, blind eye to rapes, dispossession of small farmers, rewriting of Indian history, and the 2002 Gujarat massacre.

The Indian American community is sharply split on Modi's performance during his first year in office, and that was obvious in the huge crowds of protesters filling up the designated protest zones and sidewalks in front of the SAP Center. In addition to the Alliance for Justice and Accountability (AJA), a large progressive umbrella group, other groups also gathered in front of the SAP Center—most notably the Sikh community that showed up in large numbers.

“We were pleasantly surprised by the turnout, which was much higher than we anticipated,” said Bhajan Singh, a community leader with the AJA. People came from cities as far away as Los Angeles. The numbers are a testament to the strong feelings that Modi evokes because of his poor record on religious rights, women's rights, caste, digital freedom, LGBTQ equality, and environmental justice.”

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