There is prevalent trend of self aggrandizement among especially Indian Hindus. It oozes from the way they talk. One example of it is the way you once nonchalantly called Pakistanis "savages".
How that amounts to 'self-aggrandizement' beats me. How you have decided that I am an Indian Hindu beats me. And you are guilty of suggestio falsi in saying I called Pakistanis savages. Look it up once again. You have said this before, and I have pointed out that you were wrong, that calling a pattern of behaviour savage does not amount to calling an entire nation savage. Shouldn't you be looking for a promising career in some government propaganda department?
No, I did not know what it was but thanks to you I am 'educated'. I agree with this theory from my personal example. I would never use the language I use on internet in real life. For a start I would have never got far in business with that sort of language but asides that education refines a person and uncouth language is not becoming of decent person. However on internet it is free for all - I guess it's like those Japanese Manga comics. The readers don't play out what they read. As soon as the close the comic reality is so well differant.
British in particular are very PC and the culture strives for a clean language - over time if your immersed in it you become like that. Of course anonymity allows you the freedom to let go and have catharitic release.
I don't understand this behaviour that you have described. My normal, everyday speech and writing and my writing on PDF, or elsewhere on the 'Net, are identical. I would be ashamed to use the language that I have seen people write here, but there never has been any need to mince my words, while continuing to use civil and acceptable language. Is it therefore that those less equipped resort to these shortcuts? Not possible; I have been privileged to read the writing of some of those commenting, and I have seldom seen a higher class of expression.
It seems to me that more than the role-playing through language, it is the role-playing through attitude that is important; the language use is carried along helplessly. It also seems to me that many repressed causes of anger in day-to-day matters is reflected through people's comments in anonymity on the 'Net; although there again, cases of Indians and Pakistanis working together and getting to dislike each other do not seem to be anywhere as widespread as the cases of people coming on line to scream their lungs out at each other.
What on earth is this about?
I don't normally read Indian newspapers but after I saw the post about the new Gen. Bajwa, I did a quick google to see who he is and TOI came at top so I clicked that and then came across the comments section. No idea where TOI fits in the Indian media pegging order but I thought the name sounded fancy and sort of flagship/quality paper. Thus my surprise with comments.
It is a horrible rag. Please don't get me started; when they dispensed with editors because the proprietors decided that a newspaper was a business and should be run like a business and the editorial staff were merely nuisances and extravagances, the game was up. It was a great paper thirty years ago, under Sham Lal and people like that. Unfortunately the paper they use is not good enough for use in the smallest room in the house, so it has no intrinsic value whatsoever.
I have no idea how ToI was in the past. But I guess it was bought by US based Times group and after that it has become pure sh!t. If reading for literature, strategic knowledge and verified news Times of India is not for anyone. They also come up on most provocative titles.
As far as I know, it is still owned and managed by the Bennett Coleman Group. And if you look at the antecedents of that group, you go straight back to Haridas Mundhra. For anyone familiar with recent Indian social and political history, the Jeep Scandal, the resignation of the minister T. T. Krishnamachari, and the association of the notorious Mundhra, the one with a compound with a house in each corner for each of his 'wives', is well-known. They were from the gutter, and it shows.
For India's prestigious Civil Service Examinations, all the coaching centres persuade students on studying "The Hindu". Its editorial , OP-ED are world class, though its not famous with some section of people because of neutral stand or anti-BJP stand on some issues. ToI is only for those who likes Masala in our daily lives.
It was neutral. Under Ram, it became rather less so. He was/is an inveterate Marxist. Not just the intellectual sort, but the political sort. He is now out of the management, due to a family restructuring. I hope it returns to neutrality and that it continues with its famous checking of stories for authenticity with unrelenting effort until the facts are clear, and then published with minimal embellishment.
I have stopped reading TOI, YTube and Facebook comments and I agree, people responding in the most irritating and stupid way overwhelmes the sane ones. Unfortunately, in these days internet has become a handy tool to brainwash people who hardly care to chase the veracity of any news they come across on internet.
This considerable part of Indian population may hold degrees required to get a job, an internet connection but yet lack minimum common sense. Few days back, a man commented on Facebook against demonetization and 99% of the replies he got was associated with his religion. I was so disgusted about the responses that I apologized immediately on behalf of the morons.
The largest part of the population, I think cares more for their daily livings. The second largest part, this 'educated' middle class generation have been through a terrible education system and there lies the problem. Unless we introduce more sophisticated curriculum in our education system this is going to be a major trouble for Indian society in future.
Thank you for summing it up so well.
It started with the explosion in professional education, which brought in huge numbers of those whose families had not dreamt of higher education before due to sheer lack of opportunity. While these young people got trained, rather than educated, there was never that emphasis on the arts and humanities that had existed earlier, and we found ourselves with a 'middle-class' with the following characteristics:
- Knowing their history and their culture only through the Internet and through their family and group prejudices;
- Trained and therefore acceptable in well-paid jobs, and suddenly affluent, members of the 'middle-class';
- More often than not members of the privileged sections of society, in social and cultural terms if not economic, and given to despising the less privileged or belonging to another religion, blaming them for all that is going wrong, or had gone wrong;
- Bearing the attitudes and the thinking of the small-town/villages that many rose from;
- Affiliated to the religious right, and alien to the influence of urban life and its moderating influence on religious and social belief systems;
- Hating the earlier political set-up and blaming it for partition, for favouring minorities for political gains, and for being insufficiently pro-business (to be read as insufficiently pro-businessman);
- Hungry for the continuation of the good life that was interrupted by UPA2.
Put this together, and we have the Internet Hindu.
When I first joined this forum in 2010, I didn't have the hate for bhartis that I have now. It seems like online only 20% of Indians are polite. The rest are scumbags suckling on their mothers' breasts talking big online. Insulting not only Pakistan, but all Muslims. I ignored Indians for the first 7 months I was here because I was only concerned with issues regarding Pakistan. Eventually, these disgusting people turned me into a hate filled bigot that spat the same vitriol as they did. In essence, I became what I deplored. I became what I hated. I turned into one of them.
These days I take it easy on them because they are weak people. The sick dog always barks the most. The funny thing is that when I meet Indians here in the States, they are always trying to kiss up to me. It's those same types that talk shit on the internet.
I don't let it get to me anymore, but I do have fun once in a while. I get pissed when they claim IVC, or when they bring up 72 virgins, because most of the saffroni shit talkers on this website are virgins that claim to own a Royal enfield motorcyle and have Pakistan girlfriends while sitting in a slum or call center in Mumbai.
Don't let it get to you.
@Kaptaan
<phew!> Take it easy. You are reacting the way the worse elements that you despise hope that you will react. Is that what you want?
If anything recent events like the Trump election showed that there are real people behind these comments and real people who give these comments a thumbs up.
They might not represent the majority of its people since many would be poor hardworking folks who have a good heart and who don't nearly have enough time nor resources to log on to the internet but I have no doubts this presents a picture to us about the thinking of a new fundamentalist middleclass.
Please see the comments at #23 . It corroborates your conclusions.
i have burnt the quran when we were travelling and couldn't carry it along nor dispose of it in a proper manner.
