1 point by truth_ 5 minutes ago | edit | delete [–]
I also am aware of a mainstream set of people who do not mix Indianness with submission to Hindi-imposition.
While people like you do exist, I have also met many people who have no problems belonging to India but rightly abhor Hindi-imperialism exported from cow-belt North.
The attitude of the current Nationalist government is only their version of Indianness is correct. In this, you a patriotic Indian, who speaks Hindi, polythestic idol-worshipping Hindu, conforming to the caste system, eating vegetarian food only, believing in subjugation of women, and hating other religions among other things.
> While British did unify India in terms of governing it, the people always recognised themselves with the king's region. E.g., Mysore region, Hyderabad kingdom etc.,
This is only true for non-Presidency regions. This was not true for Calcutta and Bengal, Madras and Madras area, and Bombay and Bombay area.
Not coincidentally, these regions were, and still are more progressive areas of India.
Indira Gandhi is being painted in a complete negative light here, and the Princes and Kings and Nawabs are being glorified here.
Let me disagree.
The Princes, Nawabs, and Kings were all chosen based on birth and birth only and they are flag bearers of a classist society with no chance of upwards mobility. They were proponents of a system which was deeply sexist and castiest.
I am very glad that they were gotten rid of.
About Gandhi, she is among the best and worst Prime Ministers of India. She is the only one who suspended democracy and started emergency rule, and was an autocrat. On the other hand she implemented a lot of policies that pulled many people out of poverty, helped the freedom fighters in Bangladesh to gain freedom from the Genocidal and mass-rapist regime of Pakistan. Sje fully deserves the criticism for being an autocrat.
And on a different note, it is weird seeing an Indian woman being referred as Devi. Devi is not a last name. Even half a century ago, before the age of IDs, Indian women weren't allowed to hold the family name- before or after marriage. Their last name became Devi which means "goddess", literally.
It is still used informally in formal conversations and media. So if an Indian woman is X Y, where X is the given name, and Y is the family name, the woman can be referred to as X Devi.
Just Devi makes no sense. Foreign writers writing about India should know these.
Also, the title Devi is often divisive and casteist, as often only higher caste women were referred to as Devi (goddess), and women from lower castes were referred to as Dasi (slave).
Whoa, you remind me of walking through College Street in Kolkata. A whole locality named after books- Boi Para (literally- a locality of books).
The place has colleges, schools, parks, and book shops- a whole lot of them. And the book shops kept and organized books randomly. Many focused on academic books but most did not.
It was a pleasure walking through the roads and buying second hand books based on pure interest and exploration.
I had to shift all my work and research related stuff to Chrome, and I do everything else in Firefox.
After buying my new laptop five years ago, I decided that I would do the opposite. But could not keep at it. Before that, I used Firefox 100% of the times and now I use it, say, 10-15% of my browser usage time.
If it were not for those groups, I would have deleted my FB account.
And I treat FB as a non-professional networking platform. You meet someone at a wedding or a funeral who you find tolerable? Add them to your FB.
Thus, with people you are not intimate enough to share your cell number or talk over the phone, and you still want to keep in touch, you add them to your FB.