http://www.cybervictims.org
It is disturbing to see how India is getting divided due to
the pranksters and mischief mongers who took full (mis)use of social networking
sites and digital communication medium, especially SMSs. Too many news reports,
blogs, media high lights and I am distraught to see how the fear wave touched
my own dreamy university town Tirunelveli. Yes, the fear has spread like a fire
and people belonging to north east, who used to work in various industries
including hotels, brick kilns, ports, every one is running back to their home
land (See http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/article3794140.ece) . All for a dreadful SMS which instigated the violence in Bangalore and
then it did not take much long to push out others from other southern cities of
South India. I know this will die down. It will either have a natural death, or
the phenomena would be killed in the rightful way by the authorities. But the
fact remains fact. We are never encouraged to be INDIANS
first. I married a Tamil and got settled in Tamil Nadu for past thirteen
years. I speak the language of the place which has given me motherly comfort
and which actually blessed me to become what I am today. But I am still tagged
as a “north Indian” (I am not from northern part, I am from the eastern part of
India), some of the oldies in my in laws are scared of me because of my non
Tamil lineage ( a peculiar sociological behaviour which actually bars people
from different regions from accepting others due to some age old cultural
beliefs), some blame me for bringing in the Calcutta culture in my own home
consisting me, my husband and my multi lingual and multi cultural child. In my
virtual life, I often get to see ‘groups’ of
Bengalis, Tamils, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, ................... the
list is endless. Yes, all of us are practising our precious rights to speech,
expression, religion, and life. But where is the red line? Who bars us? The
answer is known to none. We are now a generation of internet era. Probably we
are the first generation. How would our children who are born of
multi-linguistic, multi religious, multi- cultural parents tag themselves? What
about those who have migrated to other parts of the country for good? They are
neither south Indian nor north Indian, neither Tamils, nor Kannadas, nor
Bengalis, nor Assameese. They are INDIANS
of the internet era. But still then, the division stays; some over smart
opportunists try to create the separatist movement through the digital
technology and we are unnecessarily feeding them to grow like poisonous trees
by taking them extremely seriously. Isn’t it an irony? When scholars,
researchers, cyber psychologists bravely announce that every human being in the
NET must learn how to detach oneself from the NET, the NET is gripping us more by sheer
technological ‘magic’ to forget about the human side of the users?
In spite of
the fact that I had my ups and downs in this place due to cultural differences,
I would still say people of Tamil Nadu have hearts that are tied with the
heart of India. From my part, I am not
giving any opportunist any opportunity to break my country and my family. What
about you?
Please Note: Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like
to use informations provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article,
please cite it as “Halder D. (2012),
A message to my fellow netizens of internet era”, 19th August,2012, published in
http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com"
