These days, every Tom, Dick, and Harry is on social media. Smartphones are widely available, and internet access in India is extremely cheap.
People who are too timid to speak in real life often become bold online, hiding behind anonymity. From there, they unleash all their vitriol.
This isn’t new—it’s always existed. Earlier, the internet wasn’t accessible to everyone, so the scale was smaller. Now, with internet penetration so high, the numbers have grown massively. Percentage-wise, most people still don’t engage in such behavior, but even 1% of 1.5 billion is far larger than 10% of 10 million.
And it’s not just Indians. Pakistanis have been the same—I’ll share an example. Back in the late 90s, I used to play pool on Yahoo Games. There was a room called “Kashmir,” named after a Led Zeppelin song. Indians and Pakistanis often gathered there; many got along well, but some were constantly abusive toward each other.
Some British Pakistanis, who had faster internet at the time, used automated spam tools to flood the chat with nonstop abusive messages about Hindus, Indians, and Indian gods. These spammers would send hundreds of lines every second, overwhelming the chat. Naturally, that made some Indians start hating Pakistanis.
That’s why I always say—and I’ve told
@Pakpak and
@DeadlyVenom before—you never really know how your words will affect someone. What you consider trolling or harmless abuse might cause the other side to develop genuine hatred, not just for you but for your entire community. That hatred then feeds into larger divisions, empowering leaders like Trump or Modi who thrive on polarization.
So my advice is simple: be kind and respectful. You’ll make the world a better place. And when faced with hate online, the best response is often no response—ignore it and don’t fuel the fire.