Coming from India, difference in cultures, religion, language etc. is nothing new to me. There have been many conflicts, not just arguments but even violent fights due to these differences. I feel most conflicts arise due to stereotypes. There is one particular stereotype that particular bothers me as It also affects me personally. The conflicts between north Indians and south Indians seem never endings and seem to have no merit at all and yet there always seems to be some problem.
Growing up in the south, the usual opinion of north Indians in my city was not very good. We always thought they were stuck up, fancy and not as down to earth as we south Indians and we did often mock their language. Likewise I know many north Indians consider south Indians to be nerds without a life outside of work, outcasts in a way as we are the only state were hindi is completely useless (It’s the national language) and also they seem to think we south Indians have a strange mentality which I cannot seem to explain being south Indian myself.
But it never seemed to be a problem till I got to college. In school we were majority south Indians but in college it is a mixture and the differences are very clear. We south Indians cannot talk to the north Indians much because were the only people who never cared about hindi much to learn the language and this seems to be something the north Indians pick on. We speak tamil and I have even heard people say “Chennai vs the rest of India” which I feel is a bit unfair. Many people in many states do not speak hindi but we get picked on and about us being nerds I feel that is completely not true because we do have a life outside studies and work, we do know how to have fun. I have many friends in other colleges where the hindi speaking population are the majority and they always complain about how the northies (as we call them) complain about us tamilians, our food, city, language, attitude just to name a few.
Of course I can’t blame the northies completely, we had our opinions on them too and I have met many north Indians who aren’t anything like what we imagined them to be. In fact some of my best friends now are north Indians. But I guess some stereotypes never die and these will cause many more intercultural conflicts in the years to come.
