But over time, things changed. Managers encouraged teams to communicate in languages everyone could understand. People adjusted. Nobody made me feel like my right to exist in the city depended on linguistic performance.

And because dignity existed alongside expectation, something interesting happened.

People learnt Marathi anyway. Friends around me picked it up naturally. Not because somebody screamed at them. Not because they were threatened. Not because politicians convinced them language was a border wall. Because they wanted to connect better and respected the culture around them.

Every Indian child has stood in a school assembly and repeated the pledge.

All Indians are my brothers and sisters.

A sentence we memorised before we were old enough to question it. Right next to unity in diversity, national integration, and maps in textbooks coloured to look beautifully seamless.

Then we grew up.

And suddenly, being Indian didn’t seem to be enough anymore.

Now you also need to sound correct.

Speak the right language. Use the right accent.

Because apparently, all Indians are my brothers and sisters with regional terms and conditions.

The Cost of Sounding Like an Outsider

In May 2026, Newslaundry reported the story of 21-year-old Pandav Kumar, a Zomato delivery worker from Bihar’s Khagaria district, who was allegedly shot dead on April 26 by a Delhi Police constable after being called a ‘Bihari’. According to the report, Pandav was his family’s sole breadwinner. His younger brother had dropped out of school due to tuberculosis. Pandav had moved to Delhi years ago to support everyone back home. That night, he had simply stepped out after attending a child’s birthday celebration with friends from his village.

Then, allegedly, came the question so many migrants in India know too well: ‘What are you Biharis doing here?’

Moments later, a bullet was fired. Pandav died. His friend survived with injuries.

And honestly, if that sentence doesn’t disturb you enough already, nothing in this article will.

Because this story is no longer about language alone! It’s about what happens when regional superiority, insecurity, politics, and everyday prejudice start wearing the mask of ‘cultural pride’.

And Pandav Kumar’s case is not an isolated incident. People can comfortably file it away under ‘tragic but rare’.

Pandav Kumar, the family’s sole breadwinner, was killed in a shooting involving a Delhi Police constable.

It is part of a pattern.

A very ugly one. Every few months, India rediscovers its multilingualism by threatening someone over it.

In November 2025, a college student in Maharashtra reportedly died by suicide after being assaulted following a language-related altercation on a local train.

In Dombivli, two women were reportedly assaulted after one of them used the word ‘excuse me’ in English.

Videos have surfaced of political workers allegedly humiliating workers, shopkeepers, and public staff for not speaking Marathi fluently enough. Bengaluru has repeatedly witnessed incidents involving people allegedly targeted for not speaking Kannada. Students from the Northeast have spoken for years about racial and linguistic hostility in metropolitan cities that proudly market themselves as ‘cosmopolitan’.

And these are only the stories that became loud enough to trend. For every viral video, there are probably hundreds of quieter humiliations that never become headlines.

The migrant worker laughed at for mispronouncing a word. The cab driver mocked for his accent.

The office employee silently excluded from conversations. The delivery executive treated like an outsider despite spending more time in the city than the people insulting him. Humiliation rarely trends unless somebody dies, gets beaten up, or the internet gets content out of it.

Everything else becomes background noise. And maybe that’s the most disturbing part. How normal this has started to feel.

India Runs on Migration, We Just Don’t Like Admitting It

Here’s the thing nobody wants to say loudly enough.

India survives because people migrate. Workers leave villages.

Students leave hometowns. Families relocate because survival demands it. Entire cities function because somebody, somewhere, left their home behind. Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Delhi — these cities are built every single day by migrants.

The person delivering your food, driving your cab, building your apartment, cleaning your office, serving your coffee, teaching your children — there’s a good chance they came from somewhere else.

Migration isn’t an exception in India; it’s the engine. Which is why the hypocrisy around language becomes impossible to ignore.

We want migrant labour; we just don’t want migrant presence. We want people to contribute economically. But socially, emotionally, and culturally? We keep reminding them they are temporary guests.

Paying taxes, working brutal hours, and helping cities function still isn’t enough. Now you also need to clear a spoken language entrance exam for basic respect.

Nothing says national unity quite like threatening someone’s livelihood over pronunciation.

The Language Question Nobody Wants to Fully Answer

The recent Marathi language debate in Maharashtra exposed this contradiction in full public view. The Maharashtra government’s push requiring taxi and autorickshaw drivers to demonstrate working knowledge of Marathi triggered political debate, legal questions, and anxiety among migrant drivers. But before we turn this into a Maharashtra-only story, let’s be honest: every region in India seems convinced it has a monopoly on language insecurity.

Maharashtra has seen repeated controversies around Marathi. Bengaluru periodically finds itself at the centre of Kannada-related language rows. Over the years, reports have surfaced of people being harassed, threatened, or even assaulted for not speaking Kannada. In one widely reported case in 2014, a student from Manipur was allegedly attacked after locals demanded he speak Kannada because he was living in Karnataka.

The language changes.

The script changes.

The political slogans change.

The behaviour often doesn’t.

Find someone who sounds different.

Question whether they belong.

Call it cultural protection.

And this is where the conversation becomes more complicated than internet shouting matches.

Because yes, Marathi deserves respect in Maharashtra.

Kannada deserves respect in Karnataka.

Tamil deserves respect in Tamil Nadu.

Every language deserves preservation.

Are We Protecting the Language or Simply Performing Power?

If drivers must prove Marathi proficiency, what comes next?

Doctors?

Nurses?

Teachers?

Private employees?

Students?

Will every Indian eventually require linguistic clearance certificates before crossing state borders? Because that sounds less like unity and more like internal immigration control.

And yet, while these debates explode politically, ordinary people remain trapped in the middle. Regional communities fear cultural erasure. Migrants fear humiliation and exclusion. Politicians harvest both anxieties like electoral crops. Meanwhile, the average person is just trying to survive rent prices and traffic. The irony becomes even more absurd when you look at the larger national picture. The same political ecosystem that promotes Hindi aggressively at the national level often simultaneously defends regional language pride locally.

In Maharashtra, backlash erupted against policies seen as ‘Hindi imposition’ in schools. Opposition leaders described it as a threat to Marathi identity. In Tamil Nadu, resistance to Hindi imposition has existed for decades. Karnataka has seen campaigns demanding stronger visibility for Kannada.

And honestly?

Some of those concerns are valid.

India cannot flatten itself into one language. But there’s a difference between resisting linguistic domination and punishing ordinary people for sounding different. Those are not the same thing. And somewhere in India’s language wars, that distinction keeps collapsing.

The Foreigner Exception

Now let’s talk about one of the funniest and most embarrassing contradictions in this country. Watch a white tourist struggle through one sentence in Hindi.

Instant national celebration.

Somebody starts recording. Instagram captions appear.

‘OMG, he respects our culture.’

‘Protect him at all costs.’

‘He speaks better Hindi than me.’

Now watch an Indian migrant struggle with a regional language in another Indian state. Suddenly everybody becomes a border security officer.

‘You’ve lived here three years and still don’t know the language?’

‘Why are you here then?’

‘Go back.’

The white tourist gets encouragement. The migrant worker gets suspicion. The exchange student gets applause. The delivery driver gets mocked. And let’s be brutally honest here: the standard isn’t always effort.

It’s familiarity. It’s perceived belonging. People often decide whether your language mistakes are charming or irritating based on who they think you are before you’ve even finished speaking.

A foreign tourist struggling through a sentence is often seen as someone embracing the culture. An Indian from another state making the same effort can be asked why they haven’t learnt the language already. That is not language pride. That is gatekeeping disguised as cultural protection.

Because if communication were genuinely the goal, effort would matter more than perfection. Broken Marathi would still be welcomed. Broken Kannada would still count. Broken Hindi would still deserve patience. Instead, fluency becomes a measure of belonging. And the people perceived as outsiders are often expected to prove themselves the fastest.

The Language of Exclusion 

I moved to Pune from Madhya Pradesh seven years ago. In the beginning, there were moments that stayed with me. Rickshaw drivers occasionally treat me differently. Office conversations suddenly switched into Marathi while I sat there wondering whether people forgot I couldn’t understand or whether they wanted me to feel that way. But over time, things changed. Managers encouraged teams to communicate in languages everyone could understand. People adjusted. Nobody made me feel like my right to exist in the city depended on linguistic performance. And because dignity existed alongside expectation, something interesting happened.

People learnt Marathi anyway. Friends around me picked it up naturally. Not because somebody screamed at them. Not because they were threatened. Not because politicians convinced them language was a border wall. Because they wanted to connect better and respected the culture around them. Because curiosity works much better than hostility ever will.

They learnt it like a skill. Not an obligation. Like respect. Not fear. And maybe that’s the part India keeps getting embarrassingly wrong. People don’t resist languages. People resist humiliation. The problem was never Marathi, Kannada, Hindi, or Tamil.

The problem begins when language stops being an invitation and starts becoming a moral superiority contest. Because somewhere along the way, some people became convinced that another language entering their state is enough to destroy their culture, identity, heritage, civilisation, and the entire emotional stability of society. Which is fascinating considering India has survived invasions, colonisation, partition, corruption, inflation, pollution, potholes, and Mumbai traffic, but apparently hearing the ‘wrong’ language at a tea stall is where we finally collapse as a civilisation.

And the saddest part? Most migrants are already trying. Trying to fit in. Trying to survive. Trying to learn. Trying to belong.

But belonging in India increasingly feels conditional. You can work here. Build here. Pay rent here. Drive our cabs. Deliver our food. Help run entire cities.

Just don’t sound too different while doing it. Because the moment somebody’s dignity becomes dependent on how they sound, we have already failed the idea of India we keep performing in school assemblies. So maybe the next time we proudly say ‘All Indians are my brothers and sisters’, we should finally say the quiet part out loud too. Unless they speak the ‘wrong’ language.

The post All Indians Are My Brothers and Sisters. Until Someone Speaks the Wrong Language appeared first on Voicey World.

This act of being in the zone with point-blank focus is a tried and tested experiment by me as well. When I was preparing for defence exams, and I wanted to become an officer so badly that I would do anything for it, I used to give my phone to my mother as a sacrifice. She was given clear instructions: do not give me my phone until I have finished my to-do list for the day.

But Why Locking in Requires ‘Sacrifice’?

I had a vision in my mind that I had to accomplish, and that required my undivided attention. Becoming an officer is not an easy thing, but my willpower in front of Reels is quite weak. I am prone to watching videos, believing I have all the sweet time in the world.

I would pick up my phone to search for a topic, but I don’t know how my finger would click on Instagram and one hour would go by just like that. Then, I would remember- oh shoot, I was studying. I even deleted the app from my phone, believing that I would not get distracted anymore. But the constant notifications from the ‘study groups’ I had joined, Zomato’s flirty notifications, and shopping apps’ messages would irritate me. One ‘ting’ voice and my head would turn towards the phone. 

While I tried to stop myself from reaching for my phone, the process of reading, making notes, memorising everything, taking regular tests, and maintaining consistency would sometimes make me lose confidence too.

I remember reading the chapter on Parliament in Indian Polity one morning. The chapter covered everything from the structure and functioning of Parliament to the roles of the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and the Speaker, along with different parliamentary procedures. After reading all of this, I took a test that night and scored 3/10. The questions were statement-based, and every option seemed correct to me.

When I opened Telegram, I saw other aspirants calling Parliament the easiest chapter, saying the type of questions and answers were fixed. I thought, Am I that dumb? I’m scoring 3/10, and people are calling this chapter easy? This all led me to question myself and my decision to prepare for the exam.

And I thought it was all because of this phone. 

Due to all of this, I made the sacrifice and gave my phone to my mother. 

Lock-In Sacrifice That Would Irritate Me

But I will be honest with you. On the first day I gave my phone to my mother, I sat down with the attitude that today, my path to becoming an officer had officially started. That enthusiasm lasted for exactly 45 minutes. And then I slept for two hours.

By the time I woke up, my willpower hit its lowest record. I would even skip my syllabus, thinking I could catch up on it the following day.

But that wasn’t easy at all. I still feel ashamed of all the times I used to say, ‘Just give me my phone for 15 minutes, and I will give it back.’

Was my motivation to clear those exams lacking? Absolutely not. 

But I still wanted my phone. And sometimes, I used to regret choosing my mother as the custodian of my phone because that lady is a disciplinarian. She would literally do anything but give me my phone.

I felt this whole process was a punishment because I took away my own choice. I did it to be away from my distractions, and getting the phone back was becoming my distraction. 

That’s when I realised that keeping my phone away was one thing, but actually sitting down and studying was another. Removing the distraction didn’t automatically make the work interesting, and it certainly didn’t mean I could concentrate for hours just because I had decided to. 

This is the time when one feels most alone and searches for comfort, and I found it online (I got it after I told my mom that I needed it for studying).

Internet Has Been Doing This Too

I thought I was the only one who needed to go to such extremes to get things done. But then people on the internet were doing the same thing, just in different ways. There was this whole fad around the 75 Hard challenge, dopamine detox, Monk Mode, and all those other challenges. All having the same winning arc: that you have got to become indispensable and take charge of the chariot of your life.

In fact, in most of the motivational speeches I’ve heard, I’ve seen people pitching the same idea: ‘Disappear for six months, and be ahead of everyone.’

And this is the mindset we perhaps need more than ever. See, earlier people didn’t have this kind of technology; millennials grew up with technology but with more restricted usage, and we are practically children of the Internet. 

The sheer number of videos telling us how to fix our lives, build discipline, wake up at 5 am or become a completely different person in six months is insane. 

And when those very videos become a distraction too, the idea of shutting everything out sounds like the best possible decision one could take. This is why locking in feels like a necessity now.

Boring, Frustrating, but Did It Work?

And if you ask me for my unsolicited opinion, I would say locking in is one of the most boring things you have to do. There were days when I wouldn’t study at all; I wasn’t a perfectly disciplined person at all, just because my phone was with my mother.

But once I started breaking down my obstacles and setting achievable goals, I found it a little easier. The feeling of ticking things off my to-do list gave me a hell lot of satisfaction. Gradually, I could see that I was getting things done.

And yes, I cleared my written exams multiple times because of it. So, yeah, locking in might actually be helpful.

The post Why Does Locking In Feel Like a Punishment? appeared first on Voicey World.

 

 

 

 

 

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After I watched the video, my feed was filled with ones where men were talking about asking young men to talk about becoming “high value,” building discipline, making more money, getting stronger, and learning how to “deal with women”.

Another video like this says men are being made weaker through social media. It shows a muscular man working out and calling young men to be stronger.

A few more videos appeared in which Andrew Tate was saying that the number one indicator of a man’s success is his ability to deal with stress. The video has over 39K Likes on Instagram, with some users praying for Tate’s release from jail.

After watching these videos, I noticed how they are being used to turn a man’s loneliness and insecurities into hate towards women.

It starts small, with a fitness influencer in a reel or a post about masculinity, and it builds from there. History proves all it takes is a well-shot frame and a powerful voice to sway a crowd.

A young, lonely, rejected man is often confused about the ideal male image, and the internet is full of people who tell them exactly what’s wrong with their life and who is apparently responsible for it.

These videos don’t begin with something hateful. In the videos I’ve seen, it’s initially about working out, waking up early, building discipline, making money and, in the longer run, being more confident. The problem starts when “work on yourself” turns into “they are responsible for it”.

The more I looked into the manosphere, the more I realised that it’s not just a group of men like Andrew Tate sitting online preaching to men. It’s bigger than that.

It’s an ecosystem of influencers: dating coaches, fitness creators, “alpha” accounts, Red Pill spaces. 

And to be frank, I find things like superbikes, supercars, six-packs attractive. And most of it feels quite natural at this age. I also want to look good, make money and have things that make me feel good.
And that’s probably why this content sells well.

Algo Knows The Frustrations 

What I felt was dangerous about entering the manosphere is how ordinary it can feel at first. I might watch a fitness video; the algorithm then gives me productivity advice. Then slowly the content shifts and I start getting videos on confidence, dating advice, and becoming more attractive. Before I realise it, I’m not watching videos anymore. I’m absorbing a way of thinking that changes how I see women, relationships and even myself.

Men don’t necessarily look for misogyny; we go for an explanation.

Young men can stumble into this content while looking for something as ordinary as dating tips, workout advice or crypto tips. And that’s what makes it tricky.

Most people don’t fall into this rabbit hole by searching for an ideology. They are just searching for help.

This is when someone appears on the screen as a messiah, saying, “Yo! Bro. I know what’s wrong”. It can attract him, right?

Something is Wrong with Your Life

The greatest trick these influencers pull is taking any complicated problem and giving it one stop-solve-for-all explanation.

If the man is unemployed, he lacks discipline. If he is single, maybe he is not “high value”. If he’s insecure, he needs more muscle.

Yes! Exercise does help; having money gives us security, confidence and social skills can make life easier. But human beings are not equations where we put in the right amount of money, muscle and confidence and automatically get love, respect or happiness in return. We can do everything right and still face rejection, feel lonely and struggle with self-doubt. That’s life. Not everything can be optimised, and not every relationship follows a formula.

Photograph: Walter Weekes/X

Someone to Blame

And this is how the modern ecosystem run by the Internet targets women and modern society.

A man’s personal problems suddenly become a part of a gender war.

A man was rejected because women want only “chads”. They can’t find a partner because women are independent now. They are unhappy because women have unrealistic standards. This is where the “bros” turn a man’s insecurity into evidence. Every bad experience is presented as a confirmation.

All women are being presented as shallow.
Modern relationships are broken.
One woman behaved badly, so feminism is to blame.

When we scroll through YouTube Shorts and Insta Reels, the algorithm quickly picks up on our watch time and pivots the feed straight into the videos that frame modern dating as a zero-sum game where women are the liars designed to exploit men. The red-pill narrative insists women are hypergamous “gold-diggers” who will mock a man when he is broke, only to come running to him when he builds wealth and status.

It gets worse from there. Rape gets brushed off, women get objectified, and “men’s rights” groups pop up. But they aren’t fighting for men’s rights. They’re fighting against women.

Walter Weekes with Alex Morgan (Photograph: Walter Weekes/X)

Closer home, take the Save Indian Family Foundation. It started in 2005 as an NGO against the misuse of dowry laws and calls itself a men’s rights group. Now it’s all over online forums. It opposed the 2022 petition to criminalise marital rape and backed a marriage strike.

One post on their own website, “How to Finish off #MeToo Movement and Save Lives?”, tells readers to go after the people behind the movement aggressively. It calls feminists “feminazis” and terrorists, says mentally unstable women will do anything, and wants the movement ended. Real honourable men.

The bros on the Internet provide endless anecdotes to support their conclusions. That’s how the foundations for the resentment are laid.

And suddenly masculinity comes with a scoreboard… money, muscle, status, sex and dominance, and there is no end to it.

Cashing in on Loneliness

The manosphere doesn’t always tell lonely men to solve loneliness; it gives loneliness an identity.

A man is not lonely; he is “awake”.

He is not rejected; it’s the system that is rigged.

He is not insecure; he simply doesn’t understand “female nature”.

For me, the central question is who gets to explain why men are struggling. Men are lonely; that’s for sure in an argument. Men and women both are struggling economically; this is also a problem.

The blame game might be a way out to satisfy a man emotionally and to put his anger somewhere; there’s also money in that anger.

Courses, coaches, online communities turn male insecurity into business, but the frustration doesn’t necessarily come from the influencers. They have found a festering wound and are earning from it.

Does a man have to be ‘Alpha’?

I think we need to stop building such dramatic ideas of masculinity.

A man doesn’t have to dominate anyone. He doesn’t need endless girls, or the fanciest car in town, to prove he’s worth something. He can enjoy getting stronger. He can make money because it gives him confidence, and build that confidence until he’s comfortable in his own skin.

The manosphere gets one thing right: young men want direction. They just shouldn’t be getting it from people who profit off their anger.

So when videos like these pop up on my feed, I take a step back and swipe past. I don’t let an online messiah tell me who I am, what I should do with my life, or whom I should hate.

The post Does a Man Have to Be ‘Alpha’? appeared first on Voicey World.