India has 1.4 billion people, of course some of them are black hats for hire. Perhaps India is a hotbed of cybercrime but this article is mostly anecdotes and nothing in it is evidence that the nation’s at all comparable to other hotspots of hirable hackers like Eastern Europe or Israel.
India already have the reputation for their "IT support departments" calling everyone in the world every few months to try to gain access to their computer, also known as social engineering, a form of hacking. Many of their operation centers have been exposed, yet the Indian government has not been able to stop it. China also has 1.4 billion people, and they indeed are more known than India for being a serious black hat threat. But if you ask the average person what kind of hacker they are more familiar with, they will probably recall the 10+ times they were personally called by a hacker with a strong Indian accent.
That's slowing down; Mexico City and the Philippines are becoming more popular.
PI because of long standing ties to the US and Canada, and eligbility for things like TFW workers in Canada. Mexico City for timezones and NAFTA TN visas.
The reputation you describe is non existant in my (non-English-speaking) country. I guess US and UK are just the easiest and richest targets for Indian hackers. Why should we expect something else ?
I think the point was more that there are fewer German speakers in India than English speakers, by a large margin, so if you are going to scam in German you might be more likely to source your call-centre operatives from elsewhere, which is why Indian call centres don't have the reputation in that country which they do in the UK & US.
Some of them might be former residents of Germany. Most of my spam calls came from Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey or Bulgaria, most of the spoken German was pretty decent. Good old times when I had time for scambaiting.
The fact that general English language proficiency is far greater in India (where English is an official language) than China ... may have something to do with this.
Boiler-room telephony operations tend to follow linguistic capabilities. The Philippines is another locale with widespread English-language capabilities and a low prevailing wage rate, though it seems less associated with technical scams than India is.
I think the parent commenter was trying to portray Indians from a Western perspective, to highlight the disdain that the West has supposedly held for India.
They're not wrong, by the way; Nixon was reportedly vitriolic in his racism against Indians[1].
Why? In the view of the descendants of Mediterranean civilisations — "the West" (Christendom) and West Asia/North Africa (Ummah), Hindus are the last remaining large group of pagans, and idol-worshippers to boot. Everyone else like them has been "saved" by hook or crook, stick or carrot.
The term "pagan" historically referred to individuals who practiced polytheistic religions outside of the major world religions and Hindus worship Brahman ultimately. Also the "idols" are not seen as the deity but a physical representation that helps worshiping the deity.
But I'd love to be corrected as my knowledge is very superficial.
> The term "pagan" historically referred to individuals who practiced polytheistic religions outside of the major world religions
Not really, all nature worshippers have been called pagans by followers of Abrahamic religions. "Major/minor" is a modern concept, the original idea was of true believer and heathen – Religion was never a democracy
> Hindus worship Brahman ultimately. Also the "idols" are not seen as the deity but a physical representation that helps worshiping the deity.
Talk to 10 Hindus and you will get 20 definitions of Hinduism. Not surprising, when considering its 4000 year old roots and its practice in an ultra-diverse society.
This is not entirely true. Hinduism is a religion spanning almost 5000 years of continuous belief, and is the last direct descendant of the Proto-Indo-European mythos and beliefs system. As such, it is extremely complex, and it escapes attempts (especially by Western, Christocentric authors) to easily classify it.
Vaiṣṇavas believe Viṣṇu is the ultimate being; Śaivas replace him with Śiva. The Brahman-is-everything belief is closer to the Advaita and Smarta traditions, developed by Ādi Śaṅkara in the 8th century CE. There are the Aghoris, who believe extreme ascetism will lead them closer to Śiva; there exist Hindus who are also Jains, an arguably nāstika ('heterodox') tradition.
Furthermore, it is equally fair to argue that many Hindus do worship the idols (or mūrtis) themselves, which are generally considered extremely holy anyway. Although it has descended from PIE religion, Hinduism has undergone much syncretism after its arrival in the Indian subcontinent, perhaps first with the Indus Valley religion, and then with the myriad animist and fetishist beliefs of the various Indian tribes throughout the subcontinent, and therefore the lingering idolatry.
Every village has a kuladevatā, a 'clan god'. These have been syncretised with popular worship of the more major Hindu deities. 4000 years ago, Vedic nature deities closer to the Greco-Roman-Norse-Anglo-Saxon-Slavic equivalents were more popular. These include Indra, Váruṇa, Vāyu, Savitṛ, Agni, Sóma etc.
After approximately 500 BCE, they were generally replaced by the Trimūrti, their consorts, and their issue, including Gaṇeśa, Pārvatī, Sarasvatī, Lakṣmī, etc. These gods don't really have equivalents in pre-Christian European religions, as they developed through the synthesis of the various scriptures.
Hinduism doesn't even have a single prophet, or religious figure; it has not one but at least sevenṛṣis. It has four Vedas, dozens of Purāṇas, two epics that are individually orders of magnitude longer than any Homerian tragedy.
Dravidian Hinduism, being almost equally as old, has developed almost independently of the rest of the subcontinent, with its own set of beliefs, cultures, and even architecture.
Ergo, Hinduism does not fit into neat categories developed with a Judeo-Christian perspective. Heck, Christians have made it easy for themselves; even their own religion developed out of a polytheistic nature-god religion. The Judeo-Christian god Yahweh is just one deity out of an entire pantheon that more or less went out of fashion after Judaism, including Astarte, Ishtar, Asherah, Baal, El, etc.
>Hindus worship Brahman
As a Hindu, some people see this as the ultimate truth, while quite a lot of others don't. There are a lot of paths to salvation, depends on whom you ask.
Nativity scenes, as well as the countless number of icons and statues seen in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, would count as a form of idol worship under strict interpretation of Abrahamic religious texts too. So yes, you are wrong.
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