One perfect example of elitism

In my previous post besides pointing out the fact that Bloggers are making an unnecessary hue and cry over this Kunte v. Dutt issue, I also brought my reader’s attention to a particular angst I have against a culture of elitism in Indian social media. I have had this for quite some time. But never thought of writing about it. As more and more professional journalists start to blog this elitism is taking new dimensions.

A certain blogger friend constantly lives in denial of the existence of any such culture or any such elite blogger. I told him today, that as much as he wants to deny there is a certain amount of elitism that prevails in the Indian Blogsphere. While he by no means is someone who practices elitism, technically he is an elite blogger. I will explain how some other time. Will write a detailed post about it complete with the behavioral pattern and the symptoms of it. For now here is a classic example.

See this post entitled ‘Holding NDTV accountable‘ on Desipundit, a collaborative blog run by some of the premium bloggers of the country. Anybody who has heard of the word blogging must have also heard of Desipundit.

Do you see anything odd in the post? Any particular behavior singling out just one person? Any particular treatment meted out to only one blogger in that entire post? No? Check again.

Every single person who have been linked on that post have been addressed either by his/her first name or both first and last name or blog name except me. The post doesn’t take my name. For eg, Pragmatic, Mridul Khullar, Chandni etc are there, but if you’ll scroll down to the end of the post you’ll see my previous post have been linked by the words ‘a section’.

Do you not think it is odd? Unfair? Does it not imply that the name Sanjukta Basu has no relevance? This is called elitism. Other people who have been linked are all respectable bloggers with certain amount of credibility in the eyes of the author Patrix, so he has no hesitation in taking their name. While he is at the topic he did link to my post as well but by not taking my name he is being dismissive about my identity.

This same Mr. Patrix also made a comment about me on another blog on the Kunte v. Dutt issue, and I’ll quote him,

Sadly, education sometimes makes no difference to an individual’s intellect. I wish the blogger at least wrote better English.

Someone who has never read my blog and who obviously doesn’t know me at all could so easily judge that my education has not made any difference to my intellect. Such self acquired jurisdiction and credibility to judge other people’s intelligence based upon insufficient fact is elitism. Probably he thinks so highly of himself that any body digressing from his point of view has to be a moron.

I know Mr. Patrix is also on Twitter. I decided to have a direct conversation with him and ask him how could he make that judgment. But the thing about elite bloggers is that they never face you directly unless they think you are worthy of a conversation. “Hum chote logo ke muh nahi lagte types.” (We don’t deal with smaller people)

I sent him @patrix messages once, twice. I left messages for him on comment threads on various blogs asking him to face me on twitter but he never responded. Perhaps he realized, it is not easy to face the person you criticize.

I have been around this blogsphere long enough, and I know my followers would vouch for my education, intellect and honesty or lack of any of it, but he was too quick to judge. Alas.

[Note the words I have tagged this post with and let me know if you can read in between the lines]