For Hotmail and Rediff, J&K does not exist in India

Perhaps, married to the cold war legacy MSN Hotmail and Rediffmail.com do not show Jammu and Kashmir as part of India thus questioning the very integrity of the country.



IF YOU ARE a resident of Jammu and Kashmir, then Microsoft owned Hotmail.com does not recognise you as an Indian. Even our very Indian Rediffmail.com does the same although it considers Jammu as part of the country while Srinagar is missing from the list of cities.

Surprised! Just try to sign up for an account with Hotmail.com, and click on the box for the option of country, that is India. While you open this section all states of the country come up but Jammu and Kashmir, the crown of India does not exist in the category.

What can be the reason behind the absence of Jammu and Kashmir from this list?

Is it an inadvertent mistake or a sad reminder of the cold war legacy that MSN owned Hotmail.com does not recognise Jammu and Kashmir as part of India.

Startlingly the same happens when one registers for Rediffmail.com, but there is a catch, the name of Jammu crops up in the list of Indian cities in Rediff, while Kashmir or Srinagar remains to be absent from the list.

It may be worth mentioning that during the cold war, American institutions and companies used to refer Kashmir as a disputed territory in order to whiplash India.

The absence of Jammu and Kashmir from the list of states in the Hotmail account clearly sends this shocking message to millions of users worldwide that there is no state with this name in India.

The seriousness of the matter can be gauged from the fact that Hotmail is world’s largest free Web-based e-mail service provider and is used in more than 220 countries and territories.

As MSN Hotmail is said to be having around 190 million active accounts, it means that a population as large as world’s 5th largest country is being told, perhaps unintentionally that Jammu and Kashmir does not exist in India.

Similarly, Rediff.com, one of the most popular and most used mail platforms in the country and its failure to show Kashmir in the list of Indian cities can send very confusing signals to the people, particularly, the citizens of Jammu and Kashmir.

When Merinews spoke to some people about this fallacy they expressed deep anguish over the issue and demanded that Microsoft and Rediffmail and any other website doing the same should correct the situation at the earliest.

Chairman of the Internet Governance Forum, Nitin Desai, when contacted, said, “It is really surprising and this is not done. What will someone residing in Jammu and Kashmir who wants to sign up for these websites do? This fallacy needs to be addressed.” Desai is also the Under Secretary for Economy and Social Affairs United Nations.

The officials of MSN as well as Rediff.com maintained that this was a technical mistake and would be rectified at the earliest. Talking to merinews, Vice President (Marketing), Rediff.Com, Manish Agarwal, said that currently there is no city in the list from Kashmir Valley, “I think it is an unintentional error made by the guys working on it. I have taken a note of it and this will be rectified at the earliest.”

A senior official of MSN, India agreeing to speak on the condition of anonymity maintained that it was a technical glitch, “We will see that it is rectified as soon as possible.”

However when merinews pointed out the fallacy, MSN officials said they would rectify the error within a couple of hours, but one wonders why it did not occur to them earlier, which is very apparent.

People in the state of Jammu and Kashmir are flabbergasted over this mistake, intentional or otherwise, they allege that this is a part of larger conspiracy to ensure that Kashmir issue remains a disputed affair.

With inputs from Pritha Roy Choudhury, merinews