This is exactly the point I keep making.
We Indians are the only people on earth who take a few bad apples and turn it into a verdict on our entire country.
Someone behaves badly in public, and within seconds it becomes "Indians have no civic sense, we give India a bad name."
We do not even wait for the world to judge us. We rush to do it ourselves, loudly.
So let me hold up the same mirror to the rest of the world.
Just two weeks ago, PSG won the Champions League. This was their second title in a row, beating Arsenal on penalties. A back to back European crown, one of the biggest things that can happen to a football club.
So how did Paris, one of the most cultured cities on the planet, celebrate?
They set cars on fire. They vandalised and looted shops. They lit fires in the streets. A group even tried to storm a police station.
Across France, 890 people were arrested in one night. More than 200 were injured. A young man died after crashing his bike into concrete barriers during the chaos.
France had to put 8,000 police on the streets just to manage a party.
And this was not even the worst of it. When PSG won their first title the year before, two people died, 264 cars were burned, and a police officer was hit in the face by fireworks and put into an induced coma.
Now ask yourself one simple question.
Did anyone write "the French have no civic sense"? Did anyone say France should be ashamed, that the French give their country a bad name?
No. Their own President tweeted "a new star is shining over Paris." The whole thing got filed under passion. Under joy. Under boys being boys.
Take another one. In February 2025, Philadelphia won the Super Bowl. Their fans ripped traffic light poles clean out of the ground and carried them down the road. They set fires in the street. They climbed on dump trucks. They threw bottles at police. Dozens were arrested. And at the playoff celebration just weeks before that, an 18 year old fell off a lamp post and died, and that same night there were shootings, a stabbing, and a car that drove straight into the crowd.
This is one of the richest cities in the richest country in the world.
And again, nobody said "Americans are uncivilised." Nobody said America should hang its head.
It was reported as a wild, passionate, beautiful night. Everyone moved on.
When a Western crowd burns cars, tears down public property, and people actually die, the world calls it energy, love, raw emotion.
When an Indian does something far smaller, the world, and worse, we ourselves, call it proof that a billion people have no manners and no culture.
I am not saying bad behaviour is fine. It is selfish, it is annoying, and you should call it out, firmly. Bad behaviour is bad behaviour, in Delhi, in Paris, in Philadelphia.
But the rule has to be the same for everyone. If burning cars and storming a police station in Paris is just passion, then a small bit of celebration in Vietnam is, at absolute worst, a small bit of inconvenience. It is not evidence that our civilisation has failed.
Other countries guard their self image fiercely.
A French fan burns a car and still calls his people the most cultured in Europe. An American tears down a traffic pole and still walks around certain he is from the greatest country on the planet.
And then we find one bad clip and use it to confirm a sad little story we have somehow been taught to believe about ourselves.
So the next time you see one Indian behaving badly and feel that urge to say "this is why we are a third world country," stop.
We do not need the world to look down on us.
🚨 BREAKING: Rioters have begun setting the school buses ON FIRE in Times Square during the Knicks riots
Police do not have NEARLY ENOUGH SUPPORT
Mamdani and Hochul have ABSOLUTELY FAILED NYPD and law abiding New Yorkers