New Delhi: Every few weeks, a post appears on Reddit that re-draws an imaginary line between two halves of India—the north and the south. A Kannadiga complaining about discrimination because of their skin colour or a Hindi-speaking IT professional questioning why his coworkers only speak in Telugu.
“The moment someone says Hindi is a national language, the fireworks on that post is something to witness,” said u/the_unquiet_mind, a Hyderabad-based Reddit user who comes from a Tamil family. “It happens every time without fail.”
Reddit has always been known as the front page of the internet. But in India, the platform’s communities (known as subreddits) are the new town square beyond usual grievance mongering found on X—where regional pride, linguistic identity and social divides play out in unfiltered conversations. And few topics get a user base amped up as ones that pit north India against south India.
A viral video from Bengaluru of a north Indian demanding that an auto driver speak in Hindi turns into a conversation about the entitlement of immigrants and a demand for him to be fired from his job. A DMK politician’s derogatory remark on Biharis has the subreddit questioning the party’s anti-caste ethos. And south Indian states unite in calling out delimitation as an attack on their political representation.
“The divide emerges sporadically, and often around specific issues—delimitation for instance. It builds on existing underlying tensions and simply explodes when an issue hits the news,” said Joyojeet Pal, a Professor of Information at the University of Michigan, whose work focuses on the use of social media in mainstream politics and the networks of online misinformation. “The reason why Reddit is uniquely well suited to amplify these is it tends to be a longform text format.”
Reddit discussions go beyond just trolling, memes and name-calling. Conversations on the north versus south divide are often well structured, lengthy arguments where users cite data, trends or deeply personal stories. Sometimes, these posts scream into an echo chamber with members applauding comments in line with their perspectives.
But occasionally, a faceless avatar pops up with a 300-word retort, complete with research-backed data and bullet points that provides food for thought for the entire community.
The reason why Reddit is uniquely well suited to amplify these is it tends to be a longform text format.
– Joyojeet Pal, a Professor of Information at the University of Michigan
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Anonymity fuels discussions
While working in Delhi, u/chandhrudhai’s friend made a passing comment on his dark skin tone, triggering painful memories he had suppressed for over twenty years. As a school student in Bengaluru, he had been subjected to colourist slurs from his North Indian classmates.
“They have addressed me as ‘tommy’ and called me a dog. They refused to touch me because they firmly believed that I’m dark skinned hence I’m unhygienic,” he wrote in a post on the r/Bangalore subreddit nine months ago. “I felt so lonely and had no friend for most of my school life. I spent the whole time alone and thinking I’ll never be as good as them (sic).”
The native Kannadiga—in his first ever post on Reddit—recounted the discrimination he experienced at a posh school that was filled with north Indians, whose parents had migrated to Bengaluru during the IT boom.
“Back in the day, I couldn’t find any means to cope. Reddit is the perfect platform—it’s much easier to talk to strangers about your issues than someone you know,” he told ThePrint.
Posts about casual colourism in the workplace or derogatory slurs pop up occasionally on regional subreddits like r/Bangalore or r/TamilNadu, where victims speak of their experience working, studying or traveling in North India. What made u/chandhrudhai’s post alarming was that it happened in Bengaluru.
“Calling people racial slurs in their native place is crazy,” wrote one user below the post. Another added their own experience as a Malayali, born and raised in Delhi, where he was called a kaala (black) who wouldn’t be ‘visible in the dark’. It wasn’t just South Indians sympathising on the post, even other North Indians added their two cents to the conversation.
“This is why I think we get all the hate from the local population here while other South Indians are treated just like the natives,” commented one Bengaluru-based user from North India. Another added that as a dark skinned North Indian woman, she has been mocked by parents, friends, relatives and neighbours alike in North India.
“India as a whole has an obsession with skin tone, and it’s a colonial hangover which we haven’t been able to get over,” said u/chandhrudhai, who doesn’t blame the entire North Indian community for a few bad apples. His own mother (‘she is fair skinned’) tried different approaches to get him to fit conventional beauty standards from a young age. Till this day, she makes snarky remarks about his skin tone.
“The obsession over skin tone is more prominent in South India, where it is discussed within families and not amongst friends,” he said.
A lot of these uninhibited conversations take place because the platform offers the Internet’s most prized currency: Anonymity. Unlike other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and, to a certain extent, X, users on Reddit interact behind comical usernames (masterofrants, IamNotHotEnough) and different avatars of Snoo, the Reddit mascot. Anonymity is the rule, not the exception.
Reddit is the perfect platform—it’s much easier to talk to strangers about your issues than someone you know.
– u/chandhrudhai
“The anonymity emboldens you. If you say something controversial, the chances of people knowing you on Reddit is less,” said u/the_unquiet_mind. She added that discussing politics with family and friends in person is too polarising and often uncomfortable, which is why she turns to Reddit.
Behind a computer screen and untraceable account—words and thoughts are let loose.
Pal calls this the ‘online disinhibition effect’, where anonymity allows for much greater aggressive and polarising speech. He added that 80 per cent of Reddit’s users fall in the 18- to 34-year-old age bracket, and the gender is more skewed toward males.
“The data also shows that males are more likely to engage in trolling, and also that that propensity to engage in hateful discourse tends to decrease with age,” said Pal.
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A space for lengthy discussions
A month ago, a post on the r/Bihar subreddit displayed results from a field survey about South Indian migrants facing discrimination in Patna, Bihar. Only 5.5 per cent of respondents said they experienced discrimination to some extent, with the vast majority claiming no discrimination. The post was titled ‘South Indians in Patna never face discrimination but Biharis face discrimination everywhere in India’.
“Biharis are often made fun of for their identity and ethnicity,” said u/abhi4774, who made the post, in a written response to ThePrint. “People outside Bihar have a mindset that every Bihari is a poor, dirty and loud person. So, racism against Biharis is everywhere in India and not just South India.”
As migrant labourers and working professionals from Bihar reached Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and even other North Indian states like Punjab and Haryana in search of job opportunities, stereotypes began to propagate. “The perception is that every Bihari is uneducated and does labour work, according to them. No Bihari is educated or financially strong, they only do low wage jobs,” commented a user on the post.
The anonymity emboldens you. If you say something controversial, the chances of people knowing you on Reddit is less
– u/the_unquiet_mind
The Bihar subreddit is littered with posts about discrimination against Biharis, sometimes specifically from South Indian states. When a DMK politician stated that Hindi speakers from UP and Bihar clean toilets in Tamil Nadu, the subreddit burst into a fervent discussion—calling out the irony of DMK’s anti-caste ethos and Tamil Nadu’s history of anti-Hindi sentiment.
“It is upon us common people to remind the South Indians that this is as much our country. And they need to back off,” said one user. “Stop being a mellow Bihari. Stand for things that matter.”
The Centre’s Three-Language Policy has only fanned resentment toward migrants in South Indian states, where it is seen as a vessel to push Hindi dominance and erode cultural pride. The internet is rife with memes, videos of scuffles between local people and migrants and even political campaigns pushing back against Hindi imposition.
On Reddit, detailed paragraphs are written anonymously —part sociological debate, part venting ground—where Indian identity is dissected. Like when a Redditor visited his ancestral village in western UP to realise that Hindi would lead to a ‘slow and painful death’ of the local Braj dialect.
In South India, the friction is often found in daily, mundane tasks—like ordering juice from a local vendor. In Bengaluru, u/Deep_Grab_5058 ordered an orange juice near his PG when the vendor asked where he was from.
When he told the vendor that he worked in IT and was from Bihar, the vendor responded with “Bahut zyada ho gaya aplog ka, bahar se aake edhar kaam karne ka (It’s too much now, you people coming from outside to work here)”.
His post received support from the r/Bihar subreddit, with a few comedic responses (“next time tell him the juice isn’t good, I will get it from the next door store”) peppered in between more lengthy, serious discussions about migration and language imposition.
Unlike X and Instagram, Reddit’s format allows for longer replies with different perspectives. Users are able to go beyond hit-and-run posts and engage in nuanced conversations.
“It’s not because you are from Bihar. It’s because there are too many people migrating to Bangalore and he would have said the same thing to anyone,” commented u/orange_jug in response to the original post. “The Hindi speaking folks expect the uneducated juice vendors, auto drivers, bus conductors to know Hindi in a non-Hindi speaking state.”
But more often than not, language debates have seeped into college campuses, India’s top IT firms, banks and startups. Hindi speakers complain that Kannada, Telugu and Tamil co-workers alienate them in the workplace. Students from Delhi University highlight that professors conduct classes in Hindi, despite a multilingual student body.
Nowhere is this divide more prominent than on r/India, one of the country’s largest subreddits with 3.3 million members. Since the subreddit isn’t state or region specific, members from across the country add their two cents to discussions. A month ago, a post titled “Why is there so much disparity north vs south in corporate world?” had people across regions erupt into debate.
“I am facing the same in a big MNC WITCH [acronym for Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant / Capgemini and HCL] company. All 13 members and the manager are Telugus. They only talk in Telugu and just don’t care if I understand or not. I guess, we as a country have not progressed in these matters,” wrote a user who works in Hyderabad.
But Hindi-speaking North Indians weren’t spared either.
“This is happening to a new joinee in my company. The guy is from South (not sure which state) but doesn’t understand Hindi and our manager only speaks in Hindi during the scrum calls. I feel bad for the guy,” commented another.
Also read: ‘We build India, who will build Bihar?’—Chhath train is a migrant story of despair
Echo chambers
There’s a subreddit for all types of niche interests—pictures of weird looking eggs, frugality, beautiful data charts, birds photoshopped with human arms, products that last for life and even arranged marriages.
But it’s the subreddit’s moderators (or mods) who hold the keys to the castle. They come up with rules and guidelines for interacting on a subreddit—removing spam or abusive posts, checking for sources and combating disinformation.
“There are a few idiots, extremists and trolls on both sides, but they generally get downvoted quickly,” said one of the r/India’s moderators, in a written response to ThePrint.
Downvoting on Reddit is the internet equivalent of a public shaming. Each post and comment can be either upvoted or downvoted—a live tracker of how fellow members feel about your comment or post.
It’s also why Reddit conversations on r/India have largely strayed away from name calling and ill-thought-out replies. And if these types of comments do find their way in the chats, they are downvoted to oblivion. If the downvotes go beyond a certain threshold, the comment is hidden. Mods can also delete a comment they deem inappropriate.
Mods also put up informal guardrails on the kind of conversation that takes place on subreddits. “Historically, r/India‘s user base has focused on asking questions to authority. Right now, the sub’s zeitgeist centers around discussing the gradual dismantling of our democratic norms and institutions,” said the r/India moderator.
While r/India’s posts range from voter fraud to artist Kunal Kamra’s response to mob vandalism, r/TamilNadu —with over 300,000 members—unsurprisingly discusses more local issues. Like a migrant girl from Bihar who scored 93 out of a 100 in her 10th standard Tamil exams.
But certain topics like tax devolution and delimitation find their way across India-based subreddits. Unsurprisingly, conversations tilt one way on these issues on regional subreddits like r/Kerala.
“It’s like rewarding the least performing states and punishing the best performing states,” commented one user on a post about delimitation, asking whether his state got any benefit for implementing family planning in 1975. And below this highly upvoted comment, hundreds of similar ones appear vehemently opposing delimitation.
A Kerala subreddit won’t have many North Indian members in its ranks to offer retorts or other points of view. And just like delimitation, tax distribution also has members of the r/Karnataka subreddit up in arms against the relatively lower share of union taxes their state receives compared to Uttar Pradesh or Bihar.
“All the South Indian states give their taxes to be distributed to these shameless north states only for them to use that money to give to politicians and crony capitalists,” commented one user. Another went so far as to state that the North and South should be separated.
And without any of these perspectives challenged, the comment section became what many accuse social media platforms of propagating—echo chambers.
“The structure of Reddit is uniquely well suited for echo chambers,” said Joyojeet Pal, adding that communities help build niche interests which people get into because of their strong feelings about topics. “The anonymity and demographic tilt further strengthen the potential for echo chambers.”
Despite this, the Reddit landscape isn’t completely homogenous even in regional subreddits. An odd comment here and there goes against the grain of conversation. But it’s in the multi-regional subreddits like r/unitedstatesofindia, where a passionate battlefield is on full display. Soldiers on both sides take up arms, many times even going against their own region’s talking points.
On a post that called delimitation an ‘attack on South India’s political representation’, some users called for a revolution, others said they were done with the ‘Hindi-Hindu majority’. But sandwiched between these comments, u/nota_is_useless—a Hyderabad-based Telugu speaker—said that delimitation was a part of the Indian Constitution.
“When you believe in one person, one vote, and each has equal value, at some point you have to do delimitation,” he told ThePrint, adding that the current generation of Indians should not suffer because their parents or grandparents didn’t follow family planning.
According to him, topics like reservation, delimitation and devolution of taxes pop up on Reddit sporadically. Every few months or once in a quarter, a news story or politician’s statement riles people up. “It’s almost always discussed online. People at the ground level don’t really discuss it,” he said.
As someone who has been on Reddit for over 10 years, u/nota_is_useless has seen the North versus South divide unravel through the years, and the often-complicated nature of the arguments. It’s not all black and white. He supports delimitation but also stands by the consensus shared by other South Indians on tax devolution.
“In Bihar you will notice that in every election, there is a new welfare scheme that is launched,” he said. “When a person in Hyderabad sees that, it feels odd. You feel like you are paying taxes not for a good use of money.”
Like him, Reddit is peppered with users who don’t necessarily agree with the common consensus of their region. Some North Indians have voiced concerns over delimitation, while others in the r/Bangalore subreddit pushed back against a post that criticised Karnataka’s share of union taxes.
“We keep repeating the same arguments amongst ourselves,” said u/nota_is_useless, laughing about the hour a day he spends scrolling on the platform. “I’ve tried to quit before, but that has never worked.”
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)