Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 6:45 PM — edited Tuesday 7 Aug 2012 IST 05:39 AM
You may click here to see the entire content of the original mail I received. There is no point reproducing the whole. Only salient features are shown in the boxed area below. That mail did attach, as it claimed, pictures of those seven Hindu deities.
Subject: USA Government Released New Postage - A Hindu's pride Pride for all the Hindus around the world..
YOU MAY CHECK IT BY YOURSELF AT: http://www.usa-postage.com/ |
Reading the mail, I was surprised. It simply did not make sense. US Govt. is made of Christians and Jews who will never compromise with their religious dictums.
So I decided to check it for myself and I found that no where there was any mention of US Govt. involvement.
That one was a lie invented by the first person who circulated this mail. And, others merrily followed the trail and went ahead forwarding it to others.
No one thought it necessary to call the bluff by checking the bold declaration "YOU MAY CHECK IT BY YOURSELF AT http://www.usa-postage.com".
If you truly wish to understand why they did so, and honestly want to avoid doing such blunders in future, I would encourage you to read the article on Parrot Humanoid Syndrome, a term I had coined years ago, defined and described, with examples.
When you become a party to forwarding a lie and make others believe in it and, thus, prompt them to do the same as you did, you are doing a grave error. You are helping establish an untruth into an accepted truth.
This is not becoming of supposedly educated people who pride themselves as better than the uneducated.
Hope some day you will learn to take your responsibility a bit more seriously.
Forwarding a mail blindly using Internet does not cost you any thing more than you have agreed to pay the ISP (Internet Service Provider) but that is not good enough reason for you to abuse a system.
For a change why don't you go to the website of that Atlanta based private company which has registered a domain usa-postage.com (which any one can do by paying any dot-com registrars about 50 cents a month). They have created a website to sell their products to interested Indian-Americans living in USA. They are also providing small businesses an opportunity to promote their own products through these commercial stamps. Those who buy those Hindoo deity postage stamps or small businesses who would want to promote their products will pay to this private company. And this private company, in turn, will share part of its revenue with the Postal Department. So, it is a win-win situation for every one. Every one makes some money. It is pure, simple business—paisa kamaane ka dhandha—पैसा कमाने का धंधा।
Mind you, at US Governmental level they have not accorded any pride status to Hindoo community. So, stop fooling yourself.
