Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg infuriated many Indians after he posted an infographic containing a map of the country minus the entire Jammu & Kashmir region, one of the country’s 29 states.
Zuckerberg posted the image on his Facebook page following the launch earlier this week in Malawi of the Facebook-led Internet.org, a platform that aims to give free internet access to billions by offering select content and services for free to those who cannot afford or do not want to pay for internet access. “...we won’t stop until every person in the world can connect to the internet,” Zuckerberg said in his post.
Many Indians, however, pounced on the graphic which missed a part of northern India including a controversial portion that is now being claimed by both India and its neighboring Pakistan. On social media, some called for a ban on Facebook if the map was not immediately corrected. One user S.K. Rao commented on the Facebook co-founder’s post, “Don’t need your free internet. All Indians log off Facebook if map is not corrected...”
Zuckerberg later deleted his post.
The Facebook CEO has waded into a controversy, if unwittingly. India’s map is an ultra-sensitive issue with many citizens who see a wrong portrayal as an intrusion into their domestic affairs. The government has been known to ban books and magazines for wrongly depicting boundaries. India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmir since their partition in 1947 and three wars have since been waged because of the territorial dispute.
Zuckerberg and his Facebook have been facing a harrowing time in India recently as Internet.org has come under attack from net neutrality protagonists. A horde of Indian businesses have announced that they will not be part of the platform.
India, which has over a 112 million Facebook users, is a key market for the social network. The potential market consists of a billion more Indians. One report estimated that the country would surpass the United States and become the largest base of Facebook users on the mobile by 2017.
Media reported that this has been a particularly bad week for India’s map. Chinese TV showed a map which missed the north-eastern Arunachal Pradesh over which India has a border dispute with China. India’s prime minister Narendra Modi is currently on a visit to China and the state-owned TV’s map error is being talked of as a diplomatic faux pas.
Facebook CEO Zuckerberg posted a distorted map of India on his Facebook page and, later, deleted his... [+]
