If you ever thought that a little GPS map embedded deep inside a tiny application in a relatively inexpensive piece of consumer technology was, in the grand scheme of things, unimportant and harmless, well, think again. Recent happenings in India will expose your naivete!

Apparently, Nokia cell phones contain GPS maps of Kashmir, which (correctly, from where I stand) show the territory to be part of Pakistan. I can understand how this might chagrin some across our eastern borders, but the magnitude of the reaction has certainly appalled me… The way it all went down was that some right-wing hindu extemists discovered this ‘feature’ in Nokia’s phones and rather than take the conventional route of sending an email to Nokia’s customer service, they took to the streets torching Nokia’s outlets and unleashing a general campaign of vandalism and destruction.

But a campaign against who, you might ask? Well, against their own poor countrymen who happened to own small hole-in-the-wall cell phone outlets. This will somehow make it all better. To be honest, I feel very sorry for the poor outlet owners in Jabalpur - which is in India even as-per Nokia’s maps - who were merely (unknowingly, albeit) correcting geographic misconceptions in their country. In the end, violence was all they received as gratitude and their livelihoods have now been snatched away from them.

Realtid.se carries this news of mayhem to its Scandanavian audience. The BJP – the right wing extremist party that has also ruled India – won pride of place in the reporting:

People broke into the shop, ripping at their mobile phones and burned them, reports the news agency Asian News International, ani.

Outside the shop awaiting police while irritated members of the opposition party Bharatiya Janata Party Youth Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha burned Nokia advertising boards.

A politician from the Conservative Party demanded that Nokia would be taken to court.

Who knew?!