Internet and anonymous forums are great, nothing exposes people's feelings more than these and gives others the opportunity to learn. I am pretty sure OP is a genuine WASP or at least white American person, its quite obvious from his posts.
I have one question @
American_Millenium, did you have this impression about Indians before you came to this forum? How is your personal experience with Indians in real life in the US?
My personal experience has been that Indians are fairly well mannered in real life, specially in the US as most are from educated and professional class and like most people they don't expose their real feelings to casual acquaintance or friends.
I have also another data point about impression on Indians. This website:
MissyUSA.com
There is around 50,000 Korean members in this website, who are living in the US. I know someone who frequents this website, like I am here in PDF and the consensus there is that Indians (in the US) are one of the most obnoxious people on earth, mainly because of their arrogance, despite the fact that India is still an underdeveloped nation.
To further solidify impression about Indians, every one needs to visit a website called Bharat Rakshak. There you can see the Hindutva supremacist Indian worldview in full bloom.
I have several theories about the origin of Indian arrogance and obnoxious behavior:
1. They come from a poor country and in the West they know well how to work the system, passing tests and getting advanced degrees (memorization is a special skill for Brahmins as they had to store the scriptures in memory, paper was introduced much later). Because of this they have reached high income levels. Many have done well in business as well. This disproportionate wealth, compared to their much poorer countrymen back home gives these expatriates an elevated sense of self worth, resulting in the obnoxious arrogance. Indians working for good salaries in the IT outsourcing industry in India, probably have a similar situation.
2. Ancestors of Brahmins who migrated to the subcontinent some 5000-6000 years back, mixed with local population, but at some point they tried to prevent diluting their "Aryan" genetic pool, hence they created the Caste system. The higher Castes have since then looked down on lower castes, and this Caste system carries over that ancient hatred of local indigenous Dravidian people. The love of whiter skin and hatred of darker skin is due to this history. So when a real white person portrays India in a negative way, a people they look up to with admiration and respect, the reaction as we see here is incredulous disbelief.
Today, an average Indian would have more hatred for an average Bangladeshi than an average Pakistani, even though both follow the same religion, because Pakistan is more Aryan, which they admire and Bangladesh is more Dravidian, which they despise. One more proof of the theory No. 2 above. I have gotten so disgusted with this kind of irrational racial hatred, just because I sport a Bangladeshi flag, that I stopped having any discussions with any Indians in any anonymous forums, while in real life, I have no problem being casual friends with Indians.
The other interesting thing I noticed is that an average Bangladeshi or Pakistani despite having significant overlap with Indians genetically, do not, for the most part, engage in similar behaviors, what in your opinion could be the cause for this?
Does all of these have any real world implications? I think they do. People's feelings percolate in public and foreign policy, specially in a democracy. And India's neighbor countries know full well who and what India is and Indians are and what they are capable of. Each and every neighbor of India is disgusted with this country's bullying, abusive behavior and unwanted interference in their internal affairs.
It is good that the whole world is now becoming aware of the true inner nature of this so called "shining" India. Again a big thank you to American_Millenium for exposing some (quite a big majority) Indians for who they are.