Hence you can't really blame Indians for getting excited about a positive news story.
I'm french and if I read any comments section of any english article about France, I'll find tons of negative comments like "cheese eating surrender monkey", "their tanks have 1 forward and 7 reverse gear" and so on. And I only speak about the comments section, the worse are article from Murdoch's empire which plainly insult us, generating tons of money along the way because it sells well.
This type of comments is also found on indian based website, and that is super strange because India and France have not been involved together, we do not share a common history which would allow the introduction of jokes making fun of one another.
Can you blame them? It's been barely 74 years since they got independence, and yet they have managed to achieve so much: satellite launches, mission to moon, Mars, stable democracy, well-run elections, booming tech sector, nukes, etc. And they still have to deal with Western media portraying them as a shitty country.
1. Joseph Dupleix - during his time, it was a tossup whether India would end up as a French or a British colony.
2. Napoleon was on close terms wiith Mysore and Tipu. [2] I recall that Tipu's rocketeers acted as consultants to Napoleon.
3. Claude Martin is a famous Frenchman who established famous schools (La Martiniere) in Calcutta, Lucknow and Lyon.
4. FWIW: a small trivia: M. Night Shyamalan's family hails from former French controlled territory in India- Mahé [4]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fran%C3%A7ois_Dupleix
[2.] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Indian_Alliances
[3]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Martin
[4]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Night_Shyamalan
[4]
Also France does not have a history of traditionally winning in India (Carnatic Wars). That, coupled with the base level knowledge of WW2 that Indians are taught at school, means that Indians often take the stereotypical view online.
Honestly, I’ve seen people being strongly nationalist both offline and online, in the USA and Europe just as much.
I don’t there’s much connection to ethnicity, rather people are just bad at taking criticism in general.
