Hindi-on-Hindi hatred

With the recent additions we now have two employees in the office who are from Bihar. They speak English and Hindi in the stereotypical Bihari accent. For English this means that all the "sh" sounds become "s" and the sentence syntax follows Hindi grammar rather than English grammar. "What value you are getting?" "What time the bus is coming?" "Why you are doing this?" etc. Make no mistake, it's hilarious as hell and way too easy to mock.

What I find interesting is that these Biharis (atleast one of them) gets mocked mercilessly by the other North Indians here. They mock his accent and mannerisms endlessly. I was partially turned off because frankly I kinda respect this guy. But more importantly I was surprised at the "Hindi-on-Hindi" hatred. Isn't this guy "one of your own"? Obviously not. You see, in the South, I know there's a lot of inter-mocking between people who speak the various languages. I can report first hand about the way the Telugus mock the broken Telugu that is spoken by the immigrants into the state. Similarly I'm sure the Tamilians mock the "gults" and so on. It's just the way of life. So that's why it's surprising to see these people who speak the same language mocking each other.

For what it's worth, there is a huge economic component to this. Bihar being a poor state, Biharis who come to the Punjab/Haryana/Chandigarh regions come there for jobs. So the more affluent Punjabis look down upon the Biharis in general. Most of the staff that works in the kitchens etc in our office is from Bihar. But even with these new employees joining in engineering positions, the old stereotypes and attitudes are prevailing. Personally even though I have an extremely negative opinion of Bihar and its residents, I find it very hard to mock the individuals because they aren't the stereotypes that I'm come to associate with that state. For that matter, even the Punjabis (Sikhs) whom we used to tease when younger aren't mock-able because I work with them and get to know them. Sigh, I hate growing up.