Social media these days has become even more powerful than mainstream media. Owing to its massive user base, social media’s ability to influence public opinion is unprecedented. That’s why all sorts of anti-Bharat and anti-Hindu actors have jumped onto the bandwagon to leverage the power of social media to denigrate Sanatan Dharma.
Hindus, unfortunately, are not that organized and strategic when it comes to using social media to promote Sanatan Dharma and ward off the Hindu haters. We are mostly private people and while we proactively use social media to highlight our life and achievements, rarely do we use it to draw attention to Hindu causes or promote Hindu culture.
As the paavan (holy) Ram Mandir in Ayodhya becomes the source of a Hindu reawakening, let us take this opportunity to be proud of our identity as a Sanatani and leverage the power of social media to create a positive perception of Hindu Dharma and culture.
Here are the top 10 tips for Hindus on how to leverage the power of social media!
- Showcase Hindu culture and customs through reels, memes, and posts – A positive portrayal of one’s own culture is the best antidote to all anti-Hindu propaganda.
Use social media to showcase Hindu culture, rituals, and festivals in all their beauty and magnanimity. Create reels of the Diwali puja ceremony at home or the Holika Dehan ceremony that happens the night before the festival of Holi. Instagram is a great platform for such content because of its enormous visual appeal. Create short reels of a havan ceremony. Use social media to showcase various rituals and traditions associated with Hindu Dharma.
Our festivals are used on social media to sell all sorts of things from women’s apparel to shoes and makeup. Search the hashtag Happy Diwali on social media. All you will see are commercial posts of models trying to sell you something or posts of Diwali celebrations by celebrities that seem to be devoid of any traditions. Where is the Hindu essence of Diwali? The only way to counter this is by using social media to communicate the essence of Hindu Dharma.
Create catchy Instagram posts telling background stories of famous tales from the Puranas like the Satyavan Savitri story. You could also use the YouTube shorts feature to post short videos of festival celebrations. Facebook is a great medium for creating lengthy text-style posts with a few pictures for illustration.
Once you start to use social media proactively to create a positive perception of Hindu Dharma, a lot of anti-Hindu propaganda will automatically become ineffective.
2. Promote hashtags related to Hindu Dharma and issues affecting Hindus
In the world of social media, hashtags are everything!
Trending hashtags basically showcase the power of collectives. The more a particular hashtag is used by people, the more trending it gets. It’s a simple cause-and- effect relationship. Hindus are the majority in Bharat. Yet, we fail to get hashtags like Hindu Dharma, Sanatan Dharma, or Save Hindus in Pakistan trending. That is because we do not use social media proactively to consolidate Hindu identity.
Use hashtags like Hindu Dharma, Hinduism, Sanatan Dharma, Hindu Rashtra, etc. generously whenever you are creating any Hindu Dharma or even Bharat-related content on social media. Spread awareness amongst your friends and family circle. The more hashtags we use related to Hindu Dharma and Hindu causes, the more the social media algorithm gets forced to showcase such content at the top.
For example, the JaiShriRam tag on Instagram shows 136k posts, at the time of writing this article, which is great. It means Hindus have already started leveraging the power of social media. We just need to push this trend further and proactively use Hindu-related hashtags on social media.
3. Don’t underestimate the power of share & repost
Even if you are not directly associated with any Hindu causes, keep an eye out for social media posts that draw attention to issues affecting Hindus.
If you come across anything worthwhile, do share the post from your own social media handle. The power of sharing and reposts is immense. The mainstream media still has a fairly low coverage of Hindu issues. That’s why a lot of important news and analysis concerning Hindus is mostly shared by small online portals or independent Hindu activists through social media. By sharing and reposting these posts, you are widening the network and helping these posts gain the kind of visibility they deserve.
These days most news outlets depend on platforms like X for potential news stories’ topics. Such is the power of social media. That is why if a Hindu issue has gained a lot of prominence due to shares and reposts, the chances of that issue being covered in the mainstream media get higher.
It just takes a click to reshare something. But most of us are lazy in that regard. We might have all the right intentions at heart. But unless we use social media strategically to raise Hindu issues, we remain fence-sitters.
4. Follow Dharmik influencers on social media.
Social media has some great content by Dharmik influencers.
Youtube, for example, has many pro-Hindu Dharma channels. “Infinity Foundation”, “Citti media”, “The Sham Sharma Show”, “PGurus”, “ SabLokTantra”, “ The Jaipur Dialogues”, and “Praveen Mohan” are some of these channels. You would find pro-Hindu news and views on these channels that the mainstream media either censors or skips altogether.
Unfortunately, many of these dharmik social channels have borne the brunt of the leftist Islamist ecosystem controlling social media. An immensely popular Dhaarmik channel called “String Reveals” has been deleted by YouTube for the apparent violation of its terms and conditions. The YouTube channel SabLokTantra has also been deleted by YouTube many times.
Dharmik YouTubers, as it is, struggle a lot to bring out the truth in the public domain in the face of anti-Hindu social media censorship. The least we as Hindus can do is support these channels by watching their content, subscribing to them, liking, commenting, and sharing.
5. Report anti-Hindu content
Social media has a mechanism for reporting hateful content. Every platform has different policies regarding reporting abusive, harmful, or derogatory content. In X, for example, you can easily report a post or an entire account on several grounds. One of these grounds is if the content is found to be abusive and perpetrating harmful stereotypes about any community or set of people.
There is a barrage of abusive and filthy anti-Hindu content on social media. It’s not even covert or indirect. Many of these handles openly proclaim their Hindu hatred and use the slur “Pajeet” for Hindus. I recently came across one such X handle called Crime Reports India which has 21.2 subscribers. The name is misleading as the account has got nothing to do with crime reports. Every post they put out is specifically meant to abuse Hindus and calls us “Pajeet”. It’s incredible that such channels flourish on social media.
One of the reasons is Hindus are passive and we don’t report hateful content. Just a couple of people reporting such accounts doesn’t make a difference. But if millions of people report these accounts again and again, a platform like X will be forced to take some action.
Islamists use the reporting option indiscriminately to even falsely report stuff that is not insulting Islam. But when it comes to Hindus, we are so passive that most of us will be happy checking out celebrity wedding pictures on social media but won’t report hateful anti-Hindu content.
The procedure of reporting on social media platforms is extremely easy. So start using this feature today!
6. Leverage the power of citizen journalism
Social media has made citizen journalism easier and more effective. If you see any anti-Hindu incidents happening in your neighbourhood or the local area, you can take relevant pictures, collect information and share a post on social media.
Social media, due to its massive influencer base, is becoming a potent tool of citizen journalism and the main source of news stories even for mainstream media. Mainstream media does not cover a lot of stuff that happens in remote areas. Anti-Hindu hate, incidents of conversion, or love jihad hardly ever get reported by mainstream media.
Therefore, if local Hindus get sensitized and leverage the power of citizen journalism to report Hindu issues on social media, it can be a game changer.
7. Use social media as an aggressive campaigning tool against anti-Hindu issues
The power of social media is immense. When a film or a web series is boycotted and criticized by millions of netizens, the mainstream media is bound to take notice.
The latest example of this is the Hinduphobic film “Annapoorani” which has now been removed by Netflix, owing to the sentiments of Hindus who have aired their grievances on social media. In fact, the big OTT players are having to rethink their content strategy in Bharat now, given the huge public backlash against casual Hinduphobia and anti-Hindu content pervading many web series and films.
As a Hindu, whenever you come across any anti-Hindu content, it could be a speech or comment by a celebrity, objectionable content of some film or web series, or anything shared on social media that is anti-Hindu, you must use social media to aggressively campaign against such content. Create consistent posts rationally critiquing such anti-Hindu content and sharing evidence of the anti-Hindu slant of such content including relevant screenshots.
Whatever issue you decide to take up, remember that you have to be aggressive and consistent in your approach. Aggression here doesn’t mean violence or any negative thing, it simply means you have to be pushy and continue to pursue your campaigning despite all odds.
8. Join Hindu groups and forums on social media
Joining various Hindu groups and forums is a great way to contribute to Hindu causes.
There are hundreds of such groups on social media platforms like Facebook. Many of these groups are cause oriented. For example, there might be a group dedicated to Vedic culture. Another group might be dedicated to Hindu temples. Then, a third one might be devoted to Hindu activism.
Spend some time researching these groups and join the ones that match your interests and temperament. If you don’t want to get involved in political causes, that’s ok. You can join groups that carry forward the philosophical and cultural legacy of Sanatan Dharma. This will make you more knowledgeable about Hindi issues, and keep you rooted as a Sanatani.
9. Create an online Hindu group
As a Hindu, you can go a step further and create a Hindu group on social media!
It’s free to create groups on Facebook. You must leverage this power of social media to draw attention to Hindu causes and issues. It could be a group to share information and views on different Hindu customs, traditions, and rituals followed throughout Bharat. Ours is a huge country and it’s amazing how many different variations one sees of the same festivals. Also, every state has its own festivals and traditions that are very much a part of Hindu Dharma. You could create a group focusing on that aspect. Or you could create a group to connect with the Hindu diaspora from across the world.
Social media can be an exciting platform to promote Hindu Dharma and spread more awareness regarding our traditions. You just got to be creative.
10. Use the online medium to boost offline engagement
Social media is great for building online communities but the power of social media can also be leveraged to organize offline events and activities.
For example, you can use social media to promote an event related to Hindu issues or causes. You can create a Facebook event, marking the location, and thus you get easy access to local Hindus in your city.
In other words, Hindus could use social media to mobilize support for Hindu causes and for organizing pro-Hindu Dharma activities and events.
