Dhun

The name of Rām now moves continuously between physical and digital worlds.

In Vārāṇasī, pilgrims pause before shrines while simultaneously recording them on mobile phones. Temple entrances display signs forbidding photography, while nearby shrines livestream rituals directly onto YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram feeds. QR codes for donations appear beside garlands and incense. Loudspeakers broadcast ārti (ritual waving of the lamps) into the street while short devotional reels circulate simultaneously across WhatsApp groups and social media timelines. The same image may appear painted onto a wall, printed onto a sticker, uploaded as a status, forwarded as a meme, and returned again through algorithmic recommendation.

The movement between sagun and nirgun takes on new dimensions here. On one screen, brightly colored images of Rām, Hanumān, and Ayodhyā circulate in disappearing stories, livestream comments, AI-generated imagery, and endlessly repeatable clips.

The smartphone becomes a portable shrine, archive, loudspeaker, camera, and devotional interface all at once.

India’s vast digital infrastructure, extending across urban and rural environments alike, has transformed the circulation of religious imagery and practice. Devotional apps count mantra repetitions digitally. WhatsApp groups distribute bhajans (devotional songs), festival greetings, political slogans, pilgrimage invitations, and clips from sermons and films within seconds. Religious influencers, temple accounts, and spiritual entrepreneurs cultivate audiences that extend far beyond the ghar (home), bazaar and ghāṭ (riverbank steps), producing new forms of devotional intimacy and authority through livestreams, reels, and constant visibility.

At the same time, these circulations are inseparable from wider political and technological infrastructures. The digital movement of the name intersects with branding, surveillance, data collection, algorithmic recommendation, and forms of public affiliation that are both voluntary and difficult to escape. A devotional image used as a profile picture, a forwarded slogan, a liked video, or a shared chant may simultaneously function as personal expression, political signaling, cultural belonging, or traceable data.

The pace of circulation accelerates constantly. Trends emerge overnight and disappear just as quickly. Images are endlessly reproduced, edited, forwarded, and detached from their original contexts. Yet even within this rapid movement, older devotional forms persist. Shrines remain crowded. Hands still touch walls darkened by incense smoke. Names continue to be written, sung, whispered, and carried bodily through the city.

What changes is not simply the disappearance of older practices, but the environments through which repetition moves. The digital does not replace the shrine. It becomes another surface upon which the name gathers presence, saturation, and visibility.