On 25 September 2026, New Delhi witnessed a distinctive cultural phenomenon called “bhajan clubbing”, a contemporary format in which young people, particularly members of Gen Z, gather in concert-like settings to sing, clap and dance to Hindu devotional songs accompanied by fast-paced modern music. The event, held to mark the 110th birth anniversary of Sangh Parivar ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya, was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a large youth gathering.
As I watched the mesmerised audience sway to the rhythm of the bhajans, I went down the memory lane, when devotional singing was a daily part of life at home. It felt as though time had come full circle, with Gen Z rediscovering and reconnecting with its cultural roots.
Born a Hindu, I grew up in a cosmopolitan culture in Hyderabad during the 1960s. At home, daily pujas, havans, and kirtans (devotional singing) were an integral part of daily life, as we followed practices drawn from both Sanatana Dharma and the Arya Samaj. My father, a highly educated man, had a liberal and cosmopolitan outlook, while my mother placed great importance on daily rituals and moral discipline. She emphasised character-building by reciting shlokas and reading aloud to us from the Bhagavad Gita and the epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
As a child, I was exposed to this diverse environment at home, where religious festivals were more like joyous celebrations than strict rituals. Many a times, I missed certain practices and rituals whenever I woke up late or joined the evening aarti after playing outside. My mother would smilingly insist that I wash my feet before joining the aarti, which I often argued against, perhaps reflecting an early scepticism about God. Yet no one ever reprimanded me for it. Even my childlike argumentative questions challenging conventional ideas about millions of Hindu Gods were patiently answered.
Attending a Muslim-minority school in my neighbourhood during my early years, followed later by a missionary school in Abids, exposed me to Islamic and Christian religious teachings alongside the lessons I received at home from the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. I remember singing hymns from the Bible each morning in the chapel before going to our classrooms. A large image of Jesus Christ stood on a high pedestal at the front of the chapel, while we sat on the floor in orderly rows. I still recall a few of those hymns, including “Give Me Oil in My Lamp,” “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” and “This Little Light of Mine.” The singing always concluded with a prayer and an “Amen.”
I rarely thought much about it at the time, but those experiences were always present in the background memory. I recited those prayers every morning until I completed my schooling. There were a moment of pride when I became a post-bearer in Class VIII, leading the prayers myself. It neither bothered me nor my parents, who accepted this with complete ease.
As time passed and I began my career as a scientist, rationality, logic, and scientific temper increasingly shaped my worldview, deepening my inclination towards atheism. Yet this did not diminish my curiosity; if anything, it made me more eager to examine the world through evidence, reason and careful observation. An avid reader with a passion for writing, I read almost anything that came my way. My sisters often laughed at my habit of reading even the smallest scraps of newspaper or any other printed paper used to wrap namkeen mixture or other snacks bought from a confectioner. Before discarding the oily paper, I would invariably read whatever was printed on it.
After superannuation, I finally had the time to pursue an old and abiding curiosity through extensive reading in comparative religion, history, politics, archaeology and cosmology, subjects that had long fascinated me beyond the boundaries of science. Many times, Hindu symbolism, mythology, and religious practices fascinated me and offered unexpected insights as I delved deeper to understand our existence. It surprised me to realise that Hindu philosophy and traditions evolved over a period of time stretching thousands of years without incidents of bloodshed. To me it was no mean achievement, looking at the spread of other religious ideologies.
A deeper study of India’s history revealed a long process of intellectual contestation within and beyond the Hindu tradition. The established forms of Brahmanical conservatism were challenged by Buddhism and Jainism, compelling Hindu thinkers to defend, reinterpret and renew their ideas. These encounters could be fierce, but they were primarily philosophical and intellectual rather than campaigns of religious extermination. The history was, of course, also marked by violence, political conquest and destruction, and it would be misleading to romanticise the past or attribute every conflict to religion alone.
In the 8th century, Adi Shankaracharya, a philosopher and theologian, engaged rival schools in debates, helping to revitalise several strands of Hindu thought. I visited Nalanda, located in the ancient kingdom of Magadha (modern-day Bihar, India) that housed over 10,000 students and 2,000 teachers. Scholars and monks came from China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia to study logic, grammar, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, and Vedic texts. It featured a monumental multi-story library known as Dharmaganja (Treasury of Truth), which reportedly held millions of manuscripts. Unfortunately, the complex was sacked and destroyed in the late twelfth century by a Muslim invader Bakhtiyar Khilji and as the legend goes it burnt for over 3 months, leading to the devastating loss of countless irreplaceable texts.
I read accounts of mass violence and loot committed by Mughal rulers in the name of religion. Hindu masses suffered annihilation and temples were demolished and replaced by alien architecture in praise of their emperors. The bravest of the Hindu Maratha king Chatrapati Shivaji and his lineage gave the Mughals their worst defeats, which are the most treasured part of Indian history. He inspired a generation and built a power base with the support of a small group of companions and laid the foundations of the Maratha state. Even today, Chhatrapati Shivaji is remembered for his code of conduct in war that included protection of women. He prohibited the treatment of women as the spoils of victory, as was the common practice of Muslim invaders.
In contrast to the ideologies of comparative religions in the world, the Hindu philosophy of pluralism and coexistence made me fall in love with our ideology and traditions into which I was born. I felt fortunate to be born as a Hindu that offered me so much freedom while growing up. I realised that Hinduism does not impose itself upon you, demand unquestioning allegiance, even accept atheists, and does not insist that everyone follow a single path. Rather, it offers tremendous freedom and leaves room for inquiry, doubt, debate, and personal discovery that resonated with me as a scientist. I realised that perhaps the only religion that is close to scientific methodology in a metaphysical way is Hinduism, as both the scientists and the practicing Hindus are seekers of the truth of our existence in our own way.
Unfortunately, the successive governments that ruled Bharat for more than half a century after independence were apologetic about Hinduism, distorted history, and embraced fraudulent secularism, harming the perception of our ideology in the minds of modern educated generations. That is why watching our Gen Z chant, sing along, clap, and dance to traditional spiritual lyrics set to modern, high-energy acoustic or electronic rhythms made me nostalgic. I felt how rich our culture and ideology is.
As Mark Twain once said, “India has two million Gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire (sic)”.
