Seeking Regression
I happened to be at Banke Bihari temple a year ago and the reference caught my eye for its accuracy. That is exactly what I'd seen but hadn't been able to connect the dots to the broader picture of what is happening with Gen Z in India.
“At Banke Bihari Temple, young women in Gopi lehengas twirl for the camera. On the ghats, swings have been set up for visitors to lounge, pose, and frame their Vrindavan vlogs. Costume rentals outside the temples do brisk business in Radha skirts, yellow dhotis, peacock mukuts, and bansuris. Selfie points now line the roads.”
The story describes a cultural moment that feels counterintuitive at first glance. India’s young, hyper-online generation that is supposedly global, progressive, and future-oriented, is increasingly consuming and producing content that leans overtly traditional. Instagram reels and YouTube shorts are filled with bhajans remixed for virality, casual jokes about caste that would have been considered taboo a decade ago, earnest discussions of kundli matching for marriage, and influencer monologues that frame conservatism not as inherited obligation but as personal choice. The scenes I witness at the temple are the logical next step from the Bhajan raves the author mentions. What’s striking is not just the content itself, but the confidence with which it is shared: irony is optional and backlash is often dismissed as out-of-touch elitism.
The article points out that this is not simply a revival of religion or tradition, but a platform-shaped conservatism. Algorithms reward emotionally charged material, identity markers, and content that signals belonging. Bhajans work well because they are rhythmic, recognizable, and culturally legible across regions. Caste references which may be framed as jokes or grievance tend to travel quickly because they provoke intense reaction. Kundli matching, once the domain of parents and family elders, now appears reframed as “compatibility science,” dressed up in modern language but rooted in older structures of belief. What was once private or generational has become public, performative, and shareable.
There is also an undercurrent of disillusionment running through these trends that seems counter-intuitive for today's youth. For many young people, the promises of liberal modernity which should have translated economic mobility, romantic freedom, meritocracy, simply have not materialized. In that vacuum, older frameworks can offer clarity and certainty. Tradition provides time-tested scripts: how to marry, how to belong, how to explain failure, how to locate oneself in a hierarchy that at least claims coherence. Social media does not create this impulse, but it amplifies and accelerates it, turning personal anxiety into collective aesthetic.
The piece is careful not to reduce this shift to simple regression. Much of this content is playful, hybrid, and selectively adopted. Young creators remix devotion with memes, pair astrology with self-help language, and talk about caste while claiming irony or detachment. Yet the repetition matters. When jokes about caste circulate unchecked, they normalize hierarchy. When kundli matching is framed as rational compatibility, it quietly reinstates exclusion. When religious expression becomes viral content, belief risks turning into branding, but one can still carry unchecked power.
What emerges is a portrait of a generation negotiating identity under conditions of visibility and pressure. The scroll does not move linearly toward progress or regress automatically toward conservatism; it loops, samples, and recombines. But the direction of attention matters. When algorithms reward certainty over ambiguity and belonging over critique, older social structures find new life, not because they were chosen after deep reflection, but because they perform well in the economy of attention.