On 22 January, as the Prime Minister along with several guests attended the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, 29-year-old Ashish Mishra was there too, as a volunteer of the media management department. His post of a video of the Ram idol on Instagram has garnered over 2 million views now.
Ashish Mishra found instant online fame when he posted the first picture of Garbh Griha (sanctum sanctorum) of Ram Mandir online in March 2023 after getting a glimpse of it with permission from the Ram Janambhoomi trust. His picture of a brick with “Jai Shri Ram” written on it was posted by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Instagram. Elated with the reach he has received with his content, Mishra was quick to drop a few names, “Union ministers like Piyush Goyal and UP Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya have shared my videos on their pages.” The account that Mishra runs “Shriramkiayodhya’’ on Instagram went from just hundreds of followers to over a lakh of followers.
Mishra had spent a couple of years travelling across India to make content. “I am a filmmaker by profession,” he told Decode. Mishra said his family runs a lot of businesses among which is a chain of gyms but the pandemic hit them hard. In 2023, Mishra came back to Ayodhya, his hometown, and started making small videos on Instagram. One of his content subjects became the Ram Mandir.
That one photo of the Ram Mandir made Mishra viral. “My videos were used in government websites of Uttar Pradesh and I started receiving calls for brand collaborations and also with the tourism ministry of Uttar Pradesh. This was a confidence booster and now I have a clear purpose,” he said.
While Mishra’s story of virality is relatively new, the Uttar Pradesh government had started cultivating a pool of influencers who would amplify the project of Ram Mandir back on 5 August 2020, the Bhoomi Poojan day for the temple, the creators told Decode. The Uttar Pradesh government had reportedly allocated 25 lakh rupees to the Culture department to reach out to creators who would make content around the Ram Temple.
This eventually led content creators, who were barely known, to get several well-paid collaborations with brands and recognition by tourism ministries of BJP led state governments. They were promoted by several union and state government ministers becoming part of an influencer economy as a “Sanatan” Influencer.
The Uttar Pradesh government has set aside a chunk of capital to make Ayodhya viral. ‘’For this purpose alone, we had launched this policy of involving travel bloggers, Youtubers from India and around the world four years ago,’’ Principal Secretary of Uttar Pradesh’s Tourism and Cultural department Mukesh Meshram told Decode. Not revealing the amount set aside, he said, “Budget isn’t an issue in making our Uttar Pradesh attractive to the travelers. We have the liberty to transfer funds from another program to this program for facilitation of stay, food arrangements of influencers or bloggers. We will take care of their translation issues, local transportation and remunerate them if needed, all they need is above one lakh subscribers or followers.”
The plan isn’t limited to the consecration of Ram Mandir but also will be extended during Diwali and Bundelkhand Gaurav Mahotsav, he emphaised. “We have a bunch of sanatan influencers creating content around Ram Janambhoomi along with interested parties from Japan, Croatia and South Korea,” he added.
Harshvardhan Varma, who claims to be the first influencer from Ayodhya to document Ram’s legacy, had just taken his class 12 exams when he started creating content. “There are now more than a thousand creators from Ayodhya but I was the first one to lead the way.” Varma’s Instagram page “Ayodhyawale” has more than 2.5 million followers.
When asked about the sustainability of such content, Varma was quick to spill his long-term plans to continue contributing to the influencer economy as a Sanatan creator. “I will follow the trail of Lord Ram across countries, as written by Valmiki. Whether it’s Lord Ram’s adventures during his childhood days to his marriage with Sita Maa in Nepal to his vanvas journey for 14 years to conquest over Ravan in Sri Lanka. I will visually document every story of his legacy on reels for Instagram and also as a long form content on YouTube, which eventually will get monetised.”
Varma’s latest video is a collaboration with another blogger Arvind Dangi. In the video he says that the wait for Ram Mandir is finally over for all Hindus in India after 500 years.
Like Varma, Arpit Singh also didn’t have much experience when it came to content creation only a few years ago. He earned around 7,000 rupees per month for doing menial jobs in construction. Singh claims he now earns over 50,000 rupees per month.
“The brand collaboration is our main source of income on Instagram as Instagram doesn’t pay like Youtube does. We generally accept brands which has similar santani content like our reels like Mangal Deep Agarbatti, Chappan Bhog, a brand from Lucknow or Make my Trip promoting flights to India’s spiritual destinations,’’ said Singh, who runs a page named “The Stroller”, which has 15 thousand followers on Instagram and over 8 thousand followers on YouTube. “ Just like me there are many more creators who have grabbed this opportunity and is earning quite well,’’ he said.
“The reach of our content is well noticed by the BJP led state governments,” said Varma.
He said that the government tourism departments reach out to them regularly to make content about tourist attractions in their states. They also get invited to state held programmes. Varma said he has worked with the tourism departments of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh Tourism. “Recently I was approached by Maharashtra tourism department,” he added.
As the creators grow their following and their bank accounts, Madhya Pradesh BJP leader Malay Dixit organised a Ramotsav Yatra to take the sanatan creators on a nationwide tour that ends in Ayodhya in February.
“Such is the power of social media that converging all sanatan creators from around the country and embarking on a Ramotsav yatra towards Ayodhya was important. Many view this as a poll pitch about the upcoming 2024 general elections but this is pure dedication to the cause of Ram and Hindu dharma,” he said.
On 14 January, days before the consecration ceremony, 500 influencers embarked on a month-long 4,500-km yatra tracing the alleged route taken by Lord Ram to return to his kingdom in Ayodhya from Tamil Nadu's Rameshwaram after his exile. This was facilitated by the All India Influencers Association, which is an Indore-based organisation founded by Malay Dixit, Chief of BJP IT Department in Indore.
“We have been supported by everyone, someone sponsored the diesel for travel, someone is facilitating free stay for all of us and someone arranged the food,” he said.
Dixit and his team are now preparing a document on Ram and his legacy through this yatra and will present it to Union minister G Kishan Reddy, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Development of North Eastern Region of India.
Meanwhile, calling themselves ‘Banar Sena’, content creators on Ramotsav Yatra are posting live updates of their journey towards Ayodhya. With devotional songs of Shiva and Ram as their background score on reels and backdrop of temples in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, their content gets thousands of likes and shares.