By day, Ritvik Tripathi is a regular 24-year-old who loves telling stories from the Mahabharata to local children in his hometown of Jaitaran in Rajasthan. By night, he transforms into the formidable Demanding Pandit — a YouTube storyteller and an avenger of history’s “distortions” with a platform that is 63 times bigger than his town’s population.
But he is just a voice, and never shows his face — a bit like ‘samay’ in Doordarshan’s Mahabharata series.
“If dharma (religion) survives, so will the world,” he declares in a booming voice in a video on Maharana Pratap’s bravery. Viewers in the comments section say they were brought to tears, and blood circulation in their body increased just listening to him. The video posted two years ago has been viewed 9.5 million times.
Tripathi is the quintessential basement historian – sharing untested theories, Googling unverified sites for information and delivering them with the thundering drama of a Crime Patrol anchor. He is a ‘historian’ with a Hindu twist.
The future of India is dark, he says, because Muslims see themselves as “the other”. His mission is to tell his 1.4 million followers that it isn’t true — that ‘all Indians are Hindus’.
But it doesn’t matter what he’s saying. His graphics-heavy videos with deep-voice narration, rousing background music, and battle clips from films like Ponniyin Selvan: I, Baahubali, and the Hollywood hit 300 suck you in. While recording the videos, the josh (zeal) overtakes the otherwise soft-spoken Tripathi. He turns into a Hindu warrior — waging a cultural war against the combined forces of Islam, Leftists, and ‘anti-nationals’. The result is one be the largest ‘Hindutva’ history classrooms in India.
YouTubers like Demanding Pandit, Abhi and Niyu, Abhijit Chavda, and Prakhar Srivastava are on a quest to challenge popular notions about India being a subservient, primitive, and regressive nation. The already blurry lines between mythology, religion and facts and scholarship don’t get in the way of these YouTubers.
The Hindutva battle has moved on from the times when every BJP government would first set upon tweaking history textbooks or renaming roads and railway stations. It has also gone beyond just abusing Nehru-era historians like Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib, and holding seminars in Lutyens’ Delhi. In the age of rebuilding Ram Temple at Ayodhya, history is now everybody’s business—not just of elite scholars. It is part of WhatsApp forwards and living room conversations, and anyone with a smartphone is a casual dabbler.
As long as India’s Hindu culture is glorified.
In this universe, the Haldighati war was won, not lost. Rama is a historical figure and Ramayana is a historical fact, not mythology. And Muslims, who campaigned on behalf of the Muslim League for Pakistan, didn’t move there so that the Congress could retain a significant vote bank.
But not everyone talks about history. They teach management lessons from the Bhagavad Gita, discuss geopolitics and India’s global image. They talk about Hindu warriors who they think have been sidelined, like Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, or Sujan Singh Shekhawat. They want the world to acknowledge the ancient, civilisational glory of India — a reputation they see as being weakened by repeated invasions and colonialism. And if their numbers are anything to go by, they are succeeding.
“My Hindu viewers will decide what’s right or wrong,” says Tripathi, sitting in a tiny bedroom that doubles as his work studio — a room where the traditional blue Rajasthani tiles are offset by an orange wall with designs of dozens of rising suns. A red and white teddy bear and a YouTube plaque announcing his 1 million subscribers occupy pride of place. Accountancy and history books line the neat shelf.
He holds a brown, patterned pillow defensively across his lap. “We Hindus are the majority anyway, why should we look down upon ourselves?”
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Setting the agenda
The YouTubers come from different backgrounds — trained physicist, former reporter, engineering graduate, and one who was on the path to become an accountant. All of them follow political and cultural developments closely, ready to jump into the conversation with a topical video.
Some of their sharp, strident views began to form early. In Tripathi’s case, the story goes like this: At the age of 18, he accidentally grazed against a young Muslim boy while riding his scooter to pick his sister up from a tuition class. There was an immediate uproar; a crowd gathered. He remembers someone trying to strike him off his bike. By the time he and his sister got home, he claims a large group of local Muslim men had surrounded his house in anger.
“I was really young and it was very scary, I thought they were going to hurt us,” he said. “That made me start thinking about why they are like this,” he added, referring to Muslims.
It was the start of Tripathi’s journey into the online world. On YouTube, his pseudonym ‘Demanding Pandit’ signals the idea of a Brahmin imparting knowledge. He claims to have studied both the Gita and the Quran. And he has concluded that Indian Muslims are themselves victims of Abrahamic ideology.
Others had a more benign entry point to their YouTube lives. Some are just creating the kind of content they would like to watch.
Abhi and Niyu, a couple with over 3 million subscribers, see themselves as nation-builders. Their YouTube journey began with a desire to showcase India’s cultural beauty and the “positive things” happening in the country. They make videos on everything from geopolitics and current affairs to modern lessons and takeaways from Hinduism — all from their tiny two-bedroom apartment in Mumbai.
“We want to create a common thread, an identity that binds us all,” said Abhi. And the identity is that India is Bharat — not bound by political borders as they stand today.
“The core message we want people to take back is that this is a civilisational state,” added Niyu, citing a commonly used code for how India’s past was grand and how there is a need to restore past glory, make India great again. “India is not 75 years old. It’s more than 5,000 years old.”
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Shooting the messenger
History is a live battlefield in India today, and historians’ heads are on the chopping block. The established historians have to be dismissed, demonised, and dismantled before a new Indian narrative can be forged.
“I don’t need bewakoofs (fools) like Romila Thapar and R.S. Sharma to tell me things,” said Prakhar Srivastava, associated with YouTube channel CapitalTV, which has over 3 million subscribers. “I can access sources myself. We can’t trust our historians — we shouldn’t trust them.”
Srivastava, who claims to be the ‘first journalist’ to start historical shows on television, says working independently gives him the freedom to cover whatever he likes. Having worked at Zee News, India TV, Aaj Tak and News24, he says he left the industry when he felt he didn’t have the scope or support to continue talking about history on television.
“Historical facts are khoonkhar (bloody),” he said. “I want to puncture the narrative started by the left liberal lobby.” He has a four-part series on why Indian Muslims did not move to Pakistan during Partition, and has taken a leaf out of Vivek Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files to produce videos of other contentious communal clashes like the Patna Files, the Moplah Files, and the Noakhali Files. Srivastava says he’s never faced any legal action, but he does receive ‘threats’ in comment sections and, sometimes, in DMs. One Facebook user sent him a message threatening that he will be shot dead and his sister raped.
In his videos — part of a show he runs called Khari Baat — Srivastava displays the books he uses as sources, challenging his viewers to do their own research. The set for a video on whether Bhagat Singh was a victim of M.K. Gandhi’s deception is complete with copies of Marx and Engels: Selected Works, Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism is Changing India, and An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. Other YouTubers don’t always list their sources, and their medium allows them to embellish their ‘research’ with exciting visuals and audios.
Tripathi lists his sources at the end of his videos, but hasn’t had anybody reach out to fact-check him. He carries himself authoritatively, loves children and gathers his joint family members to listen to his stories. He tells them tales from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, about the battles of Rajasthani kings and queens, always with a liberal sprinkling of drama. In his household, it’s not the elders who tell stories: for them, their young YouTube star is the storyteller.
Abhijit Chavda, whose channel has more than 5 lakh subscribers, says he’s been a student of history since he was a child but has a background in theoretical physics — something that allows him to bring a scientific temperament to his research. Tripathi is a B.Com graduate who failed the first level of Chartered Accountancy exams, a failure which allowed him to focus on YouTube full time.
The YouTubers don’t see their lack of academic training as a stumbling block. They see themselves as democratising a dormant narrative — the aim is to make history, religion, and mythology accessible to everyone.
But sometimes, there are consequences. Tripathi’s video on Sujan Singh Shekhawat, a lesser-known Rajput warrior who the Hindu groups valorise for fighting the Mughals after being beheaded, has been flagged for violence and inappropriate content. When Tripathi leaves the room to make chai for the family, his elder sister Ankita whispers quietly that she does worry for him and his safety.
“But he never shows his face online. And Hindus are anyway united — we will always have support,” she says.
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What the audience wants
All these creators remember the first time they went viral on YouTube.
Demanding Pandit’s first viral video was on Guru Gobind Singh, the next about desecration of temples. Chavda’s first was on Chengis Khan; Abhi and Niyu’s on eco-friendly ways to celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi.
Tripathi took to YouTube like fish to water. He didn’t feel the need to pursue his accountancy career dream. This was getting him fame, money and, of course, a larger purpose – sort of a civilisational mission.
As a platform, YouTube offers a dangerous mix: an algorithm that keeps viewers plummeting down a rabbit hole, and the opportunity to monetise provocative content. The website is also the second most used search engine — right behind Google.com. Tripathi himself starts his research on YouTube, then moves to Google, and then looks up his NCERT textbook. The final stage involves writing an “emotional” script to make his audience connect with it.
His descriptions are full of metaphors and emotion. “The speed of his sword did not slow against his enemies, driving the infidels from the battlefield,” he says in one video. “He dedicated his life to the purpose of building Akhand Bharat for us,” he says in another video on Rana Sangha.
These YouTubers say that cracking the formula for virality is an important first step, after which the only thing to do is keep making content along the same lines.
Vivek Bindra of Bada Business has the formula down pat. The motivational speaker, management guru and former ISKCON monk has a giant following of 20.2 million followers on YouTube. His new series, Gita in Action, is a spectacular hit: he delivers lectures on actionable management lessons from 108 shlokas in the Gita to packed auditoriums, which are also filmed for YouTube.
Videos begin with Bindra leading the audience in singing shlokas. Then he begins breaking it down: his lecture on war-winning strategies from the Gita is interspersed with animated graphics of Dronacharya teaching his disciples, the Pandavas discussing battle strategies, a red-eyed Duryodhana screaming on the battlefield, and a wily Chanakya creating vishkanyas. Then he draws modern parallels from the shloka — like the importance of competitor analysis in business.
Bindra and his team prefer taking data-driven decisions. They average 1.9 million views per video, and their traffic is so loyal that they’ve won seven Guinness world records that line the lobby of his bustling office. His team collates comments from their social media platform to survey what their audience wants to know about.
His audience is aspirational, according to him and his team. Many of his followers are from tier-2 and tier-3 cities, and lack an internationalist perspective — which is why he speaks to them in a nationalist language they understand, pulling examples from texts and stories they grew up hearing. Great content has to be told like a story, with an impactful opening and closing statement, Bindra says. Speaking visually, with analogies and metaphors bolstered by video graphics, is imperative. He raises his voice when making his points and invites the audience to repeat short slogans after him — evoking emotion makes the content more memorable.
“When you create content, you have to focus on one central message,” adds Bindra. He keeps his eyes closed when in deep thought, seemingly speaking almost from memory. “The consumer and the creator should stay as close as possible — when the customer gives you a signal, you create content to address that.”
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Responsible vs irresponsible history
Tripathi knows he’s more provocative than other content creators, but he cites his sponsors as examples of his content’s relatability. One of his sponsors is PrepLadder, a service owned by Unacademy for UPSC aspirants. “If future civil servants are watching my videos, surely there’s something of value to them?” he asks.
Even if content creators follow their audience’s cues, they still have to contend with the impact of their content — and any content too radical might alienate some.
Better known online as BeerBiceps, Ranveer Ahluwalia is no stranger to controversy. He has 4.6 million followers on YouTube, and 2.1 million on Instagram. He creates content on masculinity, history, entrepreneurship, and spirituality. He invites ‘experts’ on his show to discuss contentious issues to sidestep any accusation of inaccuracy. His wide range of guests on his podcast include Bollywood actors like Ananya Pandey and Priyanka Chopra, as well as archaeologists, spiritual gurus, and tantriks.
“As an Indian I’m interested in Hindu culture but that’s a reflection of who I am, not because of my political opinions,” says Ahluwalia. “That narrative gets picked up by the left a lot, but honestly I’m just having fun creating content and learning,” he says.
Calling himself a “centrist” and an “observer,” Ahluwalia adds that content creators have a responsibility to “be centrist” because of the impact they have on culture and internet discourse. “Either don’t deliver a political opinion or deliver a 360-degree view,” he says.
Abhijit Chavda describes himself online as “neither secular nor socialist.” His videos on history, he claims, are based on facts — and that there will always be a section of society that’s jingoistic and could take YouTube content to an unreasonable level.
Chavda and Ahluwalia are both aware of the problem of misinformation on YouTube, and that creators with huge followings can often fall into the trap of being inaccurate without being fact-checked.
“I think there are lots of people who mean well, but may not have the best understanding of history,” says Chavda. “I believe that most people mean well — I would not call them irresponsible, just ill-informed. I would give them the benefit of the doubt.”
But there’s an ideological and class divide here, too. Chavda and Ahluwalia largely address an English-speaking, more ‘liberal’ audience.
Tripathi has picked up on this too. Ahluwalia’s audience is more international — and so he has to toe the line and not offend any of his viewers, according to Tripathi.
Because his content is largely addressed to a Hindi-speaking audience, Tripathi says he doesn’t have to worry about alienating an international audience. He can stretch as far as he likes, shielded by his general anonymity in his physical surroundings. He says, however, that “his limit is Aurangzeb” — speaking ill of the Prophet Muhammed, for example, is a line he won’t cross.
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Small town, big platform
Tripathi’s online fame doesn’t translate to Jaitaran. Most people don’t know or understand what he does — when they ask his family, they just reply that “he works online”.
Only younger, more tech savvy people understand the scale of his achievements. Tripathi records his videos in a makeshift padded box to amplify the sound. But he has ambitions to go big. He plans on moving to Jaipur and setting up a professional studio with employees — he has already hired two video editors, based in Indore and Muzaffarnagar.
“There’s no competition for me here in Jaitaran,” says Tripathi. “All the big YouTubers are in big cities.There’s no business mindset here.”
He lives with his joint family in a cramped street, two lanes down from a Muslim locality with which he barely interacts — in fact, he barely interacts with Jaitaran. He sleeps during the day and stays up at night to research and record. There’s nothing to see and nothing to do in his town, he says, but the online world offers limitless opportunities to connect with likeminded people.
“People are waking up with the emotions of Hindutva,” says his sister Ankita. He nods next to her. “They identify with his videos, they feel a sense of identity. Hindus are always open and equal, we are united. It’s other people who are not.”
A Muslim neighbour raised her eyebrows and smiled at Tripathi as we walked down the road, crossing a few lanes over from the Tripathis’ house. “You’re taking this route today?” she asked in local Marwari. She was surprised because Tripathi usually didn’t go through the Muslim neighbourhood. He and his sister smiled and said they’re just following Google Maps.
He turned around when she was out of earshot.
“See? I don’t have a problem with Mohammedans. I just have a problem with their thinking.”
(Edited by Prashant)