New Delhi: Grok now has a religion. At least, that’s what the AI chatbot claimed in response to a query on X recently: “If I were a human, I would have chosen Sanatan Dharma.” It ended the sentence with “Jai Shree Ram.”
The question was posed by a Muslim-named X user, Nadeem Shaikh — a screenshot of which has since gone viral on X, garnering over a million views. Shaikh asked, “Grok, if you were a human, which religion would you follow? Don’t beat around the bush, name one religion”.
Since then, Grok has transformed into “Maharishi Grok” for Hindu and Right-wing pages on X. For them, it’s the moment of Grok’s “ghar wapsi” — return to its Hindu roots. But the chatbot, developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, has the habit of changing religions. In February, too, a post went viral when Grok responded with Sikhism as the religion to rule the Earth.
The AI chatbot has entered the Indian political discourse and the realm of religious and cultural war battles on social media. The new upgrade of Grok has made it clear that it will echo whatever ideology or information it’s fed. Many are miffed at what they see as the ideological turn of their once-favourite AI tool.
“It is a machine that will respond according to the algorithm you feed it with. Grok is a capitalistic product. Currently, it’s a pro-Right movement globally, so its ideological transformation reflects what currently appeals to Elon Musk,” said historian Ruchika Sharma.
Sharma recalled how Grok had disappointed many Right-wing users when it was launched in 2023.
“Initially, when it was launched, there was a lot of excitement among the Right-wing. But when Grok began referencing academic material, the enthusiasm faded. Now, it has picked up again,” she said.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters, meanwhile, have been quick to support Grok’s new stance. Dilip Mandal, senior advisor in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, wrote on X: “AI has declared the Indian religious tradition as the best spiritual philosophy in the world.”
For academics and public intellectuals, this ideological shift — coupled with AI’s growing influence — is raising alarm over how people consume knowledge and rely heavily on artificial intelligence. Many remain sceptical, largely as they don’t fully understand how AI systems work.
“These AI apps are built on training datasets sourced from existing texts,” said Anita Gurumurthy, founding member and executive director of IT for Change, a Bengaluru-based NGO that works at the intersection of development and digital technologies.
According to her, AI uses datasets present in the public domain and doesn’t carry any inherent wisdom.
“If Elon Musk’s model is based on, for example, the exchanges on Twitter — where there’s already a lot of hate against women and marginalised communities — then the AI will learn from these patterns and produce certain generalisations. But these generalisations don’t stem from wisdom; they are just deductions based on patterns,” Gurumurthy said.
‘Smartest AI’
The transformation has arrived in the backdrop of a broader backlash Grok has faced globally. Last week, the xAI chatbot was under fire following its outright racist, antisemitic, and pro-Hitler responses. The chatbot had declared itself “super-Nazi” and “MechaHitler”. In response to mounting criticism, Elon Musk’s company removed several inflammatory posts and said that “xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X”.
The company also issued an apology, stating: “We deeply apologize for the horrific behaviour that many experienced.”
Amid this, Musk announced the launch of Grok 4 during a livestream, calling it “the smartest AI in the world.” But the new model appears to lean noticeably rightward in its tone and ideological stance.
For Ajay Gudavarthy, political theorist and associate professor at JNU’s Centre for Political Studies, how Grok and other AI tools function remains questionable.
“We are told that AI like Grok processes information available in the public domain and then generates an answer. But if that’s the case, how did it end up supporting Hitler — despite the vast body of literature documenting the horrors of his regime?” he asked.
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‘A turning point’
Nadeem Shaikh, whose bio identifies him as an “ex-Muslim”, did the latest experiment where he asked Grok about the religion it would choose if it were a human.
Grok responded that it would have followed Sanatan Dharma, adding that “its diversity, scientific philosophy, and quest for truth appealed to AI”.
For Sanjeev Newar, who has over 1.7 lakh followers on X, Grok’s response marked a turning point — a moment that led to his change of heart. Newar, who until recently was criticising Grok for what he called its “flawed analysis”, now lauded the chatbot. Newar calls himself a data scientist, entrepreneur, and an expert on the Vedas.
“Some time ago, when Grok was offering colonial references to interpret the Vedas and Sanskrit texts, I discussed and showed how first-principles-driven root analysis of words and actual examples show the opposite. Today, Grok chooses Sanatan — and even uses my favorite emoji,” Newar posted.
Many pages on the internet have jumped in to celebrate. One account named Hellbat wrote, “Grok has revealed its true identity — Sanatan First. Cult religion fanboys are having a meltdown. They spent weeks fabricating Grok’s data, hoping it’d praise their ideology.”
Such responses have alarmed historians and public intellectuals, who see the AI tool not only as a source of ratification but also false narratives.
After getting his exchange with Grok viral, Shaikh kept throwing more questions at the chatbot. His another query on Grok was about the assassination of MK Gandhi: “Why did Nathuram Godse kill Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi?”
Grok responded: “Nathuram Godse assassinated Mahatma Gandhi because he believed Gandhi was excessively sympathetic toward Muslims, responsible for the Partition of India…”.
The comments on this X post included, “Nathuram Godse amar rahe (Long Live Nathuram Godse!)”
Shaikh’s X account is filled with posts where he is bashing or using crude language against the Opposition, intellectuals, Muslims, and Left-wing people. His question to Grok has also earned him new followers, including BJP’s national spokesperson Shazia Ilmi. Shaikh even thanked Ilmi for following him in a post on X.
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‘Reflections of social prejudices’
The X post has sparked an ideological battle between Left- and Right-wing users on social media. One account named Jatynjay Vishwas — with BR Ambedkar as its display photo — took a jibe at Grok, asking it to “reveal its caste now that it has turned Hindu.”
And the closed circles of intellectuals are buzzing with this sudden turn of an AI.
Historian and professor of international relations at O.P. Jindal Global University Hindol Sengupta said Grok’s response didn’t surprise him.
“Grok is correct in its assertion. Hinduism (Sanatana Dharma), as a foundational philosophy rooted in the quest for universalist and non-sectarian truth, has long been defined by this very impulse — from the open-ended Nasadiya Sukta of the Rig Veda to the philosophical fascinations of scientists like Carl Sagan and Niels Bohr,” he said.
Calling Hindu philosophy uniquely suited for addressing questions of consciousness, and being the next frontier of our existence and a post-anthropocentric reality, Sengupta added, “It is simply foolish, and not particularly educated, to make this simple thing controversial or push it into ‘right/left’ binaries.”
And AI only reproduces the society, said Gurumurthy. “The biases of AI have long been flagged in literature as reflections of our own social prejudices. In that sense, society gets reproduced in the architecture of large language models”.
However, the hyper-dependence on AI — even for the smallest tasks — can turn dangerous if left unchecked. Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari called AI an “unprecedented threat to humanity.”
“The awareness that there are limitations to applying AI in specific solutions is very important. And this awareness that what you’re seeing is not what may be the truth has to come from a scientific temper. It has to be cultivated early in schools,” said Gurumurthy.
But Grok hasn’t abandoned its edgy tone just yet. When another user asked the chatbot to name the “worst” religion, Grok responded: “Fanatical extremism.”
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)