It is difficult for me to scroll for more than five minutes on TikTok without encountering a young South Asian influencer talking about how glad she is that she “decolonized her mind” or “reconnected with her ancient culture” and embraced her South Asian identity after adolescence. Most of these micro-influencers, at least from what I can discern, are wealthy Indian-Americans who see themselves as woke, “cultured,” and progressive. They are against cultural appropriation and they fight to decolonize Gen Z’s relationship with Indian culture. And I think they are the Indian Hindu nationalist government’s greatest weapon.

India is currently ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a right-wing Hindu fundamentalist party that supports Hindu nationalism, ethnic homogeneity, conservatism, and the erasure of narratives that complicate the myth of an indigenous Hindu past. Much of this project is related to myths surrounding Indian culture and traditions, including dance, music, and yoga, positioning each of these cultural institutions as ancient and Hindu. Additionally, the erasure of minority languages, cultural practices, and history has begun the process of reinventing India. And it is this work that these TikTokers are platforming.

Take yoga for instance. While yoga is an ancient Indian practice, its roots lie not in Hindu devotion but in the spirituality of centering the mind and body through physicality and meditation. However, especially in the last centuries, yoga and Hinduism have been brought together, creating a new hybrid practice that combines yogic physicality with Hindu devotion and described links to ancient Hinduism; the entanglement of the highly Hindu-fied syllable “Om” with modern representations of yoga has also been a cause of controversy. It is also under this context that today’s prime minister of India, BJP zealot Narendra Modi, established International Yoga Day in 2021.

“Yoga is an invaluable gift from our ancient tradition,” Modi said in his address to the United Nations in which he introduced the holiday.

This is exactly what our friends on TikTok are saying. Decolonize yoga. It is an ancient Hindu practice that Hindus must reclaim from the clutches of the West, modernity, and secularism. Although they do so through the lens of Western leftism rather than Indian conservatism, these influencers and their mantras are ultimately reinforcing the ideology of Modi and his BJP.

The woke mob operates similarly when it comes to dance. The axis for “decolonization” becomes dance aesthetic in this case; dancing with body language that is deemed “Indian,” “Indian classical,” “cultural,” or “traditional” is seen as decolonial and leftist. I was criticized by a peer my age about a piece I made that combined Indian and Western aesthetics and was told that I was colonizing our art and disrespecting our culture. But again, there is more beneath the surface.

Indian “classical” dance forms were classicalized, codified, and reimagined as ancient, affluent, and Hindu around the time of Indian independence, appropriated by middle-class Hindu populations of the traditions of low-class hereditary courtesan dancers. In subsequent years, the new Hindu-fied aesthetics of these forms were globally exported and became defining aesthetics of the global imagination of India. However, this exportation of myths surrounding ancient Hindu art is precisely a part of the Hindu nationalistic project, and the “reclamation” of this aesthetic only further reproduces Modi’s cultural gospel. 

Today, the reinvented aesthetics of these dance forms have become an important framework through which we understand Indian-ness globally. Thus, young South Asians have taken to many of these aesthetics as they look to “connect with their culture” online. However, the reproduction of these aesthetics reproduces the conservative idea that this is the only aesthetic possibility for Indian dance, continuing to erase the low-class aesthetics appropriated and then marginalized around the time of independence. Every Indian classical dance piece online continues to spread this Hindu, devotionalized aesthetic possibility for what Indian dance and Indian culture is.

What is decolonization when it reinforces the ideologies of modern authoritarianism? I ask this question not to feel morally superior to all the voices on my For You Page, but rather to urge us all to think a bit more critically about the ways we, especially as privileged kids of the diaspora, engage with ideas of culture, heritage, and reclamation. Much of the Indian culture we know exists because of the reinvention of culture that came with Indian independence. As modern India sought to define itself as a nation state, it built a new national cultural identity. This is natural—but it is not decolonial, radical, or revolutionary to express this new identity in 2025. 

Modi’s government wants you to keep talking about how you say “naan” instead of “naan bread,” because this discourse veils the erasure of non-naan expressions of culture that is actively occurring in India. As the government works to destroy non-normative expressions of cultural identity in India, the best thing that children of the diaspora can do for them is reframe engagement with this nationalistic culture as decolonial and radical, aligning Indian conservatism with western progressivism and bringing on board lots of new and accidental supporters. I doubt most of these influencers or TikTok preachers think they are a part of the conservative project, but their shallow understanding of the complexities of our cultural heritage has led their actions to feed the Hindu nationalist cause. 

All of this is to say, think before you speak? I’m not sure I have the clear call to action that you might expect at the end of this article ready, but thinking about these links between conservatism and supposed-leftism underscores the value of thoughtful interrogation and rigorous inquiry when it comes to culture and heritage, especially in the case of decolonization and reclamation. These are big ideas that can take us in the opposite direction if poorly wielded. When ethnic cleansing can be rebranded as a decolonial return to one’s ancient roots, anything is possible.

And really, that Bharatanatyam dance to “APT.” is not the revolutionary piece of art that you think it is.

Akhil Joondeph is a member of the class of 2026 and can be reached at ajoondeph@wesleyan.edu.