Hindu Discourse on Websites and Social Media: Analysis of Reimagination of Social and Political Community

The changing nature of God, as deities and temples appear in cyberspace and the establishment of the online temple or E-temple, could reframe the mythology and ritual practices in the digital age. We have seen the transformation of the structure of religious organizations into virtual religion built upon multiple online networked community platforms. Many temples and holy places in India are now available on the internet and provide live temple darshan, and online puja with a virtual interactive worship environment. These changes also affected the relationship between religious authority and administration within the temple and also the relationship between the devotee and priests. Ragopal 2001; Sahana 2011; Rohit Choptra 2020 shows that Media technology is a very crucial factor in the emergence of religion in the public sphere and the construction of religiosity was the product of Hindu nationalism. Meera Nanda's work focuses on the commercialization of Hindu gods and goddesses as related to globalization and Hindutva ideology (Nanda 2011). Tulsi Srinivas (2010) argues that neoliberal markets provide opportunities to upper-caste Hindu or Hindustan forces to remake religious practices and culture that they think that were corrupted by Western influences.