When clickbait poses as genuine devotion

Faith does not have to turn into fact in order to remain faith. It just needs to stop pretending to be a formula

Something strange has been happening to Neem Karoli Baba, a man who was born and passed away long before the age of the internet and social media. By every account, he also cared nothing for fame while he was alive. He has nonetheless become one of the most reproduced faces on the internet, so much so that his image seems ubiquitous on social media platforms, smiling back at you from Instagram stories, promising miracles, prosperity, work, marriage, or a cure, as long as you repost his picture, tag your ten friends, and type a religious slogan in the comments.

No influencer, temple, or foundation may lay claim to a holy person. If they belong anywhere, it is as much to the hungry man standing outside a hospital as to a devotee praying in front of their photo. (Shutterstock)

This makes me uncomfortable, not because I question the legitimacy of Baba’s grace, but because I have been trying to understand, for more than a decade, what such grace asks of its believers. I believe it was never this simple. It isn’t a question of sharing a photo of a saint. They may have been photographed countless times, and devotees may always held on to their images of him. This is where devotion turns into a bargain: Do this, and the baba/mata in question will give you that.

Something is definitely changing in the way people discuss saints/holy persons online. What was once a personal matter, someone’s private sense that their guru/seer had answered a prayer, becomes a universal bargain: Share this, and the same thing will happen to you. The language used is typical of clickbait all across the internet. Except that this time, the bait comes adorned with the face of a saint. That is the attention economy at work. The platform does not ask whether something is true or sacred; it rewards what makes people pause and click. Platforms reward engagement through views, shares, and followers, while monetisation occurs in some cases directly, regardless of the intentions of any particular creator. The algorithmic incentive is simple: What gets attention gets shown to more people, and what gets shown to more people gets even more attention. Repetition eventually turns into confirmation. That is how folklore quietly becomes fact, and how a saint’s life can be rewritten by people who have never read a page about them.

In the testimonies of Baba’s followers, most notably Ram Dass, whose book, Miracle of Love, has shaped how one generation of readers came to know him, Baba has been described as someone whose entire teaching can be summed up in few words: love, serve, remember, and tell the truth. His foremost teaching was neither fame nor reward, but karma yoga, service done without concern for who is watching. This is a strict teaching, and it is much simpler to hit the share button than to feed a hungry person.

Miracle of Love is built from the stories devotees have shared with each other, most of them secondhand, few of them footnoted, all of them presented in awe. There is a great difference between such oral traditions and clickbait, even though both may technically be unverified. The difference lies not in lack of verification. It is in intent. The problem is not merely misinformation; it is the monetisation of attention. An honest testimony by a devotee that “this happened to me” is one thing. But a post that claims “share this and Baba/Mata X will fulfill your wish” is something very different: a claim being made on your behalf, for a purpose that has nothing to do with prayer. Faith does not have to turn into fact in order to remain faith. It just needs to stop pretending to be a formula.

There is no way the algorithm can tell the difference between prayer and clickbait, since it was never designed to do that. It only knows that fear, hope, and repetition keep people glued to the screen, and it rewards anything that provokes those responses, whether that’s a picture of a saint or any other photograph.

Unlike others, my connection to Neem Karoli Baba began not with an algorithm, but in a hospital corridor. My son was born with congenital disorders in 2006, and in the months that followed, I prayed for what these posts now describe: a miracle, a quick solution, anything at all. No miracle came. What came slowly was the work itself — work that was no miracle, but that had everything to do with being there for people who arrive in Delhi hoping for a new beginning. That was when I learned something about Baba that can never be learned from a post: Sometimes the best way to pray for yourself is to be of use to someone else. Whatever I have since done, creating my foundation, my meditation centre, was never the point at all.

So, who is a real devotee? I don’t think it’s the one with the biggest page dedicated to one saint/holy person or the other on Facebook, or the most followers on Instagram, or the most miracle stories memorised. As soon as I start naming the qualities of a real devotee — silent work, no clickbait, no fanfare — I realise that those traits form something very much like a flattering self-portrait. Most true saints and holy persons would be suspicious of people who perform humility, much like, it is reported, Neem Karoli Baba was. So, maybe the honest answer is that I simply don’t know who the real devotee is, including those who shares saints’ images on Instagram.

All of this does not mean that the internet is an enemy. It has introduced many genuinely spiritually evolved persons to people who otherwise would never have heard their names, some of whom may go on to read a Ram Dass, meditate, or simply become nicer people. There is value in that. The trouble starts when reach exceeds truth, and a saint’s face turns into a way of creating urgency, where “Baba/Mata X says” opens a sentence the latter never uttered.

Perhaps all we have to do is ask ourselves before revealing something: Is it the saint’s teaching, or my own wish wearing their name?

No influencer, temple, or foundation may lay claim to a holy person. If they belong anywhere, it is as much to the hungry man standing outside a hospital as to a devotee praying in front of their photo.

So, the next time a reel promises that sharing it will fulfil your wish, perhaps don’t share it, not out of fear but because the holy person in question never needed your engagement. Call your mother instead or feed somebody or just sit for 10 minutes in silence, asking for nothing.

Perhaps the only way to keep a deceased saint alive is not to make more people share their photograph, but to remember the person themself: who, in almost all cases, asked us to love, serve, remember and tell the truth.

Rahul Verma is founder of Uday Foundation and NKB Divine Meditation Foundation. the views expressed are personal

(This is a Hindustan Times digital exclusive)