ICTs and Identity: The Role of Digital Platforms in the Indian Diaspora’s National and Religious Identity

For millions of Indians living outside India, the question of identity is rarely simple. Are they Indian? Are they citizens of their host countries? Are they Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian first – and Indian second? These questions have become increasingly entangled with the rise of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Today, a WhatsApp group, a YouTube channel, or a Facebook community can do what geography once made impossible: keep an entire diaspora connected, politically engaged, and religiously active – all at once. Understanding how digital platforms shape national and religious identities within the Indian diaspora is central to understanding how belonging works in the modern world.

ICTs and the connected migrant 🔗

The Indian diaspora is one of the world’s largest, with over 32 million people of Indian origin living abroad. Historically, migrants faced the gradual erosion of ties with their homeland. Distance meant disconnection. That changed dramatically with the spread of the internet and mobile technology. New advances in communication technologies like the internet now provide virtual connectivity among individuals moving across national borders, enabling diaspora communities to maintain simultaneous memberships in multiple social, cultural, and political communities.

Scholars describe this transformation through the concept of the “connected migrant” – someone whose identity is no longer defined solely by where they physically live, but by a web of digital relationships that span continents. ICTs have created new spaces and forms of collective expression, identification, and belonging, with online diaspora networks and social media groups turning into platforms for community formation, interaction, and information dissemination. For the Indian diaspora specifically, this shift has been profound: the uprooted migrant has become a connected one.

Nationalism goes digital: long-distance nationalism and the Indian diaspora 🔗

One of the most significant outcomes of ICT adoption among diaspora communities is the emergence of what sociologist Benedict Anderson famously called “long-distance nationalism” – political and nationalist activity carried out by people living far from their homeland. Globalization and technological advancements have significantly facilitated long-distance nationalism, enabling diaspora communities to maintain strong ties with their homelands and engage in transnational political activities.

For the Indian diaspora, this manifests in several concrete ways. Members living in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, or Australia follow Indian elections closely, debate domestic policy on social media, and mobilize financially and politically around causes in India. Research on the cyberspace of the Indian diaspora shows that a variety of identity claims are expressed online, with subnational, religious, professional, and supra-national South Asian identities all finding expression on the web. Interestingly, these identities often emerge independently of the Indian government’s own digital presence – the diaspora builds its own national imaginary online.

Digital technologies significantly contribute to the promotion of digital nationalism, digital identity, and national narratives, as people use social media, websites, and applications to share their experiences, culture, and beliefs globally. For diasporic Indians, this means that “being Indian” is continuously negotiated, performed, and reinforced through everyday digital activity – from sharing news articles about India to participating in online petitions or following political leaders on social media.

The role of social media in political mobilization 🔗

Social media platforms have become key arenas for diasporic political engagement. In India and its diaspora in the UK, online activities – tweeting, blogging, messaging, trolling, and tagging – have become central to tensions surrounding religion’s presence in public life and the stakes of belonging to the nation. These digital interactions are not merely commentary; they actively shape political outcomes and community boundaries.

A notable example is the role of the diaspora during debates around India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Hindu majoritarian voices active on Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, and platforms like ShareChat continued to frame the legislation as necessary for asserting India’s identity, illustrating how diaspora members use ICTs to engage with and amplify homeland political debates. This digital participation reveals how deeply the diaspora is enmeshed in India’s national politics – even from thousands of miles away.

Religious identity in the digital age 🔗

Alongside nationalism, religion is one of the most powerful forces shaping Indian diasporic identity – and ICTs have transformed how religious identity is maintained, expressed, and transmitted abroad. Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims in the diaspora cultivated their ethnic and religious identities by gathering with those from the same place of origin, caste, and religious group, while establishing local cultural organizations and global religious networks. Today, digital platforms have extended and intensified this process.

Scholars have described the internet as a “spiritual medium” for diaspora communities. Through certain discourses, the internet can be viewed by members of a religious tradition as a tool promoting religion or religious practice and a technology for affirming religious life – enabling geographically dispersed members to come together, discuss their faith, and maintain a shared sense of community through digital communication.

Hindu diaspora: virtual temples and online piety 🔗

For the Hindu diaspora specifically, digital platforms have become extensions of religious practice. Live-streamed temple services, online pujas, and virtual religious gatherings allow devotees abroad to participate in rituals regardless of their physical location. COVID-19 accelerated digital religious adoption dramatically, with some Hindu temples in North America reporting a 300% increase in virtual participation, and WhatsApp groups becoming tools for daily religious practice sharing. What was once an emergency adaptation has now become a normalized and permanent feature of diasporic Hindu life.

Temples in the diaspora function not only as religious sites but also as cultural hubs, with architectural styles, deities, and rituals modified to reflect the diversity of the Hindu diaspora and accommodate regional and linguistic differences. Digital platforms amplify this function: a YouTube channel run by a temple in New Jersey can serve Hindu devotees in London, Singapore, and Mumbai simultaneously, reshaping the geographic boundaries of religious community.

Muslim and Sikh diaspora communities online 🔗

The digital transformation of religious identity is not limited to Hindu communities. Research on British Muslims from South Asian backgrounds shows that online religious expressions and online religious movements affect the authority positions of religious institutions and scholars within the community. Digital platforms have created new spaces where religious authority is both reinforced and contested – where traditional clerical voices compete with online influencers, activist accounts, and diaspora-specific interpretations of faith.

For Sikh communities, the internet has similarly become a vehicle for both spiritual connection and political mobilization, with digital platforms used to keep issues like the Khalistan movement alive in the diasporic imagination. Terms like “Hindu Diaspora,” “Sikh Diaspora,” and “Muslim Diaspora” have emerged as scholarly categories precisely because religion functions as the primary basis for categorizing and understanding Indian diasporic communities. Online, these religious categories find new expression, debate, and contestation.

Subnational and transnational identities online 🔗

ICTs do not simply reinforce a single, unified “Indian” identity. They also surface the internal complexity of the diaspora. Regional, linguistic, caste-based, and religious identities all find expression online – sometimes reinforcing each other, sometimes in tension. Beyond subnational identities, a strongly articulated supra-national South Asian identity also emerges in diasporic cyberspace – one that transcends Indian national borders and connects communities across South Asia and beyond.

This is part of what sociologists call deterritorialization – the way identity becomes uncoupled from physical territory. The appropriation of ICTs among migrants generates new patterns of socialization and identification, rendering possibilities for migrants to form multiple belongings and develop deterritorialized identities. A Tamil Hindu in Toronto might simultaneously belong to a local Tamil cultural association, a global Hindu digital community, and a South Asian progressive political network – all mediated through ICTs.

Hybrid identities and the second generation 🔗

The intersection of ICTs, nationalism, and religion takes on particular complexity for second-generation Indian diaspora members – those born and raised outside India. New media has played a crucial role in shaping the social and cultural practices of new Indian diaspora communities and has facilitated the creation of hybrid identities that blend homeland culture with the realities of life in a host country.

For younger diaspora members, digital platforms are often the primary means through which they encounter “Indian” culture – whether through Bollywood, Indian news, religious content, or political commentary. Despite their extensive time living abroad, Indian immigrants actively choose ethnic programming and digital media specifically as a means to reinforce their ethnic identity, stay informed about India, and nurture a sense of connection to their cultural roots. This selective engagement with Indian digital content means that the “India” being imagined and experienced by the diaspora is itself a mediated construction – shaped by algorithms, platform design, and the content choices of diaspora communities themselves.

The darker side: echo chambers and radicalization 🔗

ICTs do not only enable community and connection – they also carry risks. The same platforms that allow diaspora members to maintain religious and national identity can also become spaces of polarization, misinformation, and radicalization. Platform algorithms on YouTube, X, Facebook, and Instagram are designed to maximize engagement through emotionally charged content, while encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Telegram create closed echo chambers where unmoderated content circulates freely.

Long-distance nationalism is at least as much the product of political entrepreneurs from the homeland generating nationalist aspirations among the diaspora as it is of spontaneous nostalgia – meaning that organized political movements can deliberately use ICTs to shape diasporic identity in specific ideological directions. The result is that diasporic communities online are not just passive consumers of national or religious content; they are also active targets of political mobilization. This dynamic calls for critical digital literacy, particularly among younger members of diaspora communities navigating identity formation in online spaces.

ICTs as a double-edged tool of identity 🔗

What becomes clear from examining the Indian diaspora’s engagement with ICTs is that digital platforms are not neutral tools. They amplify existing identities, create new ones, and sometimes sharpen divisions. ICTs enable migrants’ simultaneous memberships in multiple social, cultural, and political communities, as well as the creation of multiple identities across borders – a reality that is both empowering and complex. For the Indian diaspora, ICTs have made it possible to be deeply Indian and deeply part of a host country at the same time; to practice religion across continents; and to engage with national politics without setting foot on Indian soil.

At the same time, online diasporic exchanges transcend host-homeland territorial boundaries and invite comparatively expressive forms of identity-based political engagements that are simultaneously both deeply local and digitally global. The Indian diaspora’s use of ICTs reflects a broader truth about digital life: that identity in the 21st century is not something inherited passively, but something actively constructed, contested, and performed – every day, online.

What do you think? As ICTs increasingly shape how diaspora communities experience religion and nationhood, does digital participation strengthen authentic cultural identity – or does it create a version of “Indianness” filtered through algorithms and political agendas? And when religious and nationalist identities merge in diasporic online spaces, who gets to define what those identities mean?

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