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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsIn Kunal Purohit’s H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars, a Hindu procession in Gumla, Jharkhand, reaches a mosque where Muslim residents are waiting with garlands. The music reportedly changes to an incendiary song calling for violence against Muslims. Police intervene. The episode, as recounted in the book and its Scroll.in review published February 25, 2024, captures the book’s central question: what happens when familiar entertainment becomes a vehicle for communal intimidation?
“H-Pop” is not a formal genre with a fixed sound. It is shorthand for a Hindutva-oriented cultural ecosystem—songs, poetry, videos, public performances, influencer channels, publishing and commerce—that turns Hindu majoritarian politics into repeatable, shareable popular content.
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What H-Pop means
H-Pop is political before it is musical. Its works may use devotional idioms, patriotic anthems, rap-like delivery, stage poetry or cheaply produced music videos. What links them is a recurring ideological frame: Hindu pride as national common sense, militarised nationalism, hostility to Pakistan and the portrayal of Muslims, secular institutions and political opponents as internal enemies.
The term should therefore not be used for every Hindu devotional song, every nationalist performance or every criticism of Pakistan. It describes content and networks that the review interprets as embedding Hindutva ideology in everyday entertainment. Purohit’s project page says the book examines how popular culture is “co-opted and weaponised” to create social divisions (author’s project page).
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Low production values do not make this material politically irrelevant. A phone-recorded song can travel through WhatsApp groups, YouTube links, local loudspeakers and live events, where its value lies less in polish than in recognition, repetition and collective participation.
Three routes into the ecosystem
Purohit’s narrative follows three figures. They are case studies, not a statistical sample of Hindutva creators.
Kavi Singh: the singer
The review describes Haryana singer Kavi Singh’s rise after a song about the 2019 Pulwama attack. The song praised the martyrs and blamed Indian Muslims for cross-border terrorism. The author’s project page says Singh recorded more than 80 songs after beginning her singing career in 2019, with further releases pending; that is an author-site description, not a measure of the movement as a whole.
Kamal Agney: the poet-performer
Hindi poet Kamal Agney’s performances, as described in the review, target Gandhi, Nehru, Pakistan, JNU students and other critics or institutions associated with secular politics. Poetry gives the message a live, theatrical form: an audience can chant, laugh, applaud and record it together.
Sandeep Deo: media operator and merchant
Sandeep Deo represents a broader business model. The review presents him as a journalist, YouTube operator, publisher and e-commerce entrepreneur. In this model, political content can lead to books, merchandise, direct sales, subscriptions, invitations and a durable personal brand.
Why the creator economy matters
The book’s important economic insight is that these figures resemble many precarious digital creators. Cheap recording tools reduce the cost of entry. YouTube and social platforms provide distribution. Identity-based networks supply an initial audience, while virality can produce bookings, political invitations and local status.
Success requires frequent publishing and continued algorithmic visibility. A creator may move between a phone video, a village performance, a campaign appearance and an online store without treating them as separate careers. Political antagonism can therefore be both conviction and livelihood strategy: outrage attracts attention, attention creates opportunities, and opportunities encourage more content.
This does not mean every creator is centrally directed or that every platform endorses the message. It means a market for attention can reward content that is emotionally sharp, easy to share and legible inside an existing political identity.
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The recurring content machine
The review and the book’s description identify several repeated themes:
- Muslims cast as an internal threat or disloyal minority.
- Pakistan and cross-border terrorism used to frame domestic political conflict.
- Military sacrifice converted into proof of majoritarian nationalism.
- Attacks on Gandhi, Nehru and secular institutions.
- Hostility toward JNU students, journalists, liberals and political opponents.
- Religious processions treated as stages for public dominance.
Repetition matters. A stereotype heard in a song, a joke at a performance and a slogan in a video can make exclusionary language feel ordinary. “Deep-rooted hatred” is best understood as this accumulation of mechanisms—not as a claim about all Hindus, all Hindi-speaking people or every listener.
From screen to street
The Gumla episode illustrates how online and offline circulation overlap. A song played through loudspeakers during a procession is no longer private media; it is a public performance directed at people who may not have chosen to hear it. Police intervention indicates perceived risk, but it does not by itself prove that a particular song caused a later act of violence.
The safer conclusion is that communal music can intensify an already tense environment, provide a shared vocabulary of hostility and make intimidation visible. Content may contribute to a chain of events without being the sole cause of a lynching, riot or confrontation. Local organisers, political actors, policing, rumours and existing disputes also matter.
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Entertainment, propaganda or both?
H-Pop can be both entertainment and propaganda. Camp, crude metaphors and amateur video aesthetics may be enjoyable to a target audience rather than embarrassing to it. Songs offer belonging, grievance, humour, status and a way to perform political identity with others.
At the same time, entertainment can normalise dehumanising language. Calling something “just a song” hides how repetition and ritual work. Audience responses are not uniform: some listeners may be enthusiastic, some casual, some ironic and some interested mainly in the performer. View counts alone cannot establish persuasion.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the digital platforms change
Hindutva music and political performance predate social media. Smartphones, recommendation systems and direct distribution change the speed, permanence and discoverability of the material. A local singer can reach audiences outside a town; a removed clip can be reuploaded; a live performance can become a short video; and a creator can connect attention to sales or invitations.
Platform questions are separate from questions of ideology:
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- Availability: Is the content accessible at all?
- Recommendation: Does a platform actively surface it to new viewers?
- Monetisation: Can the creator earn from advertising, memberships or sales?
- Moderation: Are threats or incitement removed, and how consistently?
A June 16, 2026 Scroll.in report cited a Center for the Study of Organized Hate study identifying 523 alleged Hindutva hate songs across YouTube, Meta, Apple Music and Spotify. The study reportedly said more than half threatened or incited violence and that 18 of 225 reported songs had been removed by May. Those are attributed study findings, not an independently verified census or permanent platform-wide removal rate; the methodology and platform responses matter.
What “fundamentally changed India” does—and does not—prove
The review presents Purohit’s conclusion that religious nationalism has deeply transformed society, especially in the Indo-Gangetic heartland. That is a powerful cultural diagnosis, not a nationally representative causal study.
Three vivid biographies establish that the ecosystem exists and that it can connect ideology, visibility and commerce. They do not establish its total audience, growth rate or electoral effect. A stronger assessment would distinguish:
- Reach: views, shares, listeners, bookings and sales.
- Content: pride, exclusion, dehumanisation, threats or incitement.
- Distribution: platforms, messaging groups, events and political networks.
- Conversion: online attention becoming performances, access, sales or mobilisation.
- Impact: evidence of changed attitudes, intimidation, disorder or violence.
It would also compare states, languages, castes and urban-rural audiences, and separate digital visibility from actual expansion. H-Pop may be new in its platform mechanics while continuing older traditions of political and communal music.
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H-Pop moves the discussion beyond the assumption that propaganda is produced only by parties or official spokespeople. Its creators are also workers competing for attention, income and recognition. Their autonomy does not make the politics harmless; it helps explain why the message can proliferate without a single command centre.
The book’s most durable insight is therefore about normalisation. Hostility becomes more powerful when it is catchy, locally performed, commercially viable and available as ordinary background media. That does not prove that every listener is radicalised or that one song determines one act of violence. It shows how a political worldview can become part of the routine cultural environment in which people form judgments about neighbours, opponents and the nation.
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