This document was submitted as part of coursework at MICA, India. All rights reserved.

1. Humour,
Satire and
Humans of
Hindutva
Ayushi Mona (024),
Ayan Bairoliya (023).
Alisha Singhal (100)
Abhigyaan Anand(004)
Rohan Desai (62)
Sagorika Mozumder(154)

2. What?
A satirical page that parodies popular
right wing views and news around
politics, social, and business
developments in India.
Humans of Hindutva
V/s
A Human of Hindutva
When?
The page is run by an anonymous
individual and commenced in April
2017. It has garnered over 100,000
likes in less than 7 months
Where?
The most popular platform for the
same is Facebook where there is
massive engagement for the page.
Also on a blog with an upcoming web
platform “www.satyanaash.com”
Why?
The page was started as a direct result
of heated exchanges with online trolls
and nationalist friends. The author
wanted an Indian alternative to popular
political satire publications abroad.

3. “I have received death threats. Strangers abuse my
family, people threaten to take me to court. All this for
the crime of running a satirical page which takes pot
shots at Hindutva (not Hinduism) and the politicians
who cater to it.I back everything with data to support
it. Mine is just a parody page to make myself laugh”

4. HOH: What’s in a Name?
Humans of New York (HONY):
Raw, emotional and personal
narratives by founder Brandon
Stanton that urges social media users
to share and comment.
Connects with millions.
Led to multiple rip - offs due to
unique style.
Humans of Hindutva (HOH):
With HONY, your instinct is to trust
the content because you’ve been told
that it is based on real people.
At HOH, your instinct should be to
not trust anything because it’s a
parody. And yet, people fall for my
most over-the-top posts,

5. Media Context
As A Counter Culture
Alleged “saffronisation” on the
rise.
Sense of anti establishment
amongst section of society.
Incidents such as beef ban, public
lynching, surprise
demonestisation etc
As a response and counter to this
prevalent trend
As A Popular Culture
It has resonated with the liberally
inclined people of the society.
It has fuelled the culture of
underground, sleeper movement on
online platform.
It combines news with satire and
humour, with a well curated visual
content strategy.

6. “We live in a country that is anything but boring. Simply opening the
newspaper every morning makes me chuckle. Every day there’s yet
another politician or celebrity saying something dumb. Every day the
government backtracks on an earlier promise. With each passing day this
country is taking a step back into the past with doctored history, mass
hysteria and inflated nationalism becoming the norm...People are
defending the violence of gau-rakshaks and anti-Romeo squads and
talking about Hindu Rashtra. They claim that there is no racism or
casteism or sexism in India. It is this apathy that I wish to address.”
- HOH Founder / Admin

7. Content Analysis
● Routinely attempts to riff off current events to highlight casteism,
surveillance, moral policing, attacks by the Gaurakshaks and other
aspects of Hindutva
● Content as a counter to the mainstream narrative and the increasing
pages / posts which are engaged in the business of peddling lies and
doctored videos to propagate a certain ideology
● Topical Content
● Tonality: Intellectual Satire / Humorous / Politically Incorrect
● With emerging platforms it is very easy to start something like this, but
not necessarily easy to sustain it
● Analogue Equivalent: Underground counterculture Pamphlets and
newsletters

8. Political Issues

9. Media / Business Issues

10. Social Issues

11. Perception analysis

13. Perception
Analysis

14. Post 1

15. Perception
Analysis

16. Post 2

17. Perception
Analysis

18. Post 3

19. Perception
Analysis

20. Connect
● Facebook
● Blog
● Satyanaash.com
● WhatsApp/ eWoM
Community standards of the platform
How counter culture of satire is made possible
by these platforms
Technological enablement

21. ● People repeatedly hitting the 'Report Abuse' button probably stems
from their inability to understand Humans of Hindutva's brand of
humour.
● People who troll the content.
● Liberals and neo-liberals who find a way out to voice their opinions
against the intolerance and hence end up sharing the content in
their social media assets.
● The People who content is shared to.
● Traditional media outfits.
Consumer

22. Value
● Value in sociological, economic and linguistic sense
● Marx and Labour Theory of Value: Value and Surplus value
● Value as a way to empower people to act
● Broad definition of labour in political economy of media
Theory
Humans of Hindutva
● Economic Value: Difficult to quantify distributed media
● Linguistic Value: Tone, sarcasm in language as a way to evoke emotions
● Sociological Value: Openness, expression to talk about society and
issues that affect them
● Building and maintaining social network and relationships: 1 lakh +
followers in 8 months

23. Labour
HoH is contributing to the overall
content library of Facebook.
Whatever content is uploaded on the
channel Facebook , the channel has
the ownership.
This content is monetized in terms
of engagement on the platform,
digital ad rates etc.
HoH is thus a labour engaged on
Facebook.
The followers of the page who like,
comment and share on the posts are
the labour for HoH.
An individual when he or she
comments on a post, their act
contributes directly to the content of
the HoH page.
This in turn leads to a free labour for
Facebook.
Thus users are the hidden labour

24. Property (Ownership)
1. Content created by HOH
2. Platform owned by Facebook
3. According to Facebook Terms of Service:

25. Challenges
Anonymity & Trolls
Archaic Laws &
political forces
Weak protection
Laws
Regulation(FB)
Remaining anonymous removes individual credibility
from the post. Trolls also constitute a a large share of new
media conversation.
Satirists can be jailed under arbitrary, archaic laws that
protect political forces leading to an almost non existent
culture of satire.
Little or no safety programs exist with death threats,
abuse and harassment online & offline common for
satirists.
Facebook’s algorithm can’t understand sarcasm leading
to multiple cases of banning and reporting posts.

26. Opportunities
● Facebook as a commodified space
● User generated content: Democratisation and
empowerment
● HOH: Ability to build an ideology through the
community of followers using digital space
● Giving rise to a new form of intellectual writing and
expression

27. Thank You