Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Smartphones have become a medium for spiritual leaders to conveying messages to their supporters. They go viral and are watched because they have millions of followers and views on their videos. If you go to trending section of any social media platform, you’ll see videos on spirituality at the top.
They have millions of followers on Twitter and Instagram, YouTube. Spiritual leaders like Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, Jaya Kishori and Pradeep Mishra have lakhs of followers on their social media accounts as well.
Pandit Pradeep Mishra Sehore Wale has 4.42 million followers on YouTube. He doesn’t have a verified Instagram account, but there are around three Instagram accounts that go by his name, and there are more than 123k followers on those accounts.
"Nowadays, everyone uses social media. If we want to spread spiritualism, we have to use social media because it is the best way to convey the message." Mishra's assistant told Free Press over phone.
Dhirendra Krishna Shastri of Bageshwar Dham has 4 million followers on YouTube. On Instagram, he has 316k followers. Spiritual speaker Jaya Kishori has 1.96 million followers on YouTube and 4.8 million followers on Instagram. Even the fan pages that are made by their followers have more than 20,000 followers.
Anushka, a social media manager, said, "Earlier, these gurus and their messages were confined to a particular region as there was a lack of mass communication. Now that world is a global village, it is easy to spread message."
Having followers give their videos the views that they want. When people see enormous number of views babas have on their videos, they also watch the video to check the hype, and then they also start following them.
