“No Religious Sentiments Were Hurt, So No FIR Was Filed” — The Kanwar Dance Videos and India’s Convenient Offence of Religious Outrage

There is something almost surreal about some of the images that emerged from Uttar Pradesh during the 2025 Kanwar Yatra. A decorated vehicle moves with a procession of saffron-clad Kanwariyas; loud music fills the road; performers dance from the vehicle; devotees dance along; and smartphones are held up everywhere to record the scene. One widely circulated video from Basti showed dancers performing on a decorated tractor associated with a group of Kanwariyas returning after collecting sacred water from Ayodhya. Contemporary reporting identified the location as the Dubaulia area and described the participation of two transgender performers, while other reports framed the performance as controversial because of the manner in which it was conducted during a religious pilgrimage. (ABP Live; Navbharat Times)

The Basti footage was not the only Kanwar-related dance video to attract attention during the 2025 season. Separate footage from elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh showed women dancing on or around Kanwar vehicles before large gatherings, prompting similar criticism about the boundary between religious celebration and entertainment. These should not be presented as a single event or a single organised programme; their significance lies in the fact that similar questions arose at multiple locations during the same pilgrimage season.

The footage itself is useful because it allows the reader to see the scene before encountering the competing descriptions attached to it. The following Instagram Reel, published by The CSR Journal, is reproduced as the social-media version of the footage under discussion. It should be read as visual material rather than as independent proof of every factual claim made about the incident; the location, date, identity of participants and circumstances are better established through corroborating news reports.

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What the footage establishes visually is narrower than what the surrounding controversy sometimes suggests. It shows a religious procession in which dancing, amplified music, performers and participating devotees occupy the same visual frame. It does not, by itself, establish whether the performance was intended as devotional expression or entertainment, whether any procession rule was violated, whether anyone present regarded it as offensive, or whether a criminal offence occurred. Those are separate questions requiring separate evidence. The distinction matters because the public debate has tended to collapse them into a single conclusion: that conduct regarded by some viewers as inappropriate must therefore have been unlawful.

The footage was not confined to a single social-media upload. Contemporary television and digital-news reports also covered the episode, giving the public a second layer of context around the images circulating online.

A separate incident was reported from Etah, where a video from the Awagarh area showed young women dancing to film songs at a bhandara near the Kanwar route. The episode was not the Basti tractor incident and should not be presented as though it were part of the same procession. Its relevance lies elsewhere: it indicates that during the 2025 Kanwar season, similar questions about entertainment, dance, public display and the religious character of the surrounding environment arose in more than one location. (Dynamite News; News Track)

What makes the matter worth examining is not simply the existence of provocative footage. It is the curious political and cultural language that surrounds controversies involving religion in India. The phrase “hurt religious sentiments” can become enormously powerful. It can trigger complaints, police action, political mobilisation and prolonged public controversy. Yet in the present case, notwithstanding the visibility of the footage and the criticism it generated, the reporting reviewed for this article does not identify a corresponding FIR arising specifically from the Basti dance video. It would therefore be inaccurate to say that the police officially declined to register a case because nobody’s religious sentiments had been hurt. There is no evidence establishing that particular explanation. The sarcasm belongs to the author, not to the police.

And that is the point of the title: perhaps no religious sentiments were hurt sufficiently to require an FIR. The statement is deliberately ironic, because the real issue is not whether an FIR ought to have been filed. The real issue is the extraordinary elasticity of “hurt religious sentiments” as a social, political and sometimes legal category in India. In some controversies, the allegation appears capable of moving very quickly from indignation to criminal proceedings. In others, even behaviour occurring within the setting of a major religious pilgrimage is treated primarily as a matter of taste, decorum or social criticism. That contrast deserves scrutiny without presuming that either side is automatically right.

The Videos Are Only the Surface

The Basti footage is striking because it puts several different forms of public activity into a single frame. The religious symbolism is unmistakable: saffron clothing, Kanwariyas, a decorated vehicle and a journey associated with carrying sacred water for offering to Shiva. At the same time, the scene contains all the visual characteristics of entertainment: performers, amplified music, dancing, an audience and continuous filming. The resulting spectacle sits somewhere between religious celebration and public performance, and it is precisely that ambiguity that makes the footage culturally interesting.

Navbharat Times reported the episode in strongly critical language, describing the performance as an “obscene” dance and saying that the video generated social-media controversy over its appropriateness during the Kanwar Yatra. ABP Live similarly presented the incident as a “dance show” that raised questions about the changing nature of the pilgrimage. (Navbharat Times; ABP Live) Those reports are significant because they establish the existence of public criticism. They do not, however, settle the legal question. A performance may be vulgar in someone’s eyes without satisfying the statutory definition of a criminal offence.

Video/reference: AajTak — transgender Kanwariyas dancing to Shiva bhajans

The meaningful question is therefore one of context, content, intention and purpose. What is being celebrated? What is being performed? Who is the intended audience? Is the performance integrated into worship, or is the religious setting providing a stage for entertainment? Those are cultural questions rather than conclusions that can be drawn simply from the presence of a dancer.

When Devotion Becomes Spectacle

The contemporary Kanwar Yatra increasingly illustrates how religious practice can acquire the characteristics of an organised public event. Decorated vehicles, DJ systems, lighting, large speakers and choreographed displays have become part of the visual vocabulary surrounding sections of the pilgrimage. This is not necessarily evidence of religious decline. Religious communities naturally adopt contemporary technologies and forms of collective expression. But when those additions become more elaborate and competitive, they change the incentives surrounding the event.

Hindustan Times reported substantial seasonal business for Delhi-NCR DJ operators during the 2025 Kanwar period, including demand for customised sound systems, large speakers and other equipment. (Hindustan Times) Once a significant market develops, competition can produce escalation. One group acquires a large sound system; another seeks something more impressive. A decorated vehicle becomes a symbol of group prestige; the next group responds with an even more elaborate design. The process resembles an event industry because the same incentives that drive event production—novelty, scale and visibility—begin operating inside the religious gathering.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the existence of such commerce. Pilgrimages have always created markets and livelihoods. The more important question is whether the market is merely servicing the pilgrimage or beginning to determine what the pilgrimage looks like. A DJ can accompany devotional songs without compromising religious purpose; a decorated vehicle can be a form of collective religious expression; a dance can be joyful and devotional. But once the spectacle becomes the principal feature through which outsiders encounter the pilgrimage, it is legitimate to ask whether the means are overshadowing the end.

That is the cultural tension behind the videos. The question is not whether the participants are religious. It is whether the public form through which their religion is being expressed remains proportionate to its spiritual purpose.

The Camera Has Become Part of the Event

The proliferation of smartphones changes the equation further. A traditional pilgrimage was experienced principally by the pilgrim and by people encountered along the route. A contemporary pilgrimage is also experienced through the camera and, later, through social-media feeds. The event has a second life online, and the second life can influence the first.

The most ordinary pilgrim is unlikely to become a viral video. The most visually elaborate procession is. A giant DJ system is visually interesting. A dancer is visually interesting. A political banner is visually interesting. A confrontation is highly shareable. Something interpreted as obscene or provocative is even more valuable to the attention economy because it produces argument.

The result is an inversion of religious priorities. The elements that may be spiritually significant—discipline, endurance, prayer, restraint, personal reflection—are often the least spectacular. The elements most attractive to digital platforms are precisely those associated with display and controversy. Social media does not measure sincerity; it measures engagement.

This does not make the participants insincere. An individual may be sincerely devoted while participating in a public culture increasingly structured around performance. The important distinction is between the authenticity of a believer’s personal faith and the incentives shaping the public presentation of that faith.

The Commercialisation of Belief

The larger economic structure deserves attention because commerce does not merely follow culture; it can shape it. Pilgrimages naturally create demand for food, transportation, accommodation, religious objects, temporary camps and other services, and there is nothing inherently objectionable about that. The question is whether commercial incentives begin to influence the form of religious participation.

When a group spends heavily to make its procession louder and more elaborate, the investment creates an incentive to maximise the visibility of that investment. The vehicle is no longer merely transport. It is also a statement. The sound system is not merely technical equipment. It can become a symbol of status. The performers are not merely participants. They can become attractions.

The danger is subtle because no single actor has to intend the transformation. The organiser may simply want to create a memorable devotional experience. The supplier is simply selling equipment. The participants are simply enjoying themselves. The media is simply covering what people are watching. Social media is simply distributing what people are sharing. Together, however, these otherwise ordinary activities can create an environment in which spectacle becomes an increasingly important component of religious practice.

That is how culture can change without anyone formally deciding to change it.

Politics Understands Spectacle

Politics has an even greater incentive to engage with large religious gatherings because politics depends upon visibility, symbolism and identity. A politician’s participation in private religious practice offers little public value unless it becomes visible. Standing alongside thousands of Kanwariyas, by contrast, immediately communicates cultural affiliation and political positioning.

The Kanwar Yatra has consequently become politically valuable territory in Uttar Pradesh. During the 2025 season, The Indian Express reported that the Samajwadi Party was increasing its involvement in the Kanwar Yatra ahead of the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, including banners and imagery associated with Akhilesh Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav. The initiative was discussed in the context of countering the BJP’s long association with Hindu identity and the politics of “minority appeasement.” (Indian Express)

There is nothing inherently illegitimate about a political party respecting or participating in a religious event. The issue arises when a pilgrimage becomes a stage upon which competing parties attempt to establish ownership of religious identity. Once participation becomes electorally valuable, parties have an incentive to make their religious association highly visible. Religion then functions not only as a spiritual practice but also as a language of political affiliation.

The same event may therefore have very different meanings for the people who occupy it. The Kanwariya may be thinking about Shiva. The politician may be thinking about the electorate. The media organisation may be thinking about audience attention. The DJ operator may be thinking about the seasonal market. The content creator may be thinking about the algorithm. None of these objectives necessarily cancels the others, but they are not the same.

The political system naturally rewards the most visible elements of religion because visibility is what politics can use. Quiet devotion offers little campaign material. Large crowds, religious symbolism, speeches and dramatic images offer considerably more.

The State Becomes Part of the Process

The state has also become an increasingly prominent actor in managing the Kanwar environment. Uttar Pradesh has deployed substantial police and administrative resources for the pilgrimage, including route management, surveillance, traffic control, sound regulation and measures aimed at preventing disorder. Such intervention is both necessary and legitimate given the scale of the event.

The difficulty emerges when religious sensitivity becomes a justification for regulating the environment beyond straightforward public-order concerns. The 2024 controversy over the requirement that eateries along Kanwar routes display the names of their owners is instructive. Uttar Pradesh and other states defended the measures partly by reference to the religious practices and sensitivities of Kanwariyas. The Supreme Court stayed the mandatory owner-name component of the directions while litigation continued. (India Today)

The comparison with the dance controversy is revealing, although it should not be overstated. In one context, the state treated the religious preferences of pilgrims as a significant consideration in regulating businesses along the route. In the other, controversial performances associated with the pilgrimage generated public criticism without, on the publicly available record reviewed here, producing a comparable criminal response.

That does not prove that the state acted unlawfully in either case. It does, however, support a legitimate question: has “religious sentiment” become a selectively powerful political category?

If it has, the problem is not with the protection of religion. The problem is with inconsistency.

The Law Does Not Say “Someone Was Offended, Therefore There Must Be an FIR”

Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, concerns deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage the religious feelings of a class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs. The wording is important. It does not criminalise every act that somebody finds insulting, vulgar or distasteful. The statutory ingredients have to be established, including the requisite intention. (India Code)

That principle has a long judicial history. In Ramji Lal Modi v. State of Uttar Pradesh, the Supreme Court considered the predecessor Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code and recognised its aggravated character. Later decisions have continued to distinguish between subjective offence and conduct satisfying the elements of a criminal provision.

The Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Imran Pratapgarhi v. State of Gujarat provides a contemporary example. The Court examined allegations under Section 299 concerning a poem and associated social-media material and ultimately quashed the proceedings after concluding that the statutory ingredients had not been established. (Supreme Court of India)

The Bombay High Court similarly quashed proceedings involving singer Kailash Kher’s Babam Bam after allegations that its presentation had hurt Hindu religious sentiments. The court found the deliberate intention required for the relevant religious-offence provision absent. (Indian Express)

The broader legal principle is straightforward: being offended is not equivalent to committing a crime. That principle is not a concession to irreverence. It is a requirement of a constitutional criminal-justice system.

Why the FIR Question Matters

An FIR is not merely another form of public criticism. Once criminal proceedings begin, the accused can face investigation, legal costs, reputational harm, professional consequences and potentially arrest. Even when a case eventually collapses, the process can itself impose substantial punishment.

That is why religious-offence provisions require careful application. A law designed to protect communal peace can lose legitimacy if it becomes a mechanism for intimidating unpopular speech or settling cultural disagreements. But the opposite danger is equally real: a genuinely deliberate and criminal religious provocation should not be ignored merely because the accused is politically popular or the controversy is inconvenient.

Consistency is therefore the essential principle. If the statutory ingredients of Section 299 are established, the law should operate; if they are not, an FIR should not be manufactured merely to satisfy public outrage. Where the issue is noise, the applicable noise regulations should be enforced; where it is traffic, traffic law should apply; where procession conditions have been breached, those conditions should be enforced; and where obscenity is alleged, the relevant statutory test should be applied rather than simply reproducing the adjective ‘obscene’ from a headline. That approach protects both religious communities and individual liberty.

The Strange Selectivity of “Hurt Religious Sentiments”

This is ultimately what makes the Kanwar videos politically interesting. India has become accustomed to the rapid escalation of controversies involving alleged religious offence. A statement, joke, poem, song, photograph or video can be followed by a complaint; the complaint can be followed by an FIR; the FIR can become a television debate; political organisations can demand punishment; and the controversy can continue long after the original material has disappeared from public attention.

None of that establishes that the underlying complaint was legally invalid. Some allegations are serious and deserve prosecution. But the phenomenon demonstrates how readily the phrase “hurt religious sentiments” can become the centre of a political controversy.

Against that background, the Kanwar dance footage presents an awkward contrast. Here was a visibly religious setting, an event described by critics as inappropriate and, in some reports, as obscene, yet the publicly available reporting does not establish a corresponding FIR against the performers under a religious-offence provision.

The conclusion should not be that the police were wrong to do nothing. There is insufficient evidence for that claim. The conclusion should be that religious sentiment alone cannot be a reliable measure of criminal liability. If the facts did not establish an offence, then not filing an FIR was the legally appropriate outcome. The same principle should apply whenever the alleged target changes.

Three different things are too often collapsed into one. A person may find conduct offensive; a religious community may condemn it as inappropriate to its traditions; and the state may determine that a legally cognisable offence has occurred. These are not interchangeable propositions. The first is subjective reaction, the second is cultural or religious judgment, and the third requires statutory analysis and evidence. Much of the contemporary debate begins with the first and proceeds as though it had already established the third.

Perhaps the Real Mockery Is Not the Dance

There is a deeper irony in saying that the dancers were mocking religion. The available reporting does not establish such an intention. The performers may have considered themselves entertainers within a religious celebration; the Kanwariyas may have regarded the dancing as festive participation; the organisers may have thought it entirely appropriate. What can be criticised without speculation is the form of the spectacle itself.

Perhaps the more serious concern is that religion is increasingly being performed for an audience. A decorated tractor becomes a stage, the DJ becomes part of the event’s identity, the crowd becomes an audience, the religious image becomes a visual backdrop, the smartphone becomes part of the ritual environment, and the political banner becomes a statement of identity. The resulting public spectacle can remain sincerely religious while also becoming increasingly performative; the two conditions are not mutually exclusive.

That is why the debate deserves more sophistication than either “this is devotional” or “this is anti-religious.” A person can be sincerely devoted and still participate in a ceremony whose public form has been shaped by entertainment and politics. A religious community can genuinely celebrate while also being exposed to commercial and political incentives that change the character of the event.

Religion, Politics and the Business of Visibility

Once a religion becomes politically valuable, visibility becomes a form of currency. Participation at a major religious event can communicate solidarity. Religious imagery can become a political brand. Political parties can compete to demonstrate that they understand or defend a particular religious constituency. The event itself therefore acquires a political economy.

This is not necessarily unique to one political party, one state or one religion. It is a general feature of identity politics. But the Kanwar Yatra is particularly suited to it because it is large, visually distinctive and highly concentrated in time and place. It creates a public stage on which political affiliation can be displayed.

The problem is not merely that politics enters religion. Politics has entered religious life throughout history. The more important concern is what happens when political incentives begin to shape the public appearance of religion. If the most politically useful elements are the largest crowds, the strongest slogans, the most dramatic visual symbols and the clearest demonstrations of group identity, then those are the elements most likely to be amplified.

The Religious Question That Politics Cannot Answer

There is therefore a question that neither police officers nor politicians can answer on behalf of believers: what should devotion look like?

A devout Hindu may believe that dancing to devotional music is an entirely legitimate expression of faith. Another may believe that a public performance of the kind seen in the Basti footage is inconsistent with the dignity of the Kanwar Yatra. Neither view should automatically become a criminal-law proposition.

The appropriate response to such disagreement is discussion, criticism and, where appropriate, regulation under ordinary law. It is not the automatic conversion of cultural disagreement into criminal accusation.

Religious communities should be able to police their own norms socially without requiring the police to police every disagreement criminally. That distinction is healthy for religion as well as for the state.

A tradition becomes more resilient when its adherents can say, “This does not represent what we believe,” without needing the state to declare the opposing behaviour a crime.

What Happens When Everyone Else Has Another Objective?

The devotee is perhaps the only participant in this ecosystem whose objective cannot easily be measured. Politicians can measure votes, businesses can measure revenue, media organisations can measure traffic, social-media platforms can measure engagement and event organisers can measure attendance. Religious devotion itself is largely invisible, which creates an imbalance in the public presentation of faith: what can be counted and displayed tends to dominate what cannot.

The loudest procession can be measured, the largest gathering can be photographed, the most elaborate truck can be filmed and the most controversial dance can go viral. The depth of a person’s prayer, the discipline of a pilgrim and the personal transformation that religious practice is supposed to produce are far harder to display. This does not make the visible aspects of religion meaningless; it means only that visibility should not be mistaken for spiritual substance.

What Is the Pilgrimage For?

That may ultimately be the question that matters most.

If the Kanwar Yatra is fundamentally a pilgrimage, then its public form should remain connected to the pilgrimage’s spiritual purpose. Music can support that purpose. Dance can support it. Celebration can support it. Commerce can support the infrastructure required to undertake it. Technology can document it. Politicians can acknowledge the religious community.

But none of these things should become so dominant that the reason for the journey becomes difficult to see.

The pilgrim undertakes the journey for a reason. The sacred water has a purpose. The offering has a purpose. The discipline has a purpose. The religious symbolism has a purpose.

If the dominant public image becomes the DJ, the performer, the political banner, the giant vehicle and the viral video, the question is not whether the event is still technically religious. It plainly is. The question is whether religion remains the central purpose or has become the framework within which several other interests conduct their business.

Perhaps the Real Threat Is Not an Insult From Outside

Modern political discussion often imagines that religion is endangered primarily by outsiders—critics, atheists, artists, comedians, rival religious groups or hostile political actors. Those threats can certainly be real in individual circumstances, and deliberate religious persecution, incitement or targeted attempts to provoke communal hostility should be taken seriously. But there is another, less obvious way in which religion can be diminished: not by people who oppose it, but by people and institutions that discover that it is useful to them. Religion can be weakened not only by hostility toward it, but also by its usefulness to everyone else.

Politics can use religion to mobilise voters and construct political identity; commerce can use it to create markets and sell products and services; media organisations can use it to attract attention; social-media platforms can convert religious controversy into engagement; organisers can derive status and influence from large religious gatherings; and activists can mobilise supporters around religious identity. None of these uses necessarily requires hostility toward religion, and none is automatically illegitimate. The concern arises when so many external interests begin drawing value from a religious tradition that the tradition’s own spiritual purpose becomes increasingly subordinate to the purposes others assign to it.

Once religion becomes sufficiently useful, religious symbolism becomes a valuable public resource. Political actors can associate themselves with it to establish cultural legitimacy; businesses can surround it with commercial activity; media organisations can package it into compelling stories; and digital platforms can reward the most emotionally provocative manifestations of it. The danger, therefore, is not necessarily that anyone has decided to destroy religion. It may be that everyone has discovered a reason to use it. What begins as participation can become appropriation, and what begins as religious visibility can gradually become a form of cultural extraction in which the political system takes identity and electoral value, commerce takes revenue, the media takes attention, and the digital economy takes engagement.

What remains for the devotee is the original spiritual purpose, but that purpose is often the least visible and least commercially or politically useful part of the entire process. Personal discipline does not produce the same spectacle as a giant procession; quiet prayer does not generate the same engagement as a provocative video; and inward religious transformation is almost impossible to display. The devotee should therefore perhaps be the most questioning participant in the spectacle—not necessarily because the procession is false, but because sincerity can coexist with a public environment increasingly organised around interests that are not primarily spiritual. The important question is whether the machinery surrounding devotion continues to serve devotion, or whether devotion is gradually being asked to serve the machinery.

The Sarcasm Has a Point

The title’s sentence—“No Religious Sentiments Were Hurt, So No FIR Was Filed”—is deliberately sarcastic. It should not be mistaken for a factual statement attributed to the Basti police, nor should the absence of a reported FIR be presented as proof that the authorities concluded that nobody’s religious sentiments had been offended. The available reports reviewed for this article do not establish that police publicly explained the absence of an FIR in those terms. The phrase is therefore used as a rhetorical device to draw attention to a broader question: why does the language of “hurt religious sentiments” sometimes acquire such immediate political and legal force, while conduct occurring within the setting of a religious pilgrimage can attract criticism yet apparently remain outside a comparable criminal framework?

The answer should not be to demand an FIR in the latter case simply to create symmetry. Criminal law is not a mechanism for balancing headlines or equalising political reactions. If the facts do not disclose a cognizable offence, the absence of an FIR is entirely consistent with the rule of law. What deserves scrutiny is the standard applied before criminal proceedings are initiated. A religious controversy should not become a criminal case merely because a sufficient number of people are offended, just as genuine criminal conduct should not escape scrutiny merely because it occurs within a religious gathering or involves participants claiming religious sanction.

The appropriate principle is therefore the same legal standard everywhere. If the statutory ingredients of Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita are established—including the deliberate and malicious intention required by the provision—the matter should be investigated in accordance with law. If those ingredients are absent, an FIR should not be manufactured simply to satisfy public anger or political pressure. Where the actual issue is noise, the applicable noise regulations should be enforced; where it is traffic or unsafe procession practices, the relevant rules should apply; where a lawful procession condition has been breached, that condition should be enforced; and where obscenity is alleged, the relevant statutory test should be applied rather than treating a media description such as “obscene” as though it were itself a legal finding. Such an approach protects religious communities from genuine criminal insult while also protecting individuals from the conversion of subjective offence, cultural disagreement or political outrage into criminal liability.

That distinction is particularly important in a country as religiously and politically diverse as India. Being offended, condemning conduct and establishing a criminal offence are three different things. A believer may regard a performance as disrespectful without the conduct satisfying Section 299. A community may condemn something as inconsistent with its religious traditions without asking the criminal law to intervene. Conversely, an act that deliberately and maliciously satisfies the statutory requirements should not be excused merely because it is presented as satire, art, entertainment or political expression. The legitimacy of the law depends upon maintaining that distinction consistently, regardless of the identity of the accused, the religion involved or the political usefulness of the controversy.

Less Spectacle, More Devotion

The Kanwar Yatra can evolve without losing its meaning. It can remain joyful, colourful and communal while preserving its character as a religious pilgrimage. Music and dancing need not be enemies of devotion, nor does the participation of transgender people make a religious gathering less religious. The critical question is whether celebration remains connected to worship or becomes principally an exercise in public performance.

The videos from Basti, Baghpat and other locations during the 2025 Kanwar season should therefore be read neither as proof that religion has disappeared nor as evidence that every participant has abandoned devotion. They are better understood as windows into a changing public culture in which religion, entertainment, commerce, media and politics increasingly occupy the same physical and digital space. That convergence raises difficult but legitimate questions: who is the pilgrimage ultimately for; what role should entertainment play in it; how much of the spectacle is devotional and how much performative; how much is organic and how much is commercially incentivised; and how much of its increasingly visible public character is religious expression and how much is political branding? None of these questions has an easy partisan answer, and none requires dismissing the sincerity of the millions who participate.

A religion that has survived for centuries does not need a giant speaker system to prove its strength, just as a devotee does not need an audience to make a prayer meaningful or a sacred journey to become more sacred because it is filmed, circulated and debated. Perhaps the more uncomfortable possibility is that the most serious challenge to religion is not always the person who mocks it from outside, but the politician who discovers that religion can produce votes, the entrepreneur who discovers that devotion can produce revenue, the media organisation that discovers that controversy can produce clicks, the platform that discovers that outrage can produce engagement, or even the religious community itself when it begins to confuse the visibility of devotion with the substance of devotion.

The issue, ultimately, is not whether someone danced. It is whether, beneath the dancers, the DJ trucks, the political banners, the cameras and the ensuing outrage, the pilgrimage still remembers why the pilgrim began the journey in the first place. The strongest defence of religious tradition may not lie in making the pilgrimage louder, more political or more spectacular, but in preserving the distinction between what is sacred and what merely attracts attention: less spectacle, less political branding, less manufactured outrage, and more devotion.