Mumbai
Outside the aircraft hangar-sized venue, the crowd of Gen Z office workers and teenagers is thickening. Event staff scan QR codes and fasten wristbands. Friends take selfies together as they wait in a queue. As night falls, the doors open and the nearly 5,000 attendees walk in.
Inside the venue in India’s commercial hub Mumbai they remove their shoes and sit cross-legged on the floor. The lights dim. In the front row, a young mother rocks her baby on her shoulders, waiting for the music to begin.
When it comes, it’s not thumping electro or pop lyrics that boom through the speakers, but centuries-old Hindu devotional songs more commonly heard in a temple or religious procession.
As the music builds, entire sections of the crowd rise to their feet, clapping, chanting and dancing together. The atmosphere is ecstatic. But there’s not a whiff of marijuana, nor is anyone boozing. In fact, the organizers have expressly banned alcohol and drugs from the event – and the attendees wouldn’t have it any other way.
Welcome to “Bhajan clubbing,” a fast-growing trend that’s seeing young Indians gather to lose themselves – soberly – in another iteration of the “sober curious” events or “coffee raves” that are growing in popularity in Europe and America, as Gen Z across the world increasingly turn their backs on drugs and alcohol.
After two wholesome hours of singing and chanting, the crowds file out in happy groups.
It was the first “Bhajan clubbing” concert Jill Veera, 25, had been too. She says she’d go again.
“A concert that can actually bring you towards God, it was tremendous, amazing,” she told CNN.
“At most concerts, smoking, vaping, alcohol is natural,” she said afterwards. “But coming here and sipping buttermilk, that was my alcohol.”
The hymns themselves are not new. Bhajans are a centuries-old form of devotional singing performed in temples, religious processions and community spaces across India, often free of charge.
What is new is the setting: ticketed events held in large venues, complete with smoke machines, giant LED screens and the kind of production usually associated with clubbing and concerts.
“The theatrics speak to us,” said 26-year-old Dhwani Paradia, who attended a recent gathering with her younger sister. “The smoke, the fire effects, the beat of the music, those are things our generation relates to.”
Her sister, 23-year-old Fiyoni Paradia, said the staging felt familiar to audiences raised on electronic music festivals and concert culture. “Even the backdrops felt similar to techno concerts,” she said. “So even that attracts Gen Z crowds.”
At the center of the movement is Backstage Siblings, a performer duo who have been singing bhajans since they were children, and who have built a following across India’s major cities coding these century-old bhajans in Gen Z’s language.
India’s Gen Z are into a new kind of clubbing and it’s more prayer than party
Raghav Agarwal, one half of the duo, tells CNN that they have a message: “Alcohol and clubbing are two different things. Alcohol is being intoxicated, clubbing is enjoying yourself.”
Clubbers “can come here with their grandparents, with their friends, with their parents, their dates,” adds his sister and fellow performer Prachi Agarwal.
The trend has grown large enough to attract backing from Saregama, one of India’s oldest music labels. And online, the format travels well. Videos from these gatherings showing chanting crowds beneath concert lights, audience members crying, hugging strangers and dancing barefoot have racked up millions of views online.
Supporters argue that the gatherings represent a form of devotion untethered from rigid rituals and the gatekeeping normally associated with temples or religious processions.
Some critics on social media counter that the gatherings risk turning spirituality into spectacle, performance and commodity all at once.
India’s religious and spiritual economy was estimated at roughly $58 billion in 2025, and is projected to grow steadily over the next decade.
The “Bhajan clubbing” movement has also unfolded against the backdrop of a broader political shift in India, where Hindu symbolism and religious identity have become increasingly visible in public life – at the expense, critics say, of the secular ideals laid down by its modern founders.
Leaders from India’s ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have publicly praised bhajan clubbing gatherings. In an address expressing his approval of the trend, Modi said it was “heartening” how Gen Z had adopted bhajans into their lifestyle without compromising the “dignity and purity” of the songs.
Nikunj Gupta, who organizes these events through his company Sanatana Journey, says the audience is overwhelmingly young: college students, recent graduates and early-career professionals searching for connection in rapidly changing urban environments.
“People have so much anxiety and stress,” Gupta said. “People feel relief when they come to such places.”
With an average age of 29, India has one of the world’s youngest populations. Its young people are increasingly educated and ambitious but many are frustrated over fierce competition for limited jobs. Recent allegations of irregularities in government recruitment exams have only deepened frustrations among some young Indians.
For a few hours, bhajan gatherings offer an escape from those pressures. As thousands sing, clap and chant together, attendees describe a feeling of bliss and belonging, a chance to step outside the pressures of work, studies and an increasingly competitive society.
Similar gatherings are now appearing across Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, while versions of the format have begun surfacing overseas in countries including Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
“Instead of feeling stressed or getting a hangover, they are feeling a sense of calm,” says Gupta of Sanatana Journey. “And I think that is why so many more young people are becoming a part of something like this.”
In the happy afterglow of the “Backstage Siblings” concert in Mumbai, Fiyoni Paradia said she’d encourage others to come and see a concert.
“I think spirituality comes to everyone in their own different way so this is something you can try out to see whether this is what feels like your fit to get in touch with that side.”
Her cousin Heta Solanki is more emphatic:
“Start going once, you will get attached to it… it’s very fun.”