mumbai —
Outside the venue, which is the size of an airplane hangar, a growing crowd of Gen Z office workers and teenagers has gathered. Event staff will scan the QR code and wear a wristband. Friends take selfies together while waiting in line. At night, the doors open and nearly 5,000 attendees enter.
Inside the venue in Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, they take off their shoes and sit cross-legged on the floor. The lighting will be dimmed. In the front row, a young mother waits for the music to start, her baby on her shoulder.
Instead of thumping electro or pop lyrics, what comes out of the speakers are centuries-old Hindu devotional songs often heard at temples and religious processions.
As the music swells, everyone in the audience stands up, clap, sing, and dance along. The atmosphere is ecstatic. However, there is no smell of marijuana and no one is drinking alcohol. In fact, organizers explicitly prohibit alcohol and drugs from the event, and attendees have no other option.
Welcome to the Bajan Club. It’s a fast-growing trend that sees young Indians coming together to lose themselves sober at “sober curious” events or another iteration of the “coffee rave” as Gen Z around the world increasingly turns away from drugs and alcohol.
After two hours of wholesome singing and chanting, the crowd filed out in happy groups.
It was also 25-year-old Jill Villa’s first Bajan Club concert. She wants to go again.
“It was a concert that actually brought me closer to God. It was amazing and amazing,” she told CNN.
“Smoking, vaping and alcohol are par for the course at most concerts,” she said afterward. “But when I came here and drank buttermilk, that was my alcohol.”
The hymn itself is not new. Bhajans are a form of devotional singing performed for centuries in temples, religious processions, and community spaces across India, often for free.
What’s new is its settings. It’s a ticketed event held in a large venue, complete with smoke machines, giant LED screens, and the kind of production typically associated with clubs and concerts.
“Theatre speaks to us,” said Dhwani Palladia, 26, who attended a recent rally with her sister. “Smoke, fire effects, the beat of music, those are things that our generation can relate to.”
Her sister, Fiyoni Palladia, 23, said the production felt familiar to an audience raised on electronic music festivals and concert culture. “Even the background felt like a techno concert,” she said. “So even that attracts the Gen Z crowd.”
At the heart of this movement is a performer duo called Backstage Siblings, who have been singing bhajans since childhood and have built a following in major Indian cities by coding these century-old bhajans in the language of Gen Z.
India’s Gen Zers are into a new kind of clubbing, and it’s more prayer than party.
Raghav Agarwal, one half of the duo, told CNN: “Alcohol and clubbing are two different things. Alcohol is about getting drunk, clubbing is about having fun.”
Clubbers “can come here with their grandparents, with their friends, with their parents, with their dates,” added his sister and fellow performer Prachi Agarwal.
The trend has grown big enough to garner support from Saregama, one of India’s oldest music labels. And online, this format comes across well. Videos of these gatherings, in which crowds sang together under concert lights and audience members cried, hugged strangers and danced barefoot, racked up millions of views online.
Supporters argue that the gatherings represent a form of faith free from the rigid rituals and gatekeeping typically associated with temples and religious processions.
Some critics on social media counter that the gathering risks turning spirituality into a spectacle, a performance and a commodity all at once.
India’s religious and spiritual economy is estimated to be around $58 billion in 2025 and is expected to grow steadily over the next decade.
The “bhajan club” movement also develops against a backdrop of broader political changes in India, where Hindu symbolism and religious identity have become increasingly prominent in public life, critics say, at the expense of the secular ideals set by modern day founders.
Leaders of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have publicly praised the Bhajan Club rally. In a speech expressing support for this trend, Prime Minister Modi said it was “encouraging” to see Gen Z incorporating 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 looking to connect in a rapidly changing urban environment.
“People are dealing with so much anxiety and stress,” says Gupta. “People feel safe when they come to a place like this.”
With an average age of 29 years, India has one of the youngest populations in the world. The country’s young people are becoming increasingly educated and ambitious, but many are frustrated by the intense competition for limited jobs. Recent allegations of fraud in government recruitment exams have deepened the dissatisfaction of some young Indians.
A few hours of bhajan gatherings offer a reprieve from that pressure. As thousands of people sing, clap and chant together, participants describe a sense of bliss, a sense of belonging and a chance to escape the pressures of work, study and an increasingly competitive society.
Similar rallies are now being held across Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, and versions of the format are starting to appear overseas, including in Australia, the US and the UK.
“Instead of feeling stressed or hungover, they feel calm,” says Sanatana Journey’s Gupta. “I think that’s why more young people are getting involved in activities like this.”
In the happy afterglow of the ‘Backstage Siblings’ concert in Mumbai, Fiyoni Palladia said she would encourage others to come and see the concert.
“I think spirituality feels different to different people, so this is something you can try to see if you feel like you’re right to tap into that side.”
Her cousin Heta Solanki is even more emphatic:
“Once you start coming here, you start to feel attached to it…It’s so much fun.”
