Indian TikTok ban leaves its rural video stars without a voice, looking for income and a new platform
- The Chinese social media app TikTok is hugely popular in India and has made video stars of a number of the poor and marginalised
- Since the Indian ban on Chinese apps, these unlikely celebrities have lost their voice, their income and even their self-confidence
About a year ago, Sangita Gaikwad’s teenage daughter Mona introduced her to TikTok. Like many first-time users of the quirky video-sharing app, Gaikwad, a homemaker in a farming village in western India, was baffled.
What would she want with an infinite stream of 15-second clips showing strangers dancing, lip-synching and re-enacting memes on their phones?
But when Mona insisted, Gaikwad, a wisecracking 35-year-old who once dreamed of becoming a TV actress, started uploading her own short videos. One day she posted a lighthearted clip of herself as she was heading to the market to buy mutton. The video was viewed 100,000 times.
Gaikwad didn’t understand it, but she was on her way to becoming another unlikely star in the huge, highly addictive and often mystifying universe of TikTok, the Chinese-made app whose popularity has skyrocketed worldwide.
Nowhere is this truer than in India, TikTok’s biggest international market, where its 200 million users include many villagers, LGBTQ Indians and others from marginalised backgrounds, for whom the app was a source of joy, self-respect, income – and even a measure of fame.