When singer Kailash Kher made a startling revelation about 'Data' and ‘RAM,’ social media exploded, and the joke quickly went viral. In a way, Kher himself became data. He was stored, shared and was continuously disseminated between feeds. Of course, his moment of levity will keep the Internet engaged for days, unless he is randomly accessed by another memory.
He said that the term ‘data’ of computing is essentially Hindi-Sanskrit ‘data which literally means giver and ‘RAM’ is none other than Lord Rama. With a cheeky smile, Kher delicately asked, ‘Can any computer function without RAM and data?’ More than a pun, the comment was a subtle glimpse of India's religious impact even on technology and science. It is a warning that faith and computation are not as distant as they may appear.
One may write off the comment purely as a harmless gag, but such linguistic oddities have the power to gag rationality in the long run. They play a definite role in how people interpret politics, technology and even the past. They show how theology and technology can have happy marriage in translation.
Thus, Kher's one-liner serves as a doorway into a larger world of linguistic absurdity, where mistranslation not only poses as revelation but also has the capacity to incite violent riots via laughter riot. After all, in India, technology is footnoted to primordialism.
The core of India's multilingualism is wordplay. What starts out as a quirk, something we find funny in Bollywood songs or commercials, slowly permeates everyday discourse. We ourselves become the wordplay without even knowing. Like the preamble, we, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute ourselves into a serious nation, end up securing for us- wordplay.
The impact is further amplified when cultural icons publicly employ these quirks as wisdom. Their fanbase amplifies the situation, transforming it into a widely shared discourse. Remember, even spiritual gurus in India have fan bases greater than the populations of some of European countries.
Kher's past is relevant here. He rose to prominence as a devotional singer, performing Sufi-influenced songs such as Allah ke Bande Hans De (Seeker of God, Smile). He later became a singing ambassador for Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement before gradually pandering to the idea of cultural nationalism.
His use of the phrases ‘Data’ and ‘RAM’ is not a passing remark; rather, it is an attempt to integrate ‘Hindu spirituality’ into the architecture of digital modernity. Given that our electronic devices rely on Data and RAM (read it as Lord Rama the Giver), he suggested that India's spiritual linguistic journey has already been incorporated into Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and ongoing Web 3.0. It is inextricably tied to, or at least correlates with, the rise of the Right Wing.
Ironically, the song Allah ke Bande carries within it a haunting line: ‘Toota toota ek parinda, aise toota ki kabhi jud na paya’ (a bird is so broken that it can’t be healed.) In many ways, this line encapsulates the existential condition of the Indian society in post-liberalisation era. It speaks not only of individual despair but of a collective fragmentation that cannot easily be undone. Along with the insertion of Allah in the song, the song becomes even more ironical for the Muslims in India. Their laughter gone, their wings clipped.
The mélange of technology and theology is nothing new. In India, metaphors have always sailed between circuitry and scripture. Take the example of cloud. To engineers, it is a dispersed network of distant servers. To everyday users, however, it becomes ‘the heavenly storehouse,’ or simply God’s system. At such moments, the line blurs between ‘your soul is safe in heaven’ and ‘your data is safe in the cloud,’ collapsing divine assurance into digital promise.
Motivational speakers frequently proclaim that ‘God is the ultimate server; humans are his clients.’ Server here simply means Seva (Service) of Indic Languages.
Similarly, Login and Logout connote birth and death. Whatsapp Gyan makes it even more convincing - sins are like viruses, karma is like a bug and meditation is like antivirus software. God is the global programmer, the earth is his software and people are his apps.
Any malfunctions in one's life are caused by a bug in the code, which can only be fixed by divine upgrades. Here, the absurd is not random; rather, it is an ordered memory that keeps resurfacing whenever Indians come across a new technological terminology and incorporate it into an older theological context.
Absurdities in etymology, where words are forced to take on Sanskritic forms while losing their global roots, extend beyond puns. Australia is a well-known illustration. Often it becomes Astralaya (armoury). This insight was made by the well-known spiritual teacher Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Anga-lok, or the world of body parts, is how Whatsapp Groups refer to England.
In Vedantic thinking, the internet is Antar Jaal, or literally ‘inner net.’ It also resonates with Maya Jaal (the illusionary web of worldly reality). Google has been compared to a cow's throat or Gau-Gala.
The humour is clear, but it also highlights a deeper truth. These are not philological mistakes, but cultural reimagining. Translation in India is about reabsorption rather than faithfulness. Even if the outcome is obviously ridiculous, words must be reintegrated into Indic genealogy; they cannot stay foreign. Therefore, Indic languages must become the linguistic womb if the foreigners have to be taught a lesson.
Absurdities like these are not pure fun. They are a part of broader initiatives to claim cultural superciliousness and integrate modernity into a Hindu past. For many years, Gurus and politicians have asserted that ancient India already possessed nuclear weapons (Brahmastra), aeroplanes (Pushpaka Vimana), and television (Sanjaya recounting the Mahabharata battlefield). Why shouldn't ‘Data’ and ‘RAM’ be ‘Lord Rama the Giver?’
The ideological purpose of these translations is to assert a timeless Indic ownership of modern science while erasing its global roots. The absurdity is intentional rather than coincidental. It gives the impression that nothing is unfamiliar because Sanskrit texts have already foreseen everything.
Indian English is an ideal setting for this ideological performance because of its dual meanings and hybrid syntax.
The seriousness of such puns is what elevates the issue beyond a humorous setting. What starts as a joke in WhatsApp groups soon turns into knowledge. When repeated frequently enough, it takes on the appearance of veracity. It is cited by politicians, repeated by educators and thoughtfully debated by television anchors.
Thus, the ridiculousness of Indian English oscillates between satire and seriousness. Mistranslation is where they start, but spirituality is where they finish. The real inanity is not that there are puns like this, but rather that they are sanctified by repetition until they are accepted as common sense.
The comment made by Kailash Kher regarding data and RAM is a cultural symptom, a political assertion and a philosophy. The absurdities that combine technology and theology, mistranslation and revelation, are the epitome of how Indian English flourishes.
Indian English is a language carnival where mistranslation is not failure but identity-making, from clouds that represent skies to servers that represent divine service, from Australia reborn as Astralaya to RAM revived as Rama.
These follies are more than just quirks. They are a part of a broader ideological endeavour that aims to remove the global by proclaiming the primordial and to integrate modernity back into a past. However, they also provide witness to the playful tenacity of Indian English, a language that insists on absurdist invention and defies imperial rationale.
Maybe we are living in an Age of Absurdism rather than a Renaissance or Enlightenment. Whether India can continue to function on the limitless energy of mistranslation without crashing its cultural hard drive is the question, not whether computers can function without RAM and Data.
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