When Wikipedia defines fandom as “a subculture composed of fans who share a common interest,” it sounds like a very modern thing. A word for a generation that grew up with Marvel, K-pop, and Reddit threads. But if you apply that definition to India, the idea of fandom is as old as our popular culture. We just didn’t use the word.Growing up here, you didn’t need the internet to understand what a fandom looked like. You only had to glance at a theatre on the opening day of a Rajinikanth release. Fans dancing in front of screens, pouring milk on cutouts, treating a star like a deity; these weren’t isolated gestures; they were rituals. For decades, that energy existed across India’s film industries, from Bollywood to Tollywood, long before Comic Cons and hashtags. We even have a word for it: “jabra (die-hard)”.Cricket carried the same fever. Fans lived inside it. Streets went silent when Sachin Tendulkar batted. Entire colonies gathered around a single television set during a World Cup match. Stadiums turned into carnivals of painted faces, drums, slogans, flags, and chants that became part of the game’s soundtrack. If fandom is about a community built on shared passion, Indian cricket fans wrote that playbook years before the IPL turned it into a product.Also read | What is the ‘dead internet theory’ everyone’s talking about? Is it real?Even outside the obvious giants of cinema and cricket, fandom had its forms. Cartoonist R K Laxman’s “Common Man” was a national companion. Generations waited for his daily appearance in a popular daily, and his silence often said more than any editorial. Ruskin Bond’s readers still line up at the Cambridge Book Depot in Mussoorie to get their copies signed, decades into his career. Children’s magazines like Tinkle or Champak sustained mini-fandoms, where readers debated characters like Suppandi or Tantri the Mantri with the same enthusiasm that kids today reserve for anime or gaming.So if fandom has always existed here, what changed?Everywhere, everything, all at onceThe obvious answer is the internet. For decades, fandom in India was local, physical, and often bound to geography. You joined a fan club through a friend. You wrote letters to stars. You mailed in contest coupons. But the internet flattened that distance. Suddenly, fans of a Japanese manga or a Korean boy band could find each other across cities. Platforms like Orkut, then Facebook, then Twitter and Instagram, gave fandom a voice, an identity, and a scale it never had before.Premium Read | Our bodies are not good enough, and the other lies social media sells usThat shift also diversified what fans could rally around. It wasn’t just movies and cricket anymore. Streaming opened India to global pop culture — Marvel, DC, anime, K-dramas. Gaming exploded, first through consoles, then PUBG, then BGMI and Valorant. Esports arenas in India now fill up the way cricket stadiums once did, with fans cheering for players as passionately as they did for Sachin or Dhoni.The key insight is this: India didn’t suddenly discover fandom in the last decade. What changed is that fans themselves became creators. Earlier, you expressed fandom by showing up at theatres, stadiums, book signings. Today, you also create. Fan art. Fan fiction. Cosplay. Edits. Podcasts. Discord communities. You keep the story alive between releases. You fill in the gaps, remix the narrative, sometimes even push studios or publishers to listen. When fans in India demanded better subtitles for anime streams or when gaming creators lobbied to bring BGMI back after its ban, they were consuming and shaping.The commodification of fandomStory continues below this adAnother shift is how fandom has become visible outside its own circle. Brands now chase it. The Labubu collectible craze in India is a recent example: a vinyl toy line that would’ve once been niche suddenly turned into queues, resales, and Instagram timelines filled with tiny furry creatures. That’s fandom energy moving mainstream. Or consider the global recognition of RRR. Its Oscar win was the result of an organised, passionate, noisy fan push online; much of it powered by Indian diaspora communities acting like a global fandom army.What this means is that fandom in India is no longer background noise to popular culture; it is the culture. The audience doesn’t just consume; they dictate what survives. A film, a show, a game, even a meme, lives or dies on the strength of its fandom.Fresh Take | Off the gram: Why more celebrities are choosing to disappear from social mediaIf you have been paying attention, the signs were always there. From the letter-writing fan clubs of the 70s to kids mailing Suppandi jokes to Tinkle, from cricket slogans in packed stadiums to today’s anime cosplay competitions at conventions, the passion has always been the same. Only the platforms have changed.So when people talk about India “becoming” a fandom country, I don’t think that’s accurate. We have always been one. We just finally have the vocabulary and the visibility to call it what it is.Story continues below this adAnd maybe that’s the biggest evolution: fandom is no longer a side effect of culture. It’s the main event.Jatin Varma is founder, Comic Con India