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Dhruv Rathee
Indian influencer and social media activist (born 1994) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Dhruv Rathee[c] (born 8 October 1994) is an Indian influencer and social media activist based in Berlin, Germany. He is known for his YouTube videos on social, political, and environmental issues. As of June 2025, he has over 36 million subscribers and 7 billion views across all of his channels.
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Early life and education
Rathee was born into a Haryanvi Hindu family in the Indian state of Haryana. He completed his primary education in Haryana before pursuing higher education in Germany. He then completed his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, followed by a master's degree in renewable energy from the same institution.[2][3]
Career
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Rathee is mainly known for his political videos,[4] which mainly contain fact-checking and explanatory content.[5] According to ThePrint, Rathee was one of the first Indian users to use YouTube as a political platform. He began uploading travel videos in 2013, but by the end of the year, he shifted his focus towards political and social topics.[6]
Alongside his serious content, Rathee launched Pee News, a satirical "fake news" segment.[7] Additionally, from 2017 until early 2020, Rathee wrote opinion columns for ThePrint.[8] Dhruv's coverage of the 2018 BJP-AAP scuffle was considered to be one-sided.[9]
In July 2020, Rathee began another YouTube channel called Dhruv Rathee Vlogs, where he shares his international travel vlogs. In addition to his travel vlogs, Rathee hosts various shows, including DW Travel of Deutsche Welle and Decode with Dhruv of Netflix India.[10] He also hosts a podcast on Spotify called Maha Bharat with Dhruv Rathee.[11]
As of February 2022[update], Rathee began a shorts channel to share 30-seconds fact videos. The channel offers a quick and accessible way for viewers to engage with the information Rathee presents.[12] In September 2022, he faced controversy when a video he posted about the political crisis in Pakistan was blocked by India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The ministry claimed that the video contained a distorted map of India, in which parts of Kashmir were depicted as part of Pakistan or "disputed".[13] In March 2023, he also faced copyright charges from Dabur on his video titled "The dark-side of cold drinks". In an order, the Calcutta high court ordered social media platforms to remove the video.[14]
On 18 April 2024, Rathee announced five new YouTube channels focusing to publish dubbed videos in five Indian regional languages, which includes Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, and Kannada.[15]
Following the Pahalgam terrorist attack in April 2025, Rathee was the subject of backlash when Pakistani news channels aired clips of his video which criticized the Indian government's security failures; Rathee claimed that the clips were misused.[16]
In May 2025, he faced controversy from the Sikh community for posting an AI-generated thumbnail in a newly titled video, "The Rise of Sikhs," which primarily focused on the first Sikh ruler, Banda Singh Bahadur. The video received widespread condemnation from the Sikh community, including the SGPC President, for depicting AI-generated visuals of the Sikh gurus. Sikh principles and code of conduct strictly prohibit any visual representation or movement of the Sikh gurus or their families. Following the strong objections from sections of the Sikh community, Dhruv eventually took down the video.[17]
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Views
Rathee supported the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and their candidate Narendra Modi in the 2014 general election. However, later on, he became highly critical of Modi's government and the right-wing to far-right Hindutva ideology in general after being influenced by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)'s campaigns.[18]
Personal life
Rathee is a resident of Germany. In November 2021, Rathee married his long-time partner Juli Lbr at the Belvedere Palace, in Vienna, Austria.[19] Their first child was born in September 2024.[20][21]
In media
In 2023, Rathee was included in TIME Magazine's list of Next Generation Leaders.[22][5]
Notes
- Hindi pronunciation: [d̪ʰrʊʋ raːʈʰiː]
References
External links
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