Why some names have asterisks.

When we started building Indiagram Conversations, the easiest names to add were the ancient ones — Chanakya, Marcus Aurelius, Sun Tzu, Confucius, Lao Tzu. Their writings are public domain, their followers don't have lawyers, and nobody is going to send us an angry email about misrepresenting the Stoic emperor.

Then we got to Krishna. And Rama. And Hanuman.

The deity problem

These figures occupy a different cultural register. For hundreds of millions of people, they aren't historical — they're divine, present, real in a way that Chanakya simply isn't. Putting "Krishna" on a chat product as if he's an AI you can banter with felt wrong. Not legally wrong, necessarily — but humanly wrong.

We could have avoided the problem by only doing historical figures. But that's a poorer product. People genuinely want to talk to Krishna. They want to ask the Bhagavad Gita questions. To refuse to make any of this would have been overly cautious.

The asterisk as a small gesture

So we landed on the asterisk. "Krishna*" — with the small typographical mark that signals: this is not the real Krishna, this is our representation. A footnote built into the name itself.

The asterisk does a few things at once. It's a legal hedge — we're not claiming to be Krishna. It's a cultural humility signal — we're saying we know we're not Krishna. It's a conversation starter — every person who sees it wonders why it's there. And it's a small piece of brand identity that travels with the name wherever it goes.

Who gets one

We've drawn a simple line: deity-tier figures get asterisks. Historical figures, even very famous ones, don't. Chanakya was real. Marcus Aurelius was real. Sun Tzu was probably real. They get to be themselves.

Krishna is something else. The asterisk acknowledges that without diminishing it.

The risk of overdoing it

We thought about putting asterisks on everyone — a kind of universal humility. But that would have made the asterisk meaningless. If everyone has one, no one has one. By reserving it for the moments when it matters, we make it count.

What it doesn't do

The asterisk doesn't fix everything. Some people will still find any AI representation of Krishna unacceptable, and that's a position we respect. Our takedown page exists for exactly this — we review every request seriously.

The asterisk also doesn't replace good judgement. We still write careful system prompts. We still refuse certain types of questions. We still cite sources. The asterisk is the visible 5% of the work. The other 95% happens in the curation.

If you don't like it

That's fair. Some people will find the asterisk irreverent. Others will find it overly cautious. We landed where we landed because we think it's the most honest small gesture we can make.

Tell us what you think: info@indiagram.in.