Based on my recently published book, this talk narrates histories of Hindu social life through individual actors, autobiographical narratives, and genres in the Hindi print-public culture of early twentieth century North India. It focuses on four fascinating figures – Santram BA (1887-1998), an anticaste crusader who advocated intercaste marriages and wrote on sexological matters; Yashoda Devi (1890-1942), a pioneering woman Ayurvedic practitioner who specialised in female health and household recipes; Swami Satyadev Parivrajak (1879-1961), a maverick travel writer whose work reflects early traces of a muscular Hindu nation; and Satyabhakt (1896-1985), a Left journalist who sought to bridge Hinduism and communism. While marginalised from canonical histories and literatures, these public intellectuals were extremely popular in their time. They harboured vernacular dreams of freedom through their vantage points of caste, Ayurveda, travel, and communism, while also forging new registers of Hindi and Hindu belonging. Opening up a vast and under-explored Hindi archive, and offering fresh insights into Hindu identity formation, the talk disrupts monolithic signposts and totalising perspectives. Instead, it presents a dynamic spectacle of a plural Hindi Hindu universe of facets that coexisted, and challenged each other.