TikTok Website Access in India Fuels Talk of Possible Return After 5 Years

Is TikTok returning in India? After its site inexplicably became accessible to some people without a virtual private network, people are talking about the short-video app, which was banned in June 2020.

This surprise is observed on August 22, 2025, five years after India had blocked TikTok along with 58 other Chinese apps over national security and privacy reasons following the Galwan Valley clash on the border.

However, TikTok has yet to appear in Google Play Store and Apple App Store, and the access to the rest of the website is still restricted.

Social media networks such as X went ablaze with posts such as, Tik Toks site is operational in India without the VPN! Has it returned?”

Others were able to access the home page, but when they clicked on sections such as “Newsroom” they found error messages saying that the company services were not available in their country. Some of them received an error message of 503 Service Unavailable on other pages such as Careers. 

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The Indian government was quick to clarify that nothing has changed. “There’s no truth to claims that TikTok’s ban has been lifted,” government sources told ANI. A TikTok spokesperson also told , “We haven’t restored access in India and are still following the government’s orders.” Some speculate this could be a technical glitch or a test run, possibly tied to warming India-China ties, like resumed border trade or the upcoming Modi-Xi Jinping meeting at the SCO Summit.

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Before the 2020 ban, TikTok had over 200 million users in India, its biggest market outside China. After the ban, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts stepped in to fill the gap. While the website’s partial return has fans hopeful, a full comeback would require TikTok to address India’s strict data security rules and get government approval. For now, the app stays out of reach, leaving users and creators eagerly waiting for what’s next.