Written by Pankaj Phanase
In the 21st-century digital theatre, historical giants stand reduced. Their lives are compressed into infographics fit for sharing, their philosophies sometimes boil down to the most contentious memes and their complexities are measured by a simpler yardstick. Trends establish them as either irredeemable sinners or infallible saints. Mahatma Gandhi is a sterling example of a historical figure who resists such simplification. Year after year, the same debate resurfaces: Is he a timeless icon of peace or merely a relic of a bygone age?
The paradox in his legacy is sharp. While he is immortalised in monuments and on currency by governments, the meme-fication of Gandhi today has escalated. The bigger threat to Gandhian thought today is not ideological, but structural. It stems from the building blocks of our digital world itself. The values that shaped his life’s work — patience, nuance, self-reflection, and a universal search for truth — are in fundamental opposition to the engine that drives modern communication: The algorithm.
A true engagement with Gandhi must be an act of full immersion in reading in a world made for skimming. The patience needed to understand his subtle approach is practically non-existent in this age of 30-second reels and 280-word posts trying to outline complex ideas. One must reach beyond the familiar ideas of non-violence and civil disobedience into the profound conceptual strata beneath them. Swaraj, or self-rule, was at the very centre of his vision. To Gandhi, swaraj was not a mere political objective — the ouster of the British from India. True swaraj is a radical act of inner transformation — rule over one’s impulses, fears, and hatreds. It is an orientation towards self-mastery requiring constant self-examination and self-criticism. In stark contrast, this interior element of true activism is almost absent from superficial online activism, which almost exclusively concerns itself with the external vanquishing of its enemy, whether that be political opponents, corporations or a contrary opinion, with no simultaneous call for self-improvement.
While other revolutionary thinkers like Marx focused on the mechanics of seizing power, Gandhi was preoccupied with a more difficult question: What happens after the revolution? Deeply aware that a change of rulers meant little if the culture of oppression persisted, he elevated his struggle from the political to the personal, from the mind to the soul. His priority was to build a society where the sanctity of human life was paramount. To achieve this, he championed inclusivity and the middle path. In essence, Gandhian thought was more than a rigid formula for political purity. It was a flexible blueprint for practical, consensus-driven progress.
Contemporary digital platforms operate on a fuel completely antithetical to Gandhian principles. The algorithms that shape our encounters online do not aim at understanding or agreement. Rather, they strive to maximise “engagement”, having learned that polarisation, sensationalism, and outrage are the fastest and easiest routes to accomplish this. Gandhian methods are antithetical to the “attention economy”. Gandhi’s fasting and silent marching were meant to withdraw energy from the conflict and create a space for a moral pause in both the oppressor and the oppressed. They were slow, deliberate, and often quiet. In contrast, the digital world is constructed on the principle of constant noisy amplification, to the point of distraction.
Ahimsa, for Gandhi, was not a weak passivity. It was a strong, active force that required tremendous effort and self-restraint. It was the active, positive force of confronting injustice without dehumanising the opponent, grounded in the belief that the adversary also possessed a share of humanity. The online discourse is based on the principle of dehumanisation. The acts of trolling, doxxing and publicly shaming are “victories” gained on the opposing camp. This is a form of psychological violence. Gandhi’s concept of Satya (Truth) and our post-truth era stand on opposite ends of the spectrum. For Gandhi, life was an “experiment with truth”, a constant and humble seeking of a higher truth. This demonstrates the notion that truth is an end goal, an objective, something to be attained, and requires open-mindedness and the possibility of being wrong. Nowadays, the truth is framed as something subjective and secondary. “My truth” dominates conversations and takes precedence over “the truth”. In an age of echo chambers and filter bubbles, social media platforms further enhance fragmentation with their algorithms and shield dissenting voices, making the shared search for common ground nearly impossible.
Gandhi as a person does not fit our times either in culture or in politics. Today, politics is about personal branding, and for a leader, branding means maintaining an image, a flawless, curated mask. Gandhi, in contrast, was a man in constant, and public, evolution. His autobiography is a manifesto of self-correction, a record of errors and inadequacies and of evolution. He displayed his weaknesses as an indispensable part of his pilgrimage to truth. Today, they would be interpreted as self-sabotage and weakness. An admission of being wrong now exposes a person to attack framed as intellectual weakness, not strength. The algorithm institutionalises a pathological lack of self-critique and lacks a self-correcting persona.
Where does this leave the Mahatma? Besides the methods Gandhi adopted, he provided a paradigm for coexistence and inclusive politics — a remarkable contemporary resource for our times. The derision he receives is not new, but the form it currently takes, in a digital ecosystem that renders his thoughts invisible by design, is.
This algorithmic world prefers simple binaries. Gandhi’s life and ideas do not fit into a simple box. To try and truly understand him, with all his complexities, is therefore a quiet act of resistance. Ultimately, Gandhi’s legacy suggests a simple truth to our binary age: Between the zero and the one, an ocean of understanding can flow.
The writer is a research scholar at CIPOD, School of International Studies, JNU
