How Gandhi keeps coming back to India’s protest politics

On 2 October, India observes Gandhi Jayanti. This year, it gained political significance too.

Protests and political mobilisations took place across India on the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth. In Delhi, student groups, activists and opposition leaders protested against the Election Commission’s handling of the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, of electoral rolls and demanded action against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Delhi Police did not grant permission for the proposed gathering at Jantar Mantar, and more than 700 protesters were detained during the day, according to The Indian Express.

In Mumbai, the Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, held a large protest at Shivaji Park, also demanding Kumar’s resignation over alleged irregularities in the electoral-roll revision. The protest was the beginning of a wider campaign that the group said would continue in other cities.

The important point, however, is that not every protest held on Gandhi Jayanti necessarily is a Gandhian protest. In distinguishing between the two, we can understand why Gandhi keeps coming back to India’s protest politics.

Gandhi did not invent protest. He changed its scale.

India had a long history of resistance to colonial rule before Gandhi became a central figure in the freedom movement.

What Gandhi brought was a distinctive method of mass political mobilisation built around satyagraha, non-violence, civil disobedience and non-cooperation.

The Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 became Gandhi’s first major satyagraha campaign in India.

He went to Champaran after hearing about the difficulties faced by indigo cultivators under the system imposed by British planters. Instead of beginning with a conventional political campaign, Gandhi investigated the complaints of cultivators and challenged the authorities’ attempt to prevent him from carrying out that inquiry. The case was eventually withdrawn, and Gandhi was allowed to continue his inquiry.

More than a decade later came the Salt March.

In 1930, Gandhi and 78 volunteers walked from Sabarmati to Dandi to challenge the colonial salt laws. The march became a major act of civil disobedience and an ordinary commodity turned into a powerful symbol of resistance.

The larger lesson was that political resistance did not necessarily have to begin with weapons, violence or a conventional political organisation. An everyday issue could become political when large numbers of people acted collectively.

That idea has survived Gandhi.

What are today’s protesters actually borrowing?

Modern protest movements do not necessarily follow Gandhi’s entire political philosophy.

Instead, different groups borrow different elements of his political vocabulary. For some, it is satyagraha. For others, it is fasting, marches, non-cooperation or civil disobedience. Sometimes the connection is more symbolic: Gandhi’s photograph, his name, khadi or the choice of 2 October itself.

This is why it is important not to automatically label every protest on Gandhi Jayanti as Gandhian.

A protest can happen on 2 October simply because it is a significant national date. Another movement may consciously invoke Gandhi and his methods.

The difference matters.

Because Gandhi has become much more than a historical figure. He has become part of India’s political vocabulary.

Why Gandhi remains such a useful symbol?

Few figures in modern Indian history carry so many political associations at once.

Gandhi can represent the freedom struggle, non-violence, civil disobedience, Swadeshi, moral pressure and the participation of ordinary citizens in politics. That makes his image unusually adaptable.

A protester carrying Gandhi’s portrait does not necessarily endorse every part of Gandhi’s worldview. The person may be invoking one particular aspect of his legacy: the idea that citizens can resist authority without resorting to violence.

That selective use of Gandhi is important.

The Gandhi invoked at a protest against an institution may not be exactly the same Gandhi invoked during a campaign for Swadeshi or rural self-reliance. His legacy has multiple political meanings, and different movements have repeatedly selected the part that speaks to their immediate cause.

What makes 2 October 2026 different?

This year offered a particularly visible example of that process.

The Delhi protest was focused on the Election Commission and the SIR exercise. Organisers and opposition figures alleged that the electoral-roll revision could affect voters’ rights. The Election Commission, meanwhile, has defended SIR as an exercise intended to ensure that no eligible citizen is left out and no ineligible person is included in the electoral roll.

Opponents of the exercise have alleged that the process could disenfranchise eligible voters.

The choice of Gandhi Jayanti gave the confrontation another layer.

The protesters were challenging a constitutional institution on a date internationally associated with non-violence and peaceful resistance.

The symbolism should not be overstated.

The fact that the protest happened on Gandhi Jayanti does not by itself establish that every participant was consciously following Gandhi’s political method.

In Mumbai, the connection was more explicit. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke referred directly to Gandhi while addressing the protest and described the proposed future mobilisation as a peaceful movement that would follow the path shown by Gandhi.

That is a much clearer example of Gandhi being deliberately invoked rather than simply being present in the calendar.

2 October is more than Gandhi Jayanti.

There is another reason the date carries particular weight.

In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly established 2 October as the International Day of Non-Violence, marking Gandhi’s birthday and recognising the wider relevance of non-violence. The UN describes non-violent action as including protest, persuasion, non-cooperation and non-violent intervention.

That makes 2 October unusual.

It is simultaneously a national commemorative date in India and an international observance associated with non-violence.

So when a protest deliberately takes place on 2 October, it can carry a ready-made historical meaning. But the meaning still depends on the protesters themselves.

Gandhi and the politics of protest after Independence.

Gandhi’s political vocabulary did not disappear after Independence.

The 2011 anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare, for example, prominently used fasting and the language of satyagraha. Similar references to Gandhian methods have appeared in different campaigns over farmers’ rights, land, citizenship and civil liberties.

The important point is not that all these movements were Gandhian. They were not identical and their political demands and methods differed.

What they demonstrate is something simpler: Gandhi provided a language which later generations could adapt to new disputes.

A fast can become a political statement.

A march can become a symbol.

A refusal to cooperate can become a form of pressure.

And an ordinary citizen can present resistance not simply as opposition to authority but as a moral or civic act.

There is a paradox at the heart of Gandhi’s afterlife.

Gandhi is commemorated by the Indian state and invoked by people protesting against the state.

That happened again this year.

On Gandhi Jayanti, Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tribute to Gandhi, while protesters in Delhi and Mumbai invoked the legacy of resistance while challenging the Election Commission and demanding action against its chief.

There is no necessary contradiction here.

Gandhi is now part of India’s national memory. His legacy is not politically owned by a single party or movement. Different political groups can therefore emphasise different parts of it.

The more interesting question is not who owns Gandhi.

It is which Gandhi is being invoked.

The Gandhi of khadi and Swadeshi is not exactly the same political symbol as the Gandhi of civil disobedience. The Gandhi of communal reconciliation is not identical to the Gandhi invoked during an institutional confrontation.

And using the word satyagraha does not automatically make a modern campaign Gandhian.

Why Gandhi keeps coming back?

That may explain Gandhi’s unusual afterlife in Indian protest politics.

Every generation faces political disputes that Gandhi himself could never have anticipated: elections managed through digital systems, arguments over constitutional institutions, student movements, economic policies and new forms of political communication.

Yet protesters continue to return to an older vocabulary.

Not because their causes are the same as Gandhi’s.

But because the basic question is familiar:

How can ordinary citizens challenge authority when they believe something is wrong?

Gandhi’s answer was built around non-violence, collective action, civil disobedience and the willingness to accept personal consequences for resisting what one considers unjust.

Modern India does not operate under colonial rule. Its political institutions are different and contemporary protests cannot simply be equated with the freedom struggle.

But the language of resistance has a memory.

That memory is Gandhi.

And that is why 2 October 2026 is worth looking at beyond the individual protests that took place that day.

The significance of Gandhi Jayanti this year was not simply that protesters happened to take to the streets on Gandhi’s birthday.

It was that, once again, Gandhi provided a historical vocabulary through which different generations could talk about resistance, citizenship and the right to question authority.

His image may be on statues, currency notes and government commemorations.

But his most enduring political afterlife is still found on the streets — whenever citizens decide that being heard requires them to stand together.