Ghandi is an extremely problematic figure for this time in history, noting his views on race and treatment of women and children. I am disappointed. Choose your hero carefully
Thanks for raising this. Gandhi was a deeply imperfect human being, and many of his views - particularly around race and women - are rightly criticised and debated. That history is real and should not be erased.
This piece does not present him as a moral saint. It draws on a specific strategy he articulated and lived: disciplined non-compliance as a way to starve unjust systems of legitimacy. That method remains one of the most effective tools ever used against authoritarian power. Both things can be true.
One of the habits of collapsing cultures is confusing moral purity with strategic clarity. Every figure who has successfully disrupted entrenched power was flawed. The question is not whether a person was perfect - it’s whether an idea works.
This essay is about how unjust systems collapse when consent is withdrawn. That insight does not disappear because the man who articulated it was human. History doesn’t offer us perfect guides - only imperfect people who sometimes grasp something essential. If we require moral perfection before engaging with historical ideas, we will be left with very little history to learn from at all.
There is no call here for perfection or moral purity and no call for rejecting Ghandi’s insights, but rather for the very recognition that all humans are complicated, and as you say, flawed. It seems common in the US for our knowledge of the lives of iconic figures to be one dimensional, and I would argue that a broader understanding of those figures would be of benefit to your readers. It would have only taken the inclusion in your essay of something like the second sentence in the reply above to give a nod to a broader reality.
Thanks for clarifying. I hear what you’re saying, and I appreciate the care behind it.
You’re right that many people encounter historical figures in overly flattened, one-dimensional ways, and that a broader understanding is often healthier. My intention here wasn’t to deny that fuller reality, but to keep the essay tightly focused on one specific question: how non-violent refusal operates when power becomes coercive. I wasn’t holding Gandhi up as someone to “vote for,” emulate wholesale, or model one’s personal life on. I was pointing to the way he embodied peaceful non-compliance, and how that particular strategy, refusal without violence and withdrawal of consent without dehumanisation, speaks very directly to this moment.
I’m aware there are criticisms of Gandhi’s personal life, and I don’t deny that broader conversation. My choice not to move into those areas wasn’t about denial, but about staying with a specific thread: how that mode of resistance functioned, and why it succeeded in securing India’s freedom without civil war.
That said, I take your point about signalling. For some readers, a brief acknowledgment of complexity upfront can help orient how a piece is being read, even when the focus is narrow. That’s useful feedback, and I appreciate you offering it in good faith.
Thank you for reading closely, and for being here.
Thank-you Brenda, I actually just had the same thought. Sometimes a picture paints a thousand words, and I do agree, that image looks a bit like Gandhi has a holy halo. Didn't consider that before posting. Really appreciate your respectfulness in this interaction - I really value your feedback.
At the very least, in this current period when celebrity is often manufactured for influence, the inclusion of areas where someone has not "lived" what they teach comes to me as vitally important... especially in this example of "starving unjust systems of liberty." If someone is teaching this concept and also exhibiting an opposing example in their personal life, it allows the idea that liberty is for those deemed worthy by upper tiers deciding the value of worthiness. In an examination of Gandhi's influence... glorified longer than he has only recently been more fully understood... it seems to me that sharing where he failed and what that might have meant, could offer readers a fuller perspective on how we may individually fail in matters dealing with increasing our care for each other. That seems like something that would serve us during these harsh times.
Gandhi taught disciplined, non-violent resistance to unjust power, and he lived it. Publicly, consistently, and at enormous personal cost, including repeated imprisonment and physical harm.
The concerns being raised centre on well-documented criticisms of Gandhi’s early views on race, his patriarchal assumptions, and his late-life celibacy practices, which many people find troubling today. Those critiques exist, and the criticism is real and valid, but they are not examples of Gandhi failing to practise what he preached in relation to non-violent resistance. They are examples of how even widely admired historical figures sometimes failed to live up to personal standards we would reasonably expect today.
These events took place nearly a century ago, within vastly different cultural, spiritual, and social frameworks, shaped by colonialism, Victorian morality, and ascetic traditions very different from modern Western norms. Historical context does not excuse poor judgment, but it does matter if we are trying to understand history rather than flatten it.
There are many figures who profoundly changed the course of history whose philosophies and public actions deserve recognition, even as aspects of their personal lives do not withstand modern scrutiny. Abraham Lincoln held views on race that are unacceptable today. Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy had deeply imperfect personal lives. Nelson Mandela supported armed resistance earlier in his life. Winston Churchill’s racism and imperial decisions are rightly criticised. Susan B. Anthony used racist rhetoric in pursuit of women’s suffrage. Thomas Jefferson enslaved people while articulating democratic ideals. This list could go on.
Looking at history in context does not excuse harm. It allows us to learn honestly from both achievement and failure. This piece was not presenting Gandhi’s life as a model to be emulated in all respects. It focused on the philosophy and practice of non-violent refusal that led India out of colonial oppression. On that question - the withdrawal of consent from unjust power - Gandhi never wavered, and he remains one of the clearest historical examples of that strategy in action.
Gandhi was not perfect, and some of his personal behaviour is troubling, especially when viewed from the standpoint of 2026, but those failings do not contradict the core philosophy examined here. This essay was not a full moral accounting of his life; it was an examination of how disciplined, non-violent resistance functioned against imperial power, and why it proved effective. To catalogue every aspect of his personal life in order to discuss that strategy would have turned the piece into a biography, which it was not.
I don’t expect everyone to agree with how I framed this. Reasonable people will weigh these questions differently, and I respect that. My aim here was clarity about strategy and history, not the final word on a complex human life.
I appreciate the care people have brought to this discussion - thoughtful disagreement is part of how we deepen our understanding, and I’m glad this piece has invited that.
You bring such important and conscious insight to this pivotal moment in history. Thank you!
Re-Sourcing and Stillness my impulse right now… thank you as always for your brilliant clarity and insight 🤗🦋🕊️🩵💚
Such a pleasure, Annie. Glad it helps.
Such a beautiful and insightful reminder of how to see and approach these dark days. Thank you.
You’re welcome! Glad it resonated with you. xx
Thank you for this writing… Gandhi is such a great example to live by, and especially now.
Thank you for this precious reminder.
Ghandi is an extremely problematic figure for this time in history, noting his views on race and treatment of women and children. I am disappointed. Choose your hero carefully
Thanks for raising this. Gandhi was a deeply imperfect human being, and many of his views - particularly around race and women - are rightly criticised and debated. That history is real and should not be erased.
This piece does not present him as a moral saint. It draws on a specific strategy he articulated and lived: disciplined non-compliance as a way to starve unjust systems of legitimacy. That method remains one of the most effective tools ever used against authoritarian power. Both things can be true.
One of the habits of collapsing cultures is confusing moral purity with strategic clarity. Every figure who has successfully disrupted entrenched power was flawed. The question is not whether a person was perfect - it’s whether an idea works.
This essay is about how unjust systems collapse when consent is withdrawn. That insight does not disappear because the man who articulated it was human. History doesn’t offer us perfect guides - only imperfect people who sometimes grasp something essential. If we require moral perfection before engaging with historical ideas, we will be left with very little history to learn from at all.
There is no call here for perfection or moral purity and no call for rejecting Ghandi’s insights, but rather for the very recognition that all humans are complicated, and as you say, flawed. It seems common in the US for our knowledge of the lives of iconic figures to be one dimensional, and I would argue that a broader understanding of those figures would be of benefit to your readers. It would have only taken the inclusion in your essay of something like the second sentence in the reply above to give a nod to a broader reality.
Thanks for clarifying. I hear what you’re saying, and I appreciate the care behind it.
You’re right that many people encounter historical figures in overly flattened, one-dimensional ways, and that a broader understanding is often healthier. My intention here wasn’t to deny that fuller reality, but to keep the essay tightly focused on one specific question: how non-violent refusal operates when power becomes coercive. I wasn’t holding Gandhi up as someone to “vote for,” emulate wholesale, or model one’s personal life on. I was pointing to the way he embodied peaceful non-compliance, and how that particular strategy, refusal without violence and withdrawal of consent without dehumanisation, speaks very directly to this moment.
I’m aware there are criticisms of Gandhi’s personal life, and I don’t deny that broader conversation. My choice not to move into those areas wasn’t about denial, but about staying with a specific thread: how that mode of resistance functioned, and why it succeeded in securing India’s freedom without civil war.
That said, I take your point about signalling. For some readers, a brief acknowledgment of complexity upfront can help orient how a piece is being read, even when the focus is narrow. That’s useful feedback, and I appreciate you offering it in good faith.
Thank you for reading closely, and for being here.
Thank you for the reply. I will only add that the choice of image for this article added to my original impressions.
Thank-you Brenda, I actually just had the same thought. Sometimes a picture paints a thousand words, and I do agree, that image looks a bit like Gandhi has a holy halo. Didn't consider that before posting. Really appreciate your respectfulness in this interaction - I really value your feedback.
At the very least, in this current period when celebrity is often manufactured for influence, the inclusion of areas where someone has not "lived" what they teach comes to me as vitally important... especially in this example of "starving unjust systems of liberty." If someone is teaching this concept and also exhibiting an opposing example in their personal life, it allows the idea that liberty is for those deemed worthy by upper tiers deciding the value of worthiness. In an examination of Gandhi's influence... glorified longer than he has only recently been more fully understood... it seems to me that sharing where he failed and what that might have meant, could offer readers a fuller perspective on how we may individually fail in matters dealing with increasing our care for each other. That seems like something that would serve us during these harsh times.
Gandhi taught disciplined, non-violent resistance to unjust power, and he lived it. Publicly, consistently, and at enormous personal cost, including repeated imprisonment and physical harm.
The concerns being raised centre on well-documented criticisms of Gandhi’s early views on race, his patriarchal assumptions, and his late-life celibacy practices, which many people find troubling today. Those critiques exist, and the criticism is real and valid, but they are not examples of Gandhi failing to practise what he preached in relation to non-violent resistance. They are examples of how even widely admired historical figures sometimes failed to live up to personal standards we would reasonably expect today.
These events took place nearly a century ago, within vastly different cultural, spiritual, and social frameworks, shaped by colonialism, Victorian morality, and ascetic traditions very different from modern Western norms. Historical context does not excuse poor judgment, but it does matter if we are trying to understand history rather than flatten it.
There are many figures who profoundly changed the course of history whose philosophies and public actions deserve recognition, even as aspects of their personal lives do not withstand modern scrutiny. Abraham Lincoln held views on race that are unacceptable today. Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy had deeply imperfect personal lives. Nelson Mandela supported armed resistance earlier in his life. Winston Churchill’s racism and imperial decisions are rightly criticised. Susan B. Anthony used racist rhetoric in pursuit of women’s suffrage. Thomas Jefferson enslaved people while articulating democratic ideals. This list could go on.
Looking at history in context does not excuse harm. It allows us to learn honestly from both achievement and failure. This piece was not presenting Gandhi’s life as a model to be emulated in all respects. It focused on the philosophy and practice of non-violent refusal that led India out of colonial oppression. On that question - the withdrawal of consent from unjust power - Gandhi never wavered, and he remains one of the clearest historical examples of that strategy in action.
Gandhi was not perfect, and some of his personal behaviour is troubling, especially when viewed from the standpoint of 2026, but those failings do not contradict the core philosophy examined here. This essay was not a full moral accounting of his life; it was an examination of how disciplined, non-violent resistance functioned against imperial power, and why it proved effective. To catalogue every aspect of his personal life in order to discuss that strategy would have turned the piece into a biography, which it was not.
I don’t expect everyone to agree with how I framed this. Reasonable people will weigh these questions differently, and I respect that. My aim here was clarity about strategy and history, not the final word on a complex human life.
I appreciate the care people have brought to this discussion - thoughtful disagreement is part of how we deepen our understanding, and I’m glad this piece has invited that.