In 1930, Gandhi walked to the sea at Dandi, picked up a handful of salt and challenged an empire.
It was a small act. But millions understood what it meant.
Nearly a century later, another kind of political movement is taking shape, except there is no long road to Dandi, no spinning wheel and no handful of salt. There are Instagram posts, memes, hashtags and a generation watching from their phones.
So, can an online protest really be called satyagraha?
The story began in May with a joke.
Abhijeet Dipke, a Boston University graduate, launched the Cockroach Janta Party as political satire. What started as a joke quickly turned into something much bigger. An online political movement.
Its Instagram following has since crossed 22 million. And somewhere along the way, the joke began to look a lot like politics. The same idea, a very different toolbox. Gandhi knew exactly why salt mattered. Everyone needed it, and the British taxed it. By challenging the salt laws, he turned something ordinary into a symbol of resistance.
The Cockroach Janta Party did something similar with a word. An insult became a badge. Something meant to demean could be reclaimed, worn proudly and shared with a tap.
The medium could hardly be more different, but the basic idea is familiar. Take something ordinary and turn it into a symbol that people can rally around. Gandhi also understood something else. A protest needs an audience.
During the Salt March, reporters followed Gandhi and documented the journey for the world to see. In 2026, Gen Z does not necessarily need reporters to do that job. A phone camera can turn a protest into a national conversation within minutes.
Non-violence, too of course, remains part of the language.
The Internet Freedom Foundation noted that the party and other organisers repeatedly called for a peaceful protest during their July march to Parliament. Yet the protest ended with police using lathis and tear gas. The party alleged excessive force, while Delhi Police maintained that action was taken after protesters attempted to breach security arrangements.
Then came another familiar question. What happens when the state controls the flow of information?
Gandhi’s followers were arrested and jailed. In the digital age, one of the tools available to the state is the internet shutdown. Media reports said mobile internet was suspended in parts of central Delhi during the July march. The Internet Freedom Foundation said no suspension order had been made public.
The battlefield may have changed. Control over communication has not. But this is where the Gandhi comparison gets complicated. For all the similarities, there is one enormous difference. The cost of resistance.
Gandhi’s followers knew that protesting could mean arrest, prison, losing their livelihoods or putting themselves in physical danger. Posting online does not demand the same sacrifice.
That does not mean digital activism is consequence-free. Reports said Dipke faced casteist abuse online and received death threats. But a post can still be deleted. A hashtag can disappear. An Instagram story vanishes in 24 hours. A Salt March does not.
And then there is the question of leadership.
Gandhi was not simply the face of a movement. He could also make decisions that shaped its direction. In 1922, when violence broke out at Chauri Chaura, Gandhi called off the Non-Cooperation Movement even though it was gaining momentum.
Online movements rarely have that kind of central authority. Look at Nepal’s Gen Z protests in 2025. International media described a largely leaderless movement that eventually saw government buildings set on fire and the prime minister ousted. Leaderlessness can make a movement harder to control but it can also make it harder to hold accountable.
And then there is truth.
Satyagraha literally places truth at the centre of resistance.
That may be the hardest principle to carry from Gandhi’s India into today’s internet.
Online, a claim can travel much faster than anyone can verify it. After the Satya Niketan building collapse in Delhi, for instance, a claim circulated that mobile jammers had been used at the site. Delhi Police denied this. Some students did report poor connectivity, but that alone does not establish that jammers were being used.
The problem is not unique to one movement. It is built into the architecture of the internet: outrage travels quickly, corrections rarely do. And that makes truth harder not less important. Researchers see both possibilities.
Some argue that Gandhian principles such as truth and non-violence can still have relevance in the digital age, But a few others point to an important complication. Digital tools themselves do not come with a moral compass. A phone can organise a peaceful protest. The same phone can spread a lie. A meme can make someone feel seen. It can also turn a serious political issue into a punchline.
So perhaps the more interesting question is not whether a particular online movement can be compared to the Salt March. It is whether the principles behind satyagraha can survive when the protest itself has moved online. The worlds are too different, the risks are different and the movements are built on fundamentally different structures.
Gandhi had salt.
This generation has a screen.
What it chooses to do with it may determine whether digital protest becomes more than just another viral moment.
Written by Aradhya Mohan