By Inderjit Badhwar
There are moments when an article arrives on the page and seems to be speaking not merely to its own time, but to something that is unfolding outside our windows. Dr JP Singh’s meditation on Mahatma Gandhi, Artificial Intelligence and human consciousness is one such piece.
At first glance, the subjects may appear to belong to entirely different worlds. Gandhi belongs to the history of India’s freedom struggle; Artificial Intelligence belongs to the technological frontier of the twenty-first century. One evokes the spinning wheel, the walking stick and the power of non-violence. The other evokes algorithms, machines and an intelligence increasingly capable of performing tasks once thought uniquely human.
But Singh’s argument is that the real question is not whether machines will become more human. It is whether human beings, in the process of creating increasingly powerful machines, risk becoming more machine-like themselves.
That question becomes especially unsettling when viewed against the world around us.
On October 2, Gandhi Jayanti, young people gathered in Mumbai and Delhi to protest over questions concerning the functioning of democratic institutions and the integrity of electoral rolls. At Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, thousands gathered despite the denial of police permission. The protest included young people, civil-society participants and public figures, and the stage invoked Gandhi’s principles of non-violence and civil resistance. In Delhi, student and civil-society groups attempted to gather around Jantar Mantar; police detained large numbers of protesters and restricted access to the area.
Whatever one’s political position on the issues being protested, the symbolism was impossible to miss. A new generation was choosing Gandhi’s birthday to assert its understanding of democratic citizenship.
That is where Singh’s article acquires an importance beyond a discussion of Artificial Intelligence.
Gandhi’s greatest contribution was not simply a technique called non-violence. It was the proposition that an individual human being does not have to surrender moral agency to circumstances, authority, fear or violence. Satyagraha was, at its core, an insistence that conscience mattered.
Singh takes that proposition into the technological age. A machine does not possess a conscience in the human sense. It does not independently decide that compassion is preferable to cruelty. It operates within the parameters created by human beings and the information with which it is supplied. The deeper danger, therefore, may not be machines acquiring human characteristics, but humans surrendering their own capacity for reflection and choice.
We are conditioned every day. By ideology. By fear. By prejudice. By consumerism. By social pressure. By propaganda. By algorithms that increasingly determine what we see, what we read and, sometimes, what we believe.
The extraordinary achievement of modern technology is that it can now identify patterns in our behaviour with astonishing speed. But recognising patterns is not the same thing as possessing wisdom. Processing information is not the same thing as possessing conscience.
That distinction matters enormously for a democracy.
Democracy ultimately depends upon human beings who are capable of questioning, disagreeing, listening, resisting and changing their minds. It requires citizens who do not simply follow the crowd because everyone else is following it.
That is why the sight of young Indians invoking Gandhi on October 2 carries significance beyond the immediate demands of the demonstrations. It suggests that Gandhi’s vocabulary of peaceful resistance remains intelligible to a generation born long after independence.
The language may have changed. The placards may now be satirical. The mobilisation may take place through smartphones and social media rather than handbills and public meetings. The cultural references may belong to a different India.
But beneath those changes lies an old democratic impulse: the refusal to become silent spectators.
Gandhi himself was hardly a passive figure. His philosophy of non-violence was not an invitation to political indifference. It was a demanding form of action—action disciplined by the refusal to dehumanise the opponent.
That distinction is worth remembering today, when public discourse is increasingly conducted in the language of outrage, instant judgment and digital confrontation.
It also brings us back to Singh’s most provocative proposition: “The machine has no choice. We do.” That sentence is, in many ways, the key to this issue.
Artificial Intelligence may transform economies, medicine, journalism, warfare and education. It may eventually alter the meaning of work and even our understanding of intelligence itself. But none of that removes the fundamental human question: what will we choose to do with the powers we create?
The same question applies to democracy. Institutions matter. Laws matter. Elections matter. Constitutional safeguards matter. But ultimately, democratic life depends upon citizens who believe that their voice matters—and who are prepared to exercise that voice peacefully and responsibly.
Perhaps that is why Gandhi continues to return to our national conversation, generation after generation.
He is not merely a figure preserved in textbooks, currency notes and statues. He remains a test.
What do we do when power becomes intimidating? What do we do when the majority becomes impatient with dissent? What do we do when technology makes conformity easier than independent thought? What do we do when fear tells us to remain silent? Do we surrender our agency—or do we choose?
Singh’s essay reminds us that this choice is what makes us human.
And on a Gandhi Jayanti when young people in two of India’s great cities once again took to the streets invoking Bapu, that question could hardly be more timely.
The machine has no choice.
We do.
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