Why Mahatma Gandhi Would Use Wordpress For His Blog: Modern Activism Through The Internet

Jul 29
14:10

2014

Alex HD

Alex HD

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Like all famous celebrity blogs, Mahatma Gandhi's blog would have also become the number one target of spam comments and DoS attacks. Gandhi's revolutionary forms of communication and activism are awesome even despite his lack of technology or a Wordpress Blog. If Gandhi was empowered with a blogging system, every event in his life would have been minutely documented. We would have known him better.

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Mahatma Gandhi is known as one of the most prominent personalities and symbols of peace,Why Mahatma Gandhi Would Use Wordpress For His Blog: Modern Activism Through The Internet Articles non-violence and freedom. He lead India to its freedom from the 150 year long British Rule by making the British Rulers and the World at large, understand the value of Freedom. This not only meant Freedom in the narrow sense of not being in captivity, but also Freedom of Speech, Expression, Thought and Belief. One wonders as to how in today's world, technology would be a game changer is a similar type of revolutionary movement. I am pretty sure that one of the main weapons in his arsenal of online tools would be a Wordpress Blog.

Wordpress, being an Open Source platform emphasizes the need for freedom and free flow of knowledge and unfettered communication around the world. WordPress is a personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPLv2 (or later). This means that Wordpress is essentially "Free Software".

The GNU Philosophy of Free Software means "software that respects users' freedom and community". The GNU Website further says: Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, "free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech," not as in "free beer".

This inherent quality of Wordpress is the Primary Reason why the "modern" Mahatma Gandhi would have used Wordpress to reach out to his ocean of supporters and communicate his message of peace and non-violence.

Communicating a Message

Mahatma Gandhi made numerous speeches during India's struggle for independence. he had made a huge impact like no other. An entire Empire was brought to its knees by the strong and effective communication which Gandhi made to his supporters. If armed with a blog or a website, Gandhi would have reached a larger audience across the globe and created waves globally. If without the internet he was able to galvanize the Indian population and strengthen their resolve to a peaceful uprising, it would be awesome to see how the Internet and various e-tools would have helped him enhance his campaign.

If Gandhi was empowered with a blogging system, every event in his life would have been minutely documented so that it could be recounted to the future generations. He would have been in personal contact with a larger audience. He would have been able to integrate his blog to post automatic updates on Facebook and Twitter so that he can stay in touch with more fans.

Instant Feedback

The Wordpress blogging system has an inbuilt comment system which allows the blog viewers to communicate their thoughts or views to the website owner, which could also be made public. Gandhi's blog would have been filled with inspirational and motivational comments from various dignitaries and world leaders. The blog would have received unprecedented viewership on the day India received it's independence. His blog would have received an overwhelming amount of Congratulatory messages from all over the world.

Security from Attacks

Like all famous celebrity blogs, Gandhi's blog would have also become the number one target of spam comments and DoS attacks. He would have had to use some of the numerous Wordpress plugins to secure his login page from Brute Force Attacks. Everyone would want to ride on the wave of fame with Gandhi and try to get their two cents of advice to feature on his blog. On the down side, he would have needed a dedicated team to keep his blog updated and secure and also to filter out the junk comments. I am pretty sure that Gandhi's humility and belief in dignity of labour would have got him to update his own blog and maintain it himself.

It is remarkable how the Internet has changed our daily lives and helped us fight our daily battles with ease. Gandhi's revolutionary forms of communication and activism are awesome even despite his lack of technology or a Wordpress Blog. What impact his blog would have had on the Revolution for Independence is still quite unfathomable.