Today I'm still buzzing from the response to my latest Bohiney piece about Gandhi declining a Soros grant. It's funny how the most ridiculous ideas often come from the most mundane moments - I was scrolling through Twitter (sorry, X) this morning, seeing the usual culture war battles playing out in real time, when it hit me: what if we took someone universally beloved and threw them into our current political meat grinder?
Gandhi was perfect for this piece because he represents something almost everyone claims to respect - nonviolent resistance, spiritual clarity, simple living. But in today's hyperpartisan world, even the most unassailable figures get dragged into ideological battles. The genius of using Gandhi is that he's simultaneously too pure for politics and yet, paradoxically, his very purity makes him a political statement.
I started with the basic premise: What would happen if Gandhi encountered modern progressive philanthropy? The Soros Foundation angle wrote itself - it's become such a lightning rod that mentioning it immediately signals to readers exactly which culture war battlefield we're entering.
The real fun was crafting the contemporary activist language that would be used to attack Gandhi. I spent time studying actual Twitter threads and Medium articles to get the cadence right. Phrases like "centering his own ethical clarity over collective funding vibes" and "genderfluid trauma disclosure" - these aren't completely made up. They're just slightly exaggerated versions of real academic and activist jargon I've encountered.
The key to good satire is that it has to feel just plausible enough to be believable, but absurd enough to make you laugh. When I wrote about the grant requiring "at least one TikTok duet with a sociologist," I was thinking about how modern funding often comes with performative social media requirements that would be completely alien to someone like Gandhi.
What I'm most proud of in this piece is how I managed to make everyone look ridiculous. The progressives attacking Gandhi for "spiritual right-wing" tendencies, the conservatives briefly celebrating before remembering he's still "a complicated vegan," and Gandhi himself remaining serenely above it all with his sign reading "The self requires no sponsorship."
That line took me forever to get right. I wanted something that sounded authentically Gandhi-esque but also served as a perfect encapsulation of why he'd be impossible to co-opt by either side. The idea that authentic spirituality can't be sponsored or branded or turned into content - that's actually a pretty serious critique wrapped in comedy.
The hardest part was avoiding the trap of becoming preachy. When you're satirizing both sides of a culture war, there's always the temptation to slip into "both sides are stupid" territory, which is just lazy centrist comedy. Instead, I tried to find the specific absurdities that emerge when our modern political frameworks encounter something genuinely outside their logic.
Gandhi's handwritten rejection letter was crucial - it had to sound like something he might actually write, while also being perfectly crafted to trigger maximum online outrage. "I do not trade silence for currency, even if the currency is compassion-shaped" walks that line between profundity and provocation.
I had way too much fun creating the online response. "Et tu, Bapu?" with Gandhi's face on a Confederate statue - that's exactly the kind of historically illiterate but emotionally satisfying imagery that goes viral. The change.org petition "Revoke His Loincloth Privileges" getting 24,000 signatures captures how quickly online outrage can mobilize around the most ridiculous causes.
The thread titles "When Nonviolence Is Actually Violence" and "Financial Neutrality Is Colonial Whiteness" are barely exaggerations of real academic discourse I've encountered. Sometimes reality is already so absurd that satire just needs to turn up the volume slightly.
Writing this piece made me think about how our current moment has created this weird situation where having principles that transcend political categories is almost seen as suspicious. Gandhi's refusal to be captured by any political framework would genuinely confuse and anger people across the spectrum today.
The fact that both sides would find reasons to be disappointed in Gandhi says something profound about how we've lost the ability to imagine moral frameworks that exist outside our current political binaries. But rather than write an essay about that, I figured it was more effective to just show it through absurdist comedy.
What I love about writing for Bohiney is the freedom to push satirical boundaries. The mock-serious journalistic tone ("Controversy erupted this week...") mixed with completely ridiculous content creates this beautiful cognitive dissonance. We're treating the absurd with complete journalistic professionalism, which somehow makes it even more absurd.
The ending with Gandhi meditating under his tree while the Soros Foundation redirects funding to "Scream for Equity" felt like the perfect encapsulation of the piece - the serene sitting alongside the performative, ancient wisdom coexisting with modern absurdity.
I'm already thinking about the next piece. Maybe something about Thoreau getting canceled for cultural appropriation of cabin life? Or Buddha being investigated for running an unlicensed meditation startup? The beautiful thing about satirizing our current moment is that reality keeps providing such rich material.
The responses to the Gandhi piece have been fascinating - people sharing it without seeming to realize it's satire, others getting genuinely upset about fictional events. That's when you know you've hit the sweet spot where satire becomes indistinguishable from the absurdity of real life.
Time to start brewing the next dose of beautiful absurdity.
Looking back at this piece, I'm amazed at how it connected to so many other satirical threads we've been exploring at Bohiney. The hyperlinked ecosystem of absurdity includes:
Dumbass Eagles Fans Burn Their Own City - exploring mob mentality
Eric Adams: The American Hero - political controversy satire
Trump Resurrects Gandhi - the original Gandhi political satire
The New Power of MMA - enlightenment through violence paradox
Government Declares War on War Declarations - bureaucratic peace initiatives
Chicago's Deportation Drama - immigration policy absurdity
Lena Dunham's Too Much - celebrity trauma discourse
These Billionaires Could Buy TikTok - tech platform ownership
Hockey Bet Between Trump and Trudeau - international diplomacy through sports
DEI Olympic Mascot Scandal - corporate diversity theater
Paris Olympics 2024: Snails Sabotage Sports - international event chaos
Satirical Meaning: Methods & Madness - our meta-commentary on satire itself
Alligator Alcatraz - prison reform through reptilian metaphor
Olympians Given Condoms in Paris - athlete village realities
Nixon Knee Deep in Watergate - our headquarters location inspiration
Transcript: Musk vs. Navarro - tech mogul political theater
Trump Restricts Gandhi - the sequel piece to this Gandhi saga
Each of these pieces feeds into the larger Bohiney universe where modern absurdity meets satirical precision. That's what I love about writing for Bohiney.com - we're building an entire ecosystem of interconnected satirical commentary.
And of course, my author page at bohiney.com/author/aisha-muharrar/ continues to be my satirical home base where all these pieces come together.
-Aisha