Malcolm X; a fire lit in the heart of Black resistance. A Muslim minister, revolutionary, and fearless critic of white supremacy, he gave voice to a people tired of begging for humanity in a country that had long denied it to them. Through his belief in liberation by any means necessary, Malcolm X forced America to face the violence it had buried beneath its promises of freedom.
One of the biggest political figureheads that almost everyone must have heard of growing up, politically educated or not, is Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi – or Gandhiji as we refer to him in India – cemented himself as the Father of the Nation, earning the immortal nickname “Mahatma” (meaning “great man” in Hindi). Growing up Indian, you hear of his campaigns to expel the British from colonial India, but what stands out the most is ahimsa. The avoidance of violence and the philosophy of non-injury, is a principle that the country claims to have won India her independence.
Unfortunately, I find fault with this claim. Bhagat Singh, a socialist revolutionary; Pritilata Waddedar, young female revolutionary who courageously led a charge against the British; Chandra Shekhar Azad, fearless leader of rebellion. They would all find fault in it too. See, at no given point has history proven that complete peace and non-resistance alone have won a war. Back in school, we were taught that the nation earned its freedom from the peaceful efforts of Gandhi, his non-violent marches, and silent protests. The names above are mentioned in passing: it is simply not taught that their efforts played a massive role in attaining the freedom Indians experience now.
The philosophy of dying for the freedom of your people, rather than being mud under the boots of your oppressors, holds true even today. This tension between preached pacifism and necessary resistance is not unique to India’s struggle for independence. On the other side of the world, Malcolm X would come to embody a similar challenge to the moral comfort of nonviolence, arguing that oppressed people had not only the right, but the duty, to defend their dignity by any means necessary. Today, Malcolm X has been reduced to a one dimensional radical in history classes and popular memory, an angry voice in America. I believe that is where another mistake lies. His father died under suspicious circumstances after facing threats from white supremacists. His mother had been institutionalized after being failed by the state. Malcolm himself was pushed through a society that expected Black people to either silently endure the torture or be punished if they made a sound. So, then, his politics did not emerge from hatred or anger, but rather from experience.
At the core of his ideology, Malcolm believed in self-respect above all. Before he spoke of revolution, or self-defense, he urged Black people to stop seeing themselves through the eyes of the ‘white devil’. The “X” in his name was itself a rejection of his original slave name “Little”, a refusal to carry the branding of a history that had stolen African identity and replaced it with ownership.
To Malcolm, liberation had to begin in the mind. As he said: “You can’t hate the roots of the tree without ending up hating the tree. You can’t hate your origin without ending up hating yourself”. A people taught to hate their skin, their culture, and their history could not simply be free just because the law claimed they were citizens. They had to reclaim themselves first.
His idea of equality was different from what the traditional sermon was. “[Elijah Muhammad] doesn’t teach us to associate equality with whites. Equality has nothing to do with whites. We don’t want to be equal with the white man. He’s not the criteria or yardstick by which equality is measured”. This quote from an interview in 1963 completely redefined the struggle for equality and pushed people to rethink what it means to really be equal. Equal to what? Why must a population fight to prove that they are equal to a people that categorically oppresses their very existence? True equality, in Malcolm’s view, was not imitation or integration into a system that is built to systematically treat Black people as inferior. It was self-definition, self-respect, and the recognition that Black humanity existed fully on its own terms.
While the mainstream civil rights movement often appealed to America’s conscience, Malcolm questioned whether that conscience existed at all. He argued that a government that allowed Black people to be lynched, economically trapped, and politically silenced could not have a conscience, much less moral authority. Peace, to him, could not mean submission. Nonviolence could not be demanded only by the oppressed, while the oppressor continued to act violently through law, police, poverty, and terror. His famous phrase, “by any means necessary,” is often misunderstood as a simple call for violence. In truth, it was a call for freedom without conditions set by the oppressor.
Malcolm X believed that Black people had the right to protect themselves, organize themselves, educate themselves, and pursue justice through whatever methods were required.
Malcolm’s philosophy also evolved over time, which is one of the most important parts of his legacy. During his years with the Nation of Islam, he promoted Black nationalism, racial separation, and a sharp critique of white society. However, after leaving the Nation of Islam and traveling to Mecca, his worldview expanded.: his experiences reshaped his understanding of race, solidarity, and global struggle. He did not abandon his commitment to Black liberation, but he began to frame it within a broader fight against colonialism, imperialism, and human rights abuses across the world.
This transformation makes Malcolm X especially significant. He was not static. He was a thinker in motion, willing to revise his beliefs without surrendering his principles. His later politics became increasingly internationalist. To him, racism in America was not an isolated evil. It was part of a global system that justified conquest, exploitation, and economic control. By shifting the language from “civil rights” to “human rights,” Malcolm sought to take the Black freedom struggle beyond the limits of American courts and into the conscience of the world.
Today, Malcolm X’s legacy survives because the conditions he challenged have not disappeared. His speeches still feel urgent because police brutality, racial profiling, economic inequality, mass incarceration, and political neglect continue to shape Black life in America. He speaks to every generation that grows tired of being told to wait. His words echo whenever protestors are condemned more harshly than the systems they protest. Malcolm X remains relevant because he exposed the hypocrisy of a society that praises peace only when peace means silence.
Malcolm X was feared because he refused to perform gratitude for partial freedom. He was feared because he told the truth without decorating it. Like Bhagat Singh, Pritilata Waddedar, and Chandra Shekhar Azad, he understood that liberation is rarely handed down by the powerful out of kindness. It is demanded, organized, and fought for. His life reminds us that resistance is not always polite, and justice is not always achieved by appealing to the conscience of those who have chosen not to listen.
To remember Malcolm X honestly is not to reduce him to militancy, nor to sanitize him into a symbol of radicalism. It is to recognize him as a man who gave oppressed people permission to stand upright in a world built to keep them on their knees. His philosophy was not hatred. It was dignity. His message was not chaos. It was self-defense, self-respect, and freedom without apology.
Dubai-born Indian currently studying politics full-time at Bocconi. More often than not, I find myself debating various political controversies, and each time I wish I had a pen and paper to write about it. My head revolves around politics, football, beer, and the culinary world, so essentially your average Joe.
