Timeless Strategies of Control and Influence
In August 2025, the world feels uncomfortably familiar. Trade wars swing markets on a tweet. Deepfakes from the 2024 U.S. elections still circulate. Russian propaganda continues to muddy discourse on Ukraine. Scroll through your feed, and you might notice something: control in the digital age looks a lot like control in the imperial age.
Call it ROME: Recreate, Oppress, Manipulate, Engage. For centuries, these four strategies allowed empires to rule diverse populations. Today, they are coded into algorithms. What the Mughals and the British once did with courts, census rolls, and bayonets, social media platforms now achieve with feeds, notifications, and disinformation.
Recreate: Writing Reality
Empires rewrote histories to secure power. Akbar had the Mahabharata translated into Persian, subtly reframing it to suit his legitimacy. The British went further, turning fluid social identities into rigid “castes” via census categories. Division was presented as destiny.
Today, platforms recreate reality algorithmically. Deepfakes during the 2024 elections manufactured alternate candidates. Trump’s April 2025 post urging investors to “buy” before pausing tariffs shifted markets within hours. Like fast food, these digital recreations are engineered for instant impact, but they leave societies undernourished—hollowed of context and depth.
Oppress: Silencing Dissent
Aurangzeb’s jizya tax and temple destructions marked Mughal-era subjugation. The British perfected economic oppression, turning harvests into famine and stamping out rebellion after 1857.
In 2025, oppression is subtler but no less effective. Surveillance capitalism tracks every click. Platforms shadow-ban dissent during conflicts, as with Ukraine, drowning out authentic voices. Moderation algorithms, biased by design, sometimes silence minorities. As with colonial suppression of language, those who control the filters control the narrative.
Manipulate: Turning Diversity into Division
“Divide and rule” was not a slogan but a survival strategy. The 1905 Partition of Bengal deepened Hindu-Muslim fault lines. Separate electorates hardened identities into battlegrounds.
Today’s divide-and-rule is powered by bots and troll farms. During the 2024 U.S. elections, coordinated campaigns from Russia and China injected outrage into American feeds, polarising voters. Platforms reward anger because anger keeps us scrolling. But manipulation cuts both ways: citizen fact-checkers and coordinated activism show that communities can resist.
Engage: Hooking the Masses
Control works best when people join in willingly. The Mughals brought Rajputs into their mansabdari system. The British staffed their colonial machine with Indian clerks and officers. Both blurred complicity with survival.
Social media’s engagement machinery works on the same principle. Notifications, likes, and feeds pull users into endless loops. The more we participate, the more data we generate. Citizens become consumers, and consumers become commodities. And yet, engagement can also be liberating. Movements like #MeToo or climate justice campaigns prove that connection can empower just as it enslaves.
A Cycle That Never Ends
The parallels are uncomfortable. ROME is not a relic of history—it is a playbook that has survived conquest after conquest. Empires used it to fracture Indian unity. Today, platforms use it to monetise attention.
But unlike the past, resistance is within reach. Three steps matter most:
- Digital literacy as a civic skill. Just as oral traditions once trained communities in discernment, today’s citizens need to recognise deepfakes, outrage cycles, and algorithmic traps.
- Transparency and accountability. Algorithms are the new censors. Demanding disclosure of how platforms rank, promote, or suppress content is essential.
- Reviving cultural commons. Community forums, multilingual archives, and local dialogues—offline as much as online—can restore nuance where platforms reward noise.
The Choice Ahead
ROME thrives when people accept reality as it is handed to them. That was true under Mughal emperors and British viceroys. It is just as true under digital giants headquartered in Silicon Valley.
The difference today is that the tools of empire are also the tools of resistance. The same feed that spreads propaganda can spread solidarity. The same platforms that manipulate can mobilise.
The question is not whether ROME exists—it clearly does. The question is whether we allow it to rule us, or whether we reclaim the power to rewrite the script.
Arambhin 
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