Published on 18-Jun-2020
Khushboo Razdan
A statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Johannesburg, South Africa, September 30, 2019. /Reuters
It started with the toppling of slave trader Edward Colston's statue in Bristol, the UK. Then came the turn of confederate monuments in the United States. Now, one of the most celebrated statesmen of the 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi, is on the statue hit list.
In Amsterdam, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was vandalized on Wednesday night. In the UK, over 6,000 people signed an online petition to take down Gandhi's statue in Leicester. Another online petition was filed in Ottawa, Canada, calling for the removal of a Gandhi statue from the Carleton University campus. These petitions describe Gandhi, an Indian independence leader known for his non-violent movement against the British colonial rule, a racist, who called Africans "savages" and "inferior to Indians" during his over two-decade-long stay (1893-1914) in Johannesburg, South Africa.
"Personally, I am very sad that the statues are being removed because of all the wrong reasons," Tushar Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi's great-grandson, reacted to these developments while speaking to CGTN Digital. "I am also not a big fan of cult statues. If removing statues help the cause they seem to be subscribing to, then absolutely remove them," he added.
"If Bapu (Gandhi) was here, he would have supported these petitions and said, 'Please remove my statues.'"
It isn't the first time Gandhi's views on race have come under the lens. In December 2018, his statue was removed from the University of Ghana after protests by students and staff.