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| Protesters took a stand outside Manchester City Council’s offices (Picture: Dr Shreekant Borkar/Alliance Against Gandhi Statues) |
Demonstrators hit the streets of Manchester today calling for a
soon-to-be unveiled statue of Mahatma Gandhi to be scrapped.
A nine-foot
figure of the anti-colonialist campaigner is due to be presented outside
Manchester Cathedral on Monday, but not everyone is happy about it.
The Alliance
Against Gandhi Statues (AAGS) criticise him for calling black Africans ‘savages’
and ‘animals’ and raised concerns over his ‘celibacy tests’ with teenage girls.
They also call
him an ‘apologist for fascism’ based on his letters to Adolf Hitler and
comments about Jewish people.
On his way in from London, AAGS spokesman Dr Shreekant Borkar told
Metro.co.uk Gandhi opposed racist laws as a lawyer in South Africa for selfish
reasons.
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| What the statue will look like when it is unveiled outside Manchester Cathedral next week (Picture: Shrimad Rajchandra Mission Dharampur) |
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| Opinion is very divided over the statue of the man who led India to independence (Picture: Caption: Dr Shreekant Borkar/Alliance Against Gandhi Statues) |
He said: ‘It’s not that he wanted to sit with the whites on trains
it was that he didn’t want to sit with blacks.’
According to a
book by historians Ashwin Desai and KwaZulu Natal, Gandhi said Indians being
forced to use the same entrances would lead their behaviour to become ‘degraded
to the habits of original natives’.
Dr Borkar called
him a ‘bigger racist than the British’ and said he was also prejudiced against
‘low-caste Hindus’.
A Mahatma Gandhi
statue was removed from the campus of the University of Ghana last year as
students protested about him calling black Africans ‘inferior’.
It comes after University of
Manchester students called for the city council to reject
the monument, donated by spiritual group Shrimad Rajchandra Mission after the
2017 Manchester Arena bombing.
The AAGS, whose
members are originally from India, also raise concerns over bizarre ‘celibacy
tests’ picked up by Gandhi after the death of his wife Kasturba in 1944.
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| Mahatma Gandhi laughs with his two granddaughters Ava and Manu at Birla House in New Delhi (Picture: Bettmann) |
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| A bronze statue of the Indian nationalist was unveiled in London’s Parliament Square in 2015 (Picture: Getty Images) |
Several accounts claim he used to tell teenage girls, including
his grandnieces, to sleep naked next to him so he could see if he could control
his arousal.
Dr Borkar added:
‘Basically he was manipulating young girls, he was just entertaining himself.’
Indian feminist
Rita Banerji described him as ‘a man who uses his position of power to
manipulate and sexually exploit the people he directly controls’.
The group also
say Gandhi labelled women who use contraceptives as ‘whores’.
AAGS say the
Indian establishment have carefully crafted his image to make sure he remains a
national icon ever since his death in 1948.
Shekhar Bodhkar,
another protest organiser, said the five-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee was
‘not a good role model for anybody’.
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| Members of the AAGS say Gandhi is ‘not a good role model for anybody’ (Picture: Dr Shreekant Borkar/Alliance Against Gandhi Statues) |
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| But many still see the devoted pacifist as a symbol of ‘peace, love and harmony’ (Picture: The LIFE Picture Collection) |
He added: ‘He said all these things that people don’t know, they
have this rosy image. But he’s not a saint he’s a sinner.’
A statement from
the group added: ‘Indian and Western mainstream media avoids talking about the
bleak side of Gandhi’s personality as it may obstruct their bilateral relations
and mutual economic interests.
‘However, the
diplomatic motive and political correctness that results into Gandhi statues
being erected in West is a mockery of its egalitarian and democratic values
West represent and more so the UK.’
Responding to
last month’s student protest Shrimad Rajchandra Mission Dharampur told the
Guardian their campaign ‘appears to diminish Gandhi’s rich and complex history
and his principles of tolerance, peace and unity’.
They added: ‘While we welcome a searching public discussion of the
past, it is misleading to fixate on comments made in Gandhi’s early life as a
lawyer under British colonial influence.’
Professor Vinita
Damodaran, Indian history expert of Sussex University, told Mail Online: ‘He
moved on to become a very much more humane, much more inclusive person in his
later years and he redacted these views.’
A spokesperson
for Manchester City Council told Metro.co.uk: ‘Although we aware that there is
some debate about Gandhi’s life, most people in the city will see the statue in
the context in which it was intended – to spread a message of peace, love and
harmony.’
The Shrimad
Rajchandra Mission has been contacted for further comment.
By
James Hockaday
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