Indian Minorities Protest Ottawa Gandhi Statue
OTTAWA, Aug. 11, 2009 – Indian minorities strongly disapprove of the Ottawa City Council’s decision to allow a Gandhi statue to be placed in Strathcona Park (Sandy Hill) in Autumn of 2009.
Gandhi is considered an Apostle of Nonviolence, a Hindu deity and a messiah. He is also hailed as a catalyst of civil rights movements worldwide. Yet Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI) believes this is a skewed view of the man. The organization believes it is offensive to hold Gandhi up as a role model for the city of Ottawa.
The directors of OFMI believe that throughout his life, Gandhi harbored and acted upon a deep-seated prejudice against the black South Africans and the various minorities of India. He promoted racism, demanded segregation in Africa, and even went to war against the black Zulus. They say that this statue is offensive to those minorities who were harmed by Gandhi’s vehement prejudice.
In response to the Gandhi statue, OFMI is endorsing a new book which exposes Gandhi’s intolerance. “Gandhi Under Cross-Examination,” authored by Col. G. B. Singh and Dr. Tim Watson, provides a critical analysis of Mohandas Gandhi’s 21 years living in South Africa.
In 1893, Gandhi claims to have suffered a series of racial humiliations while traveling by train through colonial South Africa. The most infamous of these incidents was when Gandhi was reportedly thrown from a train in Pietermaritzburg after refusing to accommodate a white man by moving out of first class. Gandhi’s fabricated story has misled historians to believe that this event galvanized Gandhi to fight against white imperialism and the burgeoning apartheid system.
Singh and Watson evaluate the evidence for these pivotal incidents. Additionally, they examine Gandhi’s voluntary service as a British Sergeant Major during a war to suppress the Zulus, which he claims inspired his vow of celibacy and poverty. The authors also investigate Gandhi’s racist relationship with the black natives of South Africa and his promotion of segregation.
In the foreword, Prof. Lewis Baldwin writes: “Singh and Watson challenge us to take a new and more serious and critical look at Gandhi’s personality and values, and to come to conclusions based on the evidence in Gandhi’s own accounts of his struggle with racism. Only then can we, as Singh and Watson suggest, intelligently distinguish between Gandhi the historical figure and Gandhi the iconic symbol. This is a challenge that no human being should ignore in this age of cynicism, violence, and terror.”
Members of OFMI believe that the city councillors should reconsider their approval of the statue in light of Gandhi’s racist past. They say the statue inappropriately supersedes real heroes who truly deserve admiration, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others.