Admin | On 03, Feb 2021

We do not condone the taking down of Gandhi’s statue either by violence or vandalism. We condemn the Hindu Mahasaba’s violent shooting of Gandhi in India and the spilling of fake blood to celebrate the assassination of Gandhi. The Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI) further deplores and condemns the vandalism of the Gandhi statue in Davis, but will oppose any attempt to re-install the racist and pervert statue of Gandhi at Davis.

The Mahasaba reenacts the murder of Gandhi

Smashed statue of Gandhi in Hazariba, India

On Sunday, 31^st January, 2021, protests ensued in Davis Central Park, where the statue of Gandhi was severed from its plinth. Members of the Indian Association of Sacramento and the Hindu American Foundation were part of the protests in Davis and OFMI was not officially involved in any counter-protests on this day.

The HAF and IAS are Hindu Nationalist groups who share common ideologies with violent extremist right-wing groups called the Hindu Mahasabha. The Hindu Mahasabha has committed many atrocities against the minorities of India and they perform an annual re-enactment of Gandhi’s murder, by shooting an imaginary Gandhi emblazoned on a banner. Amidst celebrations of the act, the members of the Mahasabha shout slogans of victory as fake blood pours underneath the body of Gandhi.

This collective of Hindu nationalist groups is called the Sangh Parivar and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in a report, has pointed out that their goal is to whitewash minority crimes in India, by using the mythological history of Gandhi.

The IAS has direct ties to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the paramilitary wing of the Bharata Janata Party through the overseas group which is known as the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS). The HSS is the foreign arm of the RSS and IAS is listed on the HSS’s website as a joint operation with Ekal Vidyalaya (an educational project linked to Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the religious wing of RSS). IAS and HSS have jointly hosted events together where they have hosted speakers of the Overseas Friends of Bharatiya Janata Party (OFBJP), who are the international wing of the BJP. OfBJPwas recently investigate d for interference in American electyions.

Recently, the former mayor of Davis, Robb Davis regretted from having accepted the statue from Sangh Parivar groups. Mayor Davis who was involved in the process of erecting the statue of Gandhi in Davis, states that he was deceived on who was gifting the statue to the city. In the beginning, Davis was informed that the statue was being gifted to the city by the Indo-American community in Davis. The former mayor was told that the funding of the statue would be met by sponsors in the US and it was only after a few months that he discovered that the Indian government was the sole sponsor. Groups like the IAS and HAF were used as conduits by the government of India to install the statue of Gandhi in Davis.



Mayor Robb Davis

“I can say, categorically, that had I known in February that the Indian government was donating the statue, I would not have voted to approve its placement in the City.  The Modi government that has promoted the placing of Gandhi statues in various cities around the world as a means to burnish its image abroad is a Hindu Nationalist government that has taken actions detrimental to non-Hindu groups in India.”

Even the former mayor echoes what OFMI has been saying from the beginning that the mythological Gandhi is used by the Sangh Parivar, to whitewash crimes against Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Dalits and other minorities of India. This is a Hindu religious deity statue which continues to hurt Africans and other minorities of India in Davis. The mere sight of this statue to other minorities is an affront to their psyche and human rights to co-exist with other communities as the inhabitants of Davis.

With the recent events at Davis, OFMI is concerned that the acceleration of attacks on OFMI and minorities by Hindu nationalist groups in the US. We implore the authorities to investigate all the Hindutva nationalist groups in California and their ties to the Hindu Mahasabha, which was first to commit violent attacks on Gandhi in India. We fear that the vandalism of the Gandhi statue can be used as a pretext or distraction, to use violence against the farmers in India of who many are Sikhs. We implore the Davis City Council not to re-install the statue of Gandhi, as it is still a gift from the Indian government, which has constantly subjected the minorities of India to violence and repression. The statue is a Hindu deity icon which serves no purpose but to hurt the feelings of Africans, other minorities and victims of sexual abuse.

Davis, California Gandhi Statue Protested

OFMI will continue to lead a global awareness campaign as it has for the past 13 years on Gandhi’s racism and sexual abuse to educate on who the real Gandhi was. OFMI has researched the suppressed history of Gandhi and where possible, it has disseminated these findings through pamphlets, websites and petitions. OFMI’s work on the “real Gandhi” has influenced activists all over the world to correct the abominable history of Gandhi, which is being used by the Sangh Parivar to clean up their image. This is why citizens of many countries are petitioning their governments, to withdraw the statues of Gandhi in their public spaces due to his legacy of racism and sexual crimes.