SAN DIEGO, March 14, 2011 – Marking the 81st anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi’s historic Salt Satyahgraha, a group opposing corruption in India began a 240-mile protest march on Saturday. They were surprised, however, when counter-protesters braved the early morning chill to claim that Gandhi himself is a primary source of corruption.

The walk, called Dandi March II, began March 12 at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park in San Diego, California and will conclude March 26 at the Gandhi statue in San Francisco. Park authorities told counter-protesting Indian minorities they were upset that permission had not been requested to begin the march there. Holding signs with slogans such as “Gandhi’s Corrupt Dandi March Caused 1.2 Million Dead and Displaced,” the counter-protesters distributed flyers with quotes from Gandhi’s Collected Works that appear to express support for war, the caste system and racial segregation.

“Corruption starts with Gandhi, who laid the groundwork for apartheid during his 21 years in South Africa,” said Bhajan Singh, director of Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI), which sponsored the counter-protest. “He worked to segregate upper-caste Indians from black people, who he said spend their lives in ‘indolence and nakedness.’ His racism exposes his sham commitment to nonviolence as certainly as his outspoken support of every major war in his lifetime.”

Saying “we want unity,” the march organizers invited the OFMI group to join their walk against corruption. Yet Dr. Muni, a Tamil from Nevada, pointed out that the march only highlighted issues like scams and money-laundering and so failed to address the root cause of corruption. Both Singh and Muni argued that caste-based discrimination and institutionalized inequality are the real problems and cause state-sponsored massacres of Indian minorities.

Describing Gandhi as the creator of India’s poor, counter-protestors said Dalit icon Dr. B. R. Ambedkar was a true champion of the downtrodden. Singh suggested to march organizers that they should base their anti-corruption movement on someone like Ambedkar. One man dressed in the white clothing of an Indian Congress activist suggested they may do that someday. “When will you do it?” Singh asked. “When the world ends?”

Later that morning, OFMI again protested when the second leg of Dandi March II’s first day began outside the medical center at UC San Diego. At the university, Sri Atluri, a marcher wearing an official t-shirt bearing a silhouette of Gandhi and reading “Dandi March II,” told counter-protesters, “Forget about Gandhi. We are marching against corruption and Gandhi is not the issue.” The counter-protestors quickly dismissed this as nonsense, noting that the Dandi March II coincides with the dates of Gandhi’s original march, will cover an identical distance and uses his image and terminology.

“It is ridiculous to suggest that the father of India played no part in his country’s foundation in corruption,” stated Arvin Valmuci, operations manager for OFMI. “Look at how his Hindu supremacism was woven into India’s constitution, especially in Article 25, which denies so-called low-caste peoples from identifying with anti-caste religions.”

Article 25 of India’s constitution states: “Hindus shall be construed as including a reference to persons professing the Sikh, Jaina or Buddhist religion.” To support his claim, Valmuci cited a 1947 prayer speech in which Gandhi claimed: “It cannot be said that Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism are separate religions. All these four faiths and their offshoots are one.”