San Francisco, Oct. 3, 2010 – On Saturday morning, a group called the Organization for Minorities of India demanded the removal of the bronze statue of Mohandas Gandhi standing behind the San Francisco Ferry Building.

About 20 protesters marked the Indian leader’s 141st birthday by holding signs and distributing flyers accusing him of racism and other faults. With an audience of several thousand people present for the concurrent farmer’s market, they insisted the statue be replaced by one of either Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a champion of the low-caste people of India.

“We’re making progress,” said organizer Bhajan Singh, “because people are finally dialoguing about these issues. They’re beginning to realize that Gandhi was not a saint, but someone whose actions actually harmed minorities. Before he designed the bloody partition of India, Gandhi helped lay the groundwork for apartheid in South Africa.”

Organizers argued that Gandhi was instrumental in the 1947 partition of India. The division of the independent subcontinent along religious lines led to the largest mass migration in human history, displacing 12 million people and causing the deaths of one million more. During the reorganization, protesters say Gandhi ignored the needs of over 70 million Dalits (then called “Untouchables”) and 40 million Buddhists, Christians and Sikhs. With political power concentrated in the hands of Muslims in Pakistan and Hindus in India, minorities had no choice but to accept subservient roles.

The group claimed that their evidence was mostly taken directly from Gandhi’s own writings, compiled by the Indian government in the 100-volume “Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi.” While living in South Africa, they say that Gandhi regularly wrote diatribes against the black natives, describing them to his Indian readers as lazy, incompetent, sex-obsessed and a danger to Indian society. He lobbied political and social bodies to expand segregation by removing the blacks from proximity to the Indian population.

One incident cited as proof of Gandhi’s racism against blacks was taken from an 1896 speech he gave boasting about getting a third door added to the Durban, South Africa post office. The building previously had two doors: one for whites and the other for non-whites, including Indians and black Africans. Offended at having to share a door with blacks, Gandhi successfully petitioned the authorities to allow a third door for use by upper-caste Indians only.

Protesters spent over two hours handing out information, talking to inquisitive passersby and even distributing free copies of Gandhi Under Cross-Examination, a book critical of the Indian leader. Holding pictures of Dr. Ambedkar, a hero to India’s minorities, and signs describing Gandhi as “The Father of Violence,” the group insisted that Gandhi never changed. As an example, they mentioned a letter written by an elderly Gandhi to Hitler during World War II, saying: “We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents.”

Other Indian minorities have also harshly criticized Gandhi. In 2007, for instance, low-caste politician Mayawati, the Chief Minister of Indian state Uttar Pradesh, blamed Gandhi for India’s ongoing caste problems, saying, “He divided Indian society into two categories – the weaker sections and upper castes.” This division can be understood by Gandhi’s criticism of the tiny Sikh community’s practice of running a free kitchen. Although specifically designed to promote equality in a caste-ridden society, Gandhi adamantly opposed the practice, stating: “So far as the Sikh kitchen is concerned, it is a menace.”

Years before that, beloved Dalit leader Dr. B. R. Ambedkar rose from abject poverty to become a highly respected academic. As a contemporary of Gandhi, he offered a dismal summary of the Indian leader, saying: “If a man with God’s name on his tongue and sword under his armpit deserved the appellation of a Mahatma, then Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a Mahatma.”