Ranadivé Quotes Anti-Black Gandhi, Indian Minorities Demand Explanation, Suggest Protest

SACRAMENTO: May 7, 2014 – Some Indian-Americans are calling foul on Sacramento King’s owner Vivek Ranadivé, demanding he “explain himself” and suggesting they may protest because Ranadivé rebuked racist remarks by Donald Sterling, ex-owner of the LA Clippers, by referencing a Hindu religious leader some call a “segregationist prototype of Sterling.”

Sterling found himself in hot water on April 25 after an acquaintance of his released secretly-recorded comments in which he expressed his distaste for African-Americans, saying: “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people…. The little I ask you is … not to bring them to my games.” On April 29, Ranadivé told ESPN: “I will lead the motion” to force Sterling to sell the Clippers. He went on to state: “These comments were insulting to everyone. One of my favorite quotes is from Gandhi, and he liked to say that, ‘If you slight one person, you slight the whole world.’ I feel that the whole world was slighted.”

An Indian minority group in Sacramento believes Ranadivé increased the racial tension by introducing Mohandas Gandhi to the dialogue. They say the Hindu preacher advanced racial segregation in South Africa, published a newspaper with racist remarks about Africans, and even went to war against the Zulus. What is more, they want Ranadivé to “explain himself to his players”; if he doesn’t, they say he may face protest.

“Sterling exposed himself as a racist who secretly hates black people, but Gandhi made no secret of his hatred for the African race,” said Dr. Muni Subramani, an advisor to CA-based Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI). “Sterling deserves a lifetime ban from the NBA, but Gandhi was a segregationist prototype of Sterling. He spent 21 years in South Africa publicly promoting racial segregation of Africans from Indians. If Sterling slighted the whole world by slighting one person, did Gandhi slight the whole universe by slighting an entire race? Vivek Ranadivé should explain to his players why he is rebuking one racist with the words of another racist and, if he refuses to come clean, we should protest.”

When a statue of Gandhi was installed in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2003, it faced fierce protest, as reported by The Guardian, which said protesters “suggest he viewed black people as lazy savages who were barely human.” According to the article: “[Gandhi] was quoted at a meeting in Bombay in 1896 saying that Europeans sought to degrade Indians to the level of the ‘raw kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.’”

Gandhi statues in the U.S. have faced similar protests over recent years, especially in CA. One such protest was in Cerritos, CA in September 2013. According to Los Angeles Times coverage, protesters at the Southern California location claimed: “Gandhi perpetuated the caste system, allied himself with Adolf Hitler and was a sexual deviant who slept naked with his grandnieces.” The Orange County Register reported OFMI Founding Director Bhajan Singh told the Cerritos City Council: “You promoted a piece of racial hatred.” At a protest of the city’s Gandhi statue, many of the approximately 100 demonstrators carried signed stating: “Gandhi hated blacks.”

Commenting on Ranadivé, Singh said: “There’s not an educated Indian alive who doesn’t know about Gandhi’s racism, either towards blacks in Africa or towards so-called low-castes in India. If Ranadivé is not ignorant of the truth, he is concealing Gandhi’s true legacy as a racist. He ought to respect the sentiments of the Sacramento Kings team and explain himself to his players. Ranadivé’s integrity is as questionable as Sterling’s if he continues to advance Gandhi in the NBA.”

Arundhati Roy, a prize-winning Indian novelist known for her human rights activism in India, wrote about Gandhi’s racism towards blacks in March. She particularly focused on Gandhi’s campaign to racially segregate a post office in the South African city of Durban, writing:

“Gandhi was not offended by racial segregation. He was offended that ‘passenger Indians’ — Indian merchants who were predominantly Muslim but also privileged-caste Hindus — who had come to South Africa to do business, were being treated on a par with native black Africans…. [One of his earliest political victories] came in 1895 with a ‘solution’ to what was known as the Durban Post Office problem. The post office had only two entrances: one for blacks and one for whites. Gandhi petitioned the authorities and had a third entrance opened so that Indians did not need to use the same entrance as the ‘Kaffirs.’”

“Gandhi’s racism is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Arvin Valmuci, communications coordinator for OFMI. “If Ranadivé’s invocation of a segregationist to rebuke a racist isn’t offensive enough, Gandhi’s predatory sexual abuse of his underage grandnieces certainly takes the cake.”

As reported in 2011 by The Wall Street Journal, Gandhi compelled his 17-year-old grandniece Manu and 18-year-old grandniece Abha to sleep naked with him on a nightly basis as a test of his celibacy. Last year, Indian feminist Rita Banerji wrote: “I saw Gandhi as a classic example of a sexual predator – a man who uses his position of power to manipulate and sexually exploit the people he directly controls.”