Admin | On 02, Feb 2021

The Organization of Minorities for India would like to categorically refute claims which are being peddled by some individuals and news outlets, that we are complicit in the vandalization of the Mohandas Gandhi statue in Davis, California. OFMI in no way has any connection nor links to this incident which we do not condone as we have always advocated for the removal Gandhi’s statue in a peaceful and democratic manner.

In June 2020, suppressed minorities of India protested at the Gandhi statue in the USA

Since the installation of the statue of Gandhi in Davis, California, OFMI has protested the veneration of Gandhi due to a number of reasons:

• While in South Africa, Gandhi led a vigorous campaign to classify black/Africans as inferior to Indians. Since the time he arrived in Natal in 1893, he organized a 20-year-long campaign to separate Indians and Africans from public spaces such as trains, trams, schools, workplaces and even prisons. There is documented evidence to support all these claims
• When Gandhi was in India, he created ashrams where he practised some of the most bizarre sex experiments on teenage girls. There is documented evidence which showcases that Gandhi used to sleep naked with teenage girls, including his own grandniece and the wife of his nephew. Numerous accounts show that some of his close confidants were mortified by his actions where he conducted these sordid sex experiments in the 1940s.
• Gandhi was an ardent casteist who usually masked his disdain for the Dalits of India as confirmed by Dr Babasahed Ambedkar who was forced to give up electoral independence for the Dalits by Gandhi. There is evidence that the British government was willing to give the Dalits autonomy over elections in a post-colonial India, but Gandhi refused to grant the Dalits independence.

OFMI has always strived to educate the masses around the globe about the insincerity surrounding Gandhi’s purported humanitarianism. In Davis, California, we have always strived to educate the inhabitants of the city who did not know this history about Gandhi and as a multicultural city, some inhabitants are emotionally injured by the imposition of this statue in a public space.

Davis Central Park is a space which is meant to be for all the inhabitants of the city and the statue of Gandhi is not celebrated by other ethnicities who call Davis their home. How is an African or an African American supposed to view the statue of a man who once carried out a campaign to denigrate Africans based on racial discrimination? How are the Dalits supposed to celebrate the statue of a man who categorically refused to grant them electoral independence after being abused by the caste system for centuries? Why should women be subject to the statue of a man who used to sleep naked with girls trying to test his sexual abstinence when he was married to Kasturba?

OFMI would like to point out that last year when the Black Lives Matter Movement were protesting, various statues with links to slavery and racism were forcibly taken down. Racism being the central focus of the BLM, even saw various attacks initiated by protesters against the Gandhi statue in many countries. These actions were carried out because we live in multicultural societies where one man’s hero can be another man’s villain. We have seen the statues of Christopher Columbus, Junípero Serra, Juan de Oñate, Kit Carson, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and Francis Scott Key being torn down because of racism. We thus wonder why Gandhi is immune from being removed from a public space when sheer evidence tells us that he was a racist? Why are they these double standards? Why was it considered “OK” to tear down these other statues and their links to racism but when it is Gandhi, so many excuses are being made for him when sheer evidence derived from his own writings tell us that he did not stand for all humanity?

Columbus toppled

A confederate soldier toppled

Confederate statues with severed heads

To those who continue to argue that Gandhi changed in his later years, evidence says that Gandhi was still a racist at 40 years old and there is no evidence where he recants or even acknowledges his 20-year racist past in South Africa. Writers and historians alike have only made assumptions that he later changed but they do not support this notion with any evidence derived from his own writings.

When one investigates Gandhi’s writings, one can clearly see that Gandhi was indeed a virulent racist and for the world to believe that he was a transformed human-being, he needed to have addressed his past deeds as he always did through his writings. After leaving South Africa, Gandhi lied in his autobiography that he was sympathetic to the African cause and never in all the chapters did he mention the disdain he harboured for Africans while in south Africa. It is thus very difficult to believe that Gandhi recanted his racist ways because even when he made his vow to fight against racism when he was removed from the first class compartment of a train, he continued to fight against Africans for over a decade and a half.

This is why two countries in Africa (Malawi and Ghana) have pulled down the statues of Gandhi because they believe that Gandhi died a racist. Today, more countries in Africa are still debating why Africa should host the statues of a man who clearly despised them and called them inferior in many of his writings.

Statue of Gandhi is removed in toppled

OFMI would like to put this on record again that it has no connection to the vandals who tore down the statue of Gandhi, but we will continue to campaign peacefully to stop the Davis City Council from reinstalling the statue. We want a Davis Central Park that appeals to all ethnicities and minorities in our city and reinstating the statue of Gandhi in the park will always be a source of conflict for years to come.