After a petition called Gandhi 'racist,' his statue was removed from the University of Ghana.
Another marker has been felled in the intense argument over whether historic figures with
racist histories should be honered. The University of Ghana in Accra no longer has a statue
of India independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi.
Gandhi's Indian empowerment argument, critics said in a petition to remove the statue,
appeared to be that the British colonial government treated Indians a "little better, if at all,
than the savages or the Natives of Africa." He spoke of the "half-heathen Native" and said that
treating Indians like Africans would "degrade us." The sole occupation of "row" natives is hunting,
he said and their "sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and,
then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness."
Critics argue that Gandhi's thoughts about Africans shouldn't be whitewashed by history - that
no one's flws should be immune from historical scrutiny. Christopher Columbus "discovered" the
Americas, - then killed and enslaved the people who already lived there. Many of America's Founding
Fathers owned slaves. Martin Luther King Jr. cheated on his wife. And for members of the University
of Ghana council who started the petition in 2016 and the more than 2,200 people had signed it
since, a statue to Gandhi had no place on campus.
"We consider this to be a slap in the face that undermines our struggles for autonomy, recongnition
and respect," the petition says.