When Gandhi’s statue is removed in Ghana (Was Mohandas Gandhi a racist?)

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When Gandhi’s statue is removed in Ghana (Was Mohandas Gandhi a racist?)

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Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

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• Popularising Bapu in modern world: Two nice movies brought the idea of "Jadu ki Jhappi" and "Gandhigiri" to the modern Indian.
• The key message: It was important that Gandhi's message be lived, even if his name was erased, and statues removed.
• Gandhi in Africa: In the 21 years he lived in South Africa, the initial years do not speak highly of him. He used disparaging language for Africans, and a statue in Ghana (University of Ghana, Accra) was brought down recently for that reason.
• Flaws in Gandhi's approach to Africa: We can start with the Eurocentric thinker - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He said that art, religion and philosophy took root in the Orient (India, China, Persia, Egypt). Both India and China were mysterious lands, India more so. But as India was colonised, there was nothing new it could offer. India could not teach the West, as its lessons were for the past, and it never reached the European level of science and philosophy. India was stagnant.
• Hegel was flawed: Since he was a product of the age of colonialism, he was a flawed thinker. (Today, as nationalist currents swarm, we see the urge to prove how great our ancient past was)
• Eternal questions, Temporary answers: Philosophy basically asks eternal questions - for example "how to attain liberation?". But thinkers are bound by time and space, and so are their answers. Current standards cannot be fairly applied to earlier thinkers!
• Putting up the Gandhi statue: In the same vein, evaluating Gandhi's initial thoughts from modern standards is a tough task, although we must ask ourselves whether an apology to Africans is owed by us. Puzzlingly, the GoI decided to inaugurate a Gandhi statue there in 2016, when all know that they were not happy with Gandhi's views! So why did we do it?
• Let us respect African heroes: Ghanaian scholars would rather honour African heroes, than a foreigner (Mahatma Gandhi).
• Uprooting Lenin in Tripura: The BJP workers razed to ground two Lenin statues in Tripura in 2018 (post election victory), irrespective of the fact that the Communist thinker had created a workers' state while destroying the Tsarist regime. He was a genius, though one can disagree with his methods.
• Lenin and Gandhi: They both inspire the poor and marginalised, with or without statues.
• Ghana case is different: The opposing petition rejected not just Gandhi (and statue) but India herself! It called India a "burgeoning Eurasian superpower". That India, of Pandit Nehru, which stood for rights of all post-colonial peoples, is surely dead.
• We want profits: Perhaps the Africans have sensed that the GoI wants profits through trade, and lots of land(s) for industrialists in African nations. And Indians are known as committed racists!
• Rubbing salt into the wound: India must show solidarity with the Africans, and sensitivity towards African co-travellers in the colonial history of oppression. A mature democracy must.
• Summary : The removal of Gandhi's statue in Ghana indicates not just a failure of the past, but also of the present.

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