A group of Ghanaian academics, students and artists is calling for the removal of a statue of Mahatma Gandhi from a university campus, saying that the leader of India's independence movement was racist towards black people.
The statue of Gandhi, who spent 21 years (1893-1914) in South Africa and fought for the rights of Indians living there, was erected at the University of Ghana in mid-June during a visit to the country by India's President Pranab Mukherjee.
In an online petition, professors at the university cited a series of Gandhi's own writings during his time in South Africa to illustrate his "racist identity". [...]
But Ashwin Desai, a sociology professor at the University of Johannesburg and co-author of The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire, told Al Jazeera that Gandhi never acknowledged nor appreciated the long struggle of African people against dispossession and "their dragooning into mines" under slave-like conditions.
"There is a misrepresentation of Gandhi by court historians who want to present a largely sanitised and universalist Gandhi; as South Africa's first and foremost anti-apartheid fighter," he said, adding that his racist views towards black people had widely been chronicled.
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