Just four months after its unveiling, a statue of Mahatma Gandhi is to be removed from the University of Ghana campus in Accra, following a campaign led by professors and students who denounced Gandhi as ‘racist’.

These claims are not unjustified. Whilst working as an attorney in South Africa, Gandhi boasted that Indians were ‘undoubtedly infinitely superior to the kaffirs’.

The irony lies in the fact that the statue was intended as a gift from Pranab Mukherjee, the president of India, as a symbol of unity between the two countries.

This follows controversy earlier in the year over a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford, wherein Orwellian questions over ‘editing the past’ were called into play.

Serena Smith

(Image: Time)