MAHATMA GANDHI’S VIEWS ON RACE, ESPECIALLY BLACKS

Why Some People Think Mahatma Gandhi Was Anti Black and Racist? Does Gandhi’s Own Writings Tell That About Him?

Note: Gandhi’s quotes from the book are ‘highlighted like this’ with single inverted commas.

A black folded fist with BLM written on the wrist
Photo by Mattia Faloretti on Unsplash

Among the statues that Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters are taking down, some are Gandhi’s.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, more famously called Mahatma Gandhi, is a minor figure in the pantheon of anti-black historical figures. In fact, being the patron saint of non-violent, civil disobedience politics, he is even an unusual one to be there. He is the man who Martin Luther King Jr. called the little brown saint. Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) has inspired many including Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Barack Obama.

So, like in every other occasion, this time too when BLM protesters are daubing with the word “racist” on Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in London’s Parliament Square or defacing his statue in Washington DC, there are questions yet again about whether Gandhi was really anti-black and racist…

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Anup Sam Ninan PhD

Runaway academic. EU external expert. Knowledge entrepreneur. Flirting with AI/Conversational Technologies. Live in multiple worlds. More: https://bit.ly/AnupN