Gandhi Must Fall hashtag in Africa, Ghana varsity demolishes Mahatma's statue

Mahatma Gandhi statue in the University of Ghana before it was pulled down following protests calling him a racist. (Photo: Twitter)

To the rest of the world, Mahatma Gandhi is an apostle of peace, non-violence and fight for the right to equality but to some activists in Africa, he is a "racist". A campaign is going on originating in West African nation Ghana to South Africa. Hashtag Gandhi Must Fall is bringing these activists together. They have claimed their first victim in a university in Ghana.

A statue of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi best known as Mahatma Gandhi has been pulled down in the University of Ghana. Indians consider Mahatma Gandhi the Father of the Nation but to activists in Ghana he was a "racist".

The demolished Statue of Mahatma Gandhi had been inaugurated by then President of India Pranab Mukherjee in June 2016. This was the first visit to Ghana by an Indian President.

But only two months after the inauguration of the Statue of Mahatma Gandhi on the campus of the University of Ghana in capital Accra, a campaign was launched in Ghana by a group of professors and students, who called Mahatma Gandhi a racist based on his initial writing in South Africa.

Before taking the cudgels against the British colonial rulers in India in 1915-16, Mahatma Gandhi had lived for 21 years in South Africa and waged a struggle for the right to equality there. During this period - 1893 to 1914, Mahatma Gandhi developed his tools - Satyagrah and Ahimsa - for struggle against the repressive colonial government.

During the period of struggle, Mahatma Gandhi also shed his own notions about racial differences and resistance to simplest of modern technology including the railways.

However, the protesting professors and students, who got enforcements from activists, rejected the evolving views of Mahatma Gandhi and singled out his initial writings to wage a war against his statue on the campus of the University of Ghana.

The inauguration of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi might also have been ill-timed. Mahatma Gandhi was being debated and protested strongly in Ghana when the statue was inaugurated in its capital two years ago.

The protests flowed from a book written by two South African authors, who quoted from the letters of Mahatma Gandhi to proclaim that the man who provided basic tenets of civil struggle to the likes of Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Martin Luther King  Jr in the US was a racist.

Two instances were most cited by the protesters. In one instance, Mahatma Gandhi in 1904 wrote to the British administration in South Africa using the word "Kaffirs" for native black people. The word was considered derogatory as a reference to the native black people. Today, this word as reference to the black people is compared with another derogatory word, "negros". Back then "kaffir" was the word used by the colonial rulers to refer to the black people in South Africa.

Two years later, in 1906, Mahatma Gandhi again used the same word to protest the treatment being meted out to the Indians living in South Africa. Mahatma Gandhi wrote, "The Boer government insulted the Indians by classing them with "kaffirs."

Protest against Mahatma Gandhi on the ground in Ghana soon found way to online campaign platform, change.org where a petition to pull down the statue was signed in large numbers. Mahatma Gandhi's quotes were circulated on social media and referred to in public meetings by the protesting activists to boost their campaign.

One of the oft-referred quotes of Mahatma Gandhi in Ghana was this: "Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness."

Finally on the intervening night of December 11 and 12, when the scores of Indians were hooked to screens watching the BJP versus Congress electoral battle in the Hindi heartland, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was uprooted from the plinth in the University of Ghana.

#GandhiMustFall - Statue of Mahatma Gandhi removed from University of Ghana campus.

Thousand of students signed a petition to get rid of it because of Gandhi's litany of racist statements against black Africans.https://t.co/so2cfCyt23 pic.twitter.com/wiZJUPDDoQ

— Tom Kavanagh (@_TomKavanagh) December 13, 2018

The Mahatma Gandhi statue was pulled down after Ghana's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration approved a petition by the university council. The government in New Delhi has not reacted to the development till the time of writing.

The successful protest against Mahatma Gandhi statue in Ghana has revived a campaign in South Africa, which withstood a similar protest in 2003-04. In South Africa, the campaign is against a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Johannesburg, near an ashram where Gandhi lived. Hashtag Gandhi Must Fall is being pushed on social media.

My alma mater, the University of #Ghana was forced to pull down a statue of #Gandhi.
It followed the #GandhiMustFall campaign by lecturers & students who accused the #Indian Independence leader of using racist terms to describe black Africans.
I took this pics early this year pic.twitter.com/Adcq3rXVR4

— Benjamin Tetteh (@benjieluv) December 13, 2018

Why BJP questioning Rahul Gandhi's gotra is a setback to ghar wapasi campaign

Congress president Rahul Gandhi at the Brahma temple at Pushkar in Rajasthan. (Photo: Twitter/@INCIndia)

India is a growing nation. Economy is growing despite GDP growth rate adjusting marks with the change of government in the name of methodology. Various institutions may look like competing and fighting with one another: RBI versus government, judiciary versus executive, CBI versus CBI or any other friction in the establishment. But there is no denying that India is a major economic and strategic global player today.

India is growing and so are its needs, requirements and demands. India needs jobs in millions. India needs wealth creation in billions of dollars. India needs speed in the justice delivery system.

Justice is not limited to judiciary only. Delay in payment of wages to an entitled one is injustice. The government not providing health facilities to the remotest hut-dweller in the country is injustice.

Partial or total denial of food, house, education, health, employment, earning, well-being and other necessities of life is injustice. Murder, theft, corruption all are injustice. Delivering justice to a victim of injustice at speed must be ensured at all costs. And, towards this end, the people of the country elect government at almost every possible level - village, district, state and national.

But when election happens justice delivery machinery, policy and promises are not the most-talked about thing in the body politic of the nation. This exactly what is happening right now. The gotra of Rahul Gandhi is the talking point. Rahul Gandhi and his Congress party are hellbent on proving that he is a Hindu, a liberal Hindu, a Brahmin Hindu, a God worshiping Hindu, a temple-going Hindu who talks about leading the Indian society of Dalits and Muslims together.

The BJP and its support system have always put a question mark over the Hindu link of Rahul Gandhi. It needs to type a few keywords in the Google search engine to create doubt in the mind of an innocent citizen and voter about the religion of Rahul Gandhi. He has been proved anything but a Hindu. Some prove him a Muslim taking his Islamic ancestry to Motilal Nehru, the real empire builder in the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Some other would want you to believe that Rahul Gandhi is a Christian having adopted the religion of his mother and got rechristened in the Catholic belief. That Rahul Gandhi is only a political name.

But is this the question that one should be asking while she or he should be worried about delivery of justice? Or, should someone actually be answering this question? But it is happening. The BJP and its support system are asking the question, and Rahul Gandhi and the Congress are supplying the answers believing that if this question is left unanswered the grand old party would not come back to power again.

So, first came temple-hopping idea and propaganda. It was followed by a janeudhari devotee of Lord Shiva. Janeu is a sacred thread that only high-class Hindu believers were once allowed to wear. Fortunately, more awareness about core Hindu philosophy renders janeu useless. One can be a devout Hindu without wearing the sacred thread.

But, Rahul Gandhi is not the one to believe in this. He would proclaim his credentials as a janeudhari - wearer (and bearer) of the sacred thread.

It doesn't seem coincidental that a close aide of Rahul Gandhi and a former Union minister announced in Rajasthan at an election rally that only Brahmins can speak about Hindu religion. He validated Rahul Gandhi's greater claim over Hinduism compared to Hindutva brand leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

While Modi calls himself a member of the backward caste, Amit Shah is broadly a baniya community member. Yogi Adityanath is a born Rajput. So, Rahul Gandhi, undoubtedly, knows more about Hinduism than all his top BJP rivals put together.

Then came his own announcement that he was a Brahmin of Kaul ancestry. By visiting the Brahma temple at Pushkar in Rajasthan, Rahul Gandhi connected himself with the near-century old tradition started by Motilal Nehru to offer prayer at this shrine. He identified himself by the same caste and gotra as of Motilal Nehru.

A gang the BJP supporters and leaders latched on the opportunity offered by Rahul Gandhi by announcing his caste and gotra. As the tradition goes, gotra of a person is determined by the gotra of his or her father. Patrilineal control has been firm over many things including gotra. Varna and its offspring, caste had been fluid in the past.

Varna was chosen by an individual according to his or her profession and status in society. Caste was rigid in comparison. But in cases of inter-caste marriages, the children got a caste lower than their father's and higher than that of their mother's. However, gotra retained its identity from the father side.

Even gotra was fluid in earlier times. We hear of nine original gotras and then their diversification in over 50. This clearly hints towards influx of people in the fold of Hinduism and their amicable accommodation in the system.

But, after a point of time - perhaps when new peoples and the old peoples did not mingle well culturally or socially, the new peoples were not granted the shade of any gotra making them an open people. So, while all Rajput sub-castes and even Gurjars have a gotra to identify with, the Parsis, the Muslims and the Christians don't have any gotra. Even those people who adopted Islam and Christianity lost their gotra by dint of conversion.

The case of Parsis is very interesting. They are perhaps the only people who have their motherland somewhere else and found exclusively in India. Still they did not get a gotra. Rahul Gandhi's paternal grandfather was a Parsi. The maternal side believed in Christianity.

Since, Rahul Gandhi's grandfather was a Parsi, he is not entitled to have a gotra, according to patrilineal tradition of gotra among Hindus. Union minister Smriti Irani recently explained it beautifully while responding to a troll on Twitter. Smriti Irani identified herself with the gotra of her father. Her children may have to face the barrage of questions that Rahul Gandhi is facing today. However, they would be in more advantageous position than Rahul Gandhi as the Congress president does not have a gotra to identify himself with on the maternal side either.

Are you nuts??? I HAVE A GOTRA. BOTH PARENTS ARE HINDU. Father’s gotra - Kaushal. Mother’s gotra - Shandilya. Since Father’s gotra Kaushal so is mine. Get a life. https://t.co/n9gxsSZRKG

— Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) November 28, 2018

To deal with the deficiency of gotra, Rahul Gandhi picked up the gotra of his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, who like Smriti Irani identified herself with the gotra of her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, the son of Motilal Nehru.

The BJP is not happy with Rahul Gandhi picking up the gotra of his grandmother, great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather. The identification makes Rahul Gandhi a real claimant on Hinduism - a Brahmin with a gotra. The argument, for the BJP, is simple that gotra is decided by the lineage of the father.

It is here that the BJP goes against its own agenda. The BJP and the RSS have always supported what is popularly known as ghar wapasi campaign. It stands for reconversion of Muslims and Christians into Hinduism. These are the people who lost their gotra and, in many cases, caste also due to their association with Islam and Christianity.

If the BJP is not willing to let people adopt a gotra and a caste under the fold of Hinduism, the ghar wapasi campaign would hit a firewall. The whole ghar wapasi campaign would soon lose its cultural reassimilation touch that the RSS keeps talking about. How can a person be a Hindu and not have a caste and gotra.

If Rahul Gandhi is a Hindu - natural or adopted, he is entitled to have a caste and gotra. If he has identified himself as a Brahmin of Dattatreya gotra (an offshoot of original Atri gotra), the BJP would do harm to itself by taking Rahul Gandhi head on over the issue. It would lose its political vantage point of supporting ghar wapasi.