Archive:Controversies surrounding Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi, known for employing nonviolent resistance to lead the Indian independence movement, held a range of views that have drawn historical criticism.Template:Source needed His writings and public statements—many drawn from the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, published by the Indian government—document his positions on race, caste, gender, and colonialism that have been the topic of controversy.Template:Source needed

Response to Nazi persecution

Gandhi's prescribed response to Nazi persecution was non-violent submission. In 1938 he wrote that Jews "who claim to be the chosen race" should "prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth." Following the Holocaust, Gandhi stated in a 1947 interview with Louis Fischer: "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves in the sea from cliffs... It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions."

Gandhi's position drew rebukes from prominent Jewish thinkers. Martin Buber responded in 1939: "An effective stand in the form of non-violence may be taken against unfeeling human beings in the hope of gradually bringing them to their senses; but a diabolic universal steamroller cannot thus be withstood." Rabbi Judah Magnes similarly challenged Gandhi directly: "How can Jews in Germany offer civil resistance? The slightest sign of resistance means killing or concentration camps."

Protests and statue removals

South Africa

One of the earliest documented protests occurred in 2003 in South Africa, where campaigners branded Gandhi a racist. In April 2015, a statue of Gandhi in Johannesburg—believed to be the only one in the world depicting him as a young lawyer in court robes—was vandalised by a group who threw white paint on it and its surrounding plaques, carrying placards reading "Racist Gandhi Must Fall." The hashtag #GandhiMustFall circulated widely on South African social media in connection with the incident, borrowing language from the concurrent Rhodes Must Fall movement at the University of Cape Town. One man, Molese Maile, 21, was arrested and charged with malicious damage to property. The ANC condemned the vandalism while distancing itself from the protesters.

Ghana

In June 2016, a statue of Gandhi was unveiled at the University of Ghana in Accra by then-Indian President Pranab Mukherjee as a symbol of ties between the two countries. Within four months, academics at the university launched a petition calling for its removal, citing Gandhi's repeated use of racial slurs and his characterisation of Black Africans as inferior to Indians. The petition also noted the absence of statues of African heroes on campus. It gathered over 2,000 signatures. In December 2018, the statue was removed in the middle of the night. Ghana's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was following the controversy with "deep concern."

Canada

In 2018, Kenneth Aliu, president of the Institute of African Studies Student Association at Carleton University in Ottawa, launched a campaign to remove a Gandhi statue from campus, accusing Gandhi of "antiblack racism" and arguing he had used anti-Black prejudice as a bargaining tool with the British. The university administration declined to remove the statue.

United Kingdom

During Black Lives Matter protests in June 2020, Gandhi's statue in Parliament Square, London, had the word "racist" written near its plinth. In 2020, over 5,000 people signed a petition against the Gandhi statue in Leicester, accusing him of being a fascist, racist, and sexual predator. In September 2025, Gandhi's statue at Tavistock Square in London—unveiled in 1968—was vandalised with graffiti reading "Gandhi, Modi and Hindustani Terrorists." The Indian High Commission condemned the act and the Metropolitan Police opened an investigation treating it as racially aggravated criminal damage

Malawi

An online petition emerged under the #GandhiMustFall movement against plans to erect a Gandhi statue in Blantyre, Malawi's commercial capital, with 3000 young activists on the cause.