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

Views on Jewish people and the Holocaust

Gandhi's positions drew direct 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."

Views on white colonial authority

Support for British imperial structures

Gandhi for much of his early political life operated within and expressed loyalty to British imperial frameworks. He strongly believed that the British Empire was for the welfare of the entire world and maintained this view for a long time. In WWI he recruited Indian soldiers for the British army to express loyalty to the Empire. He remained loyal to the ideals of the British Empire, to, in his own words, its "spiritual foundations."

Views on women and sexuality

Celibacy experiments

Gandhi believed that true brahmacharya meant one could "lie naked with women, however beautiful they may be, without being in any manner sexually excited." He invited young women to share his bed in what he Described as spiritual experiments or experiments in brahmacharya. Among those women was his own grandniece Manu Gandhi. When Vallabhbhai Patel wrote to Gandhi telling him the practice was immoral, Gandhi responded: "For me Manu sleeping with me is a matter of dharma." He further stated: "If I don't let Manu sleep with me, though I regard it as essential that she should, wouldn't that be a sign of weakness in me?"

Views on menstruation and contraception

Gandhi viewed menstruation as the "manifestation of the distortion of a woman's soul by her sexuality." He also believed the use of contraceptives was a sign of whoredom.

Views on rape and female resistance

In 1920 Gandhi wrote that if a woman could not defend herself from an assailant, "her purity will give her the strength to die before he succeeds in violating her".

Views on caste and Dalit rights

Defence of the varna system

Gandhi's position for decades was that the reform of untouchability within the caste structure, not the abolition of caste itself. Even within his vision of a Gandhian utopia, the Shudras were to continue as a servile class, and Dalits were to be integrated into the Shudra varna rather than liberated from the caste order entirely.

Response to Dalit school segregation

When Dalits in Kavitha village demanded their children attend the same school as caste Hindus and faced a boycott in 1935, Gandhi's response was: "There is no help like self-help. God helps those who help themselves. If the Harijans concerned will carry out their reported resolve to wipe the dust of Kavitha off their feet, they will not only be happy themselves but they will pave the way for others similarly treated".

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

Australia

In November 2021, a life-sized bronze Gandhi statue gifted by India was vandalised with a power tool in Melbourne just hours after then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison inaugurated it. Morrison condemned the act as "disgraceful."

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.