Some young men are calling on the stakeholders of the university of Ghana to pull down the statue of Mahatma Ghandi mounted on the school’s grounds.
A protest going viral on social media platforms by young men led by Felix Ntehene a final year student of KNUST is aimed at pulling down Ghandi’s monument since they claim available records indicate that he was a racist who never liked Africans.
The members of the African Renaissance Front made up of various people from parts of Africa, such a person (Ghandi) should not be considered a role model for Africans.
They explain their move as an act to create the awareness to make the leadership of the University of Ghana pull down Ghandi’s statue.
Felix Ntehene, one of the members of the African Renaissance Front writes:
#GhandiForComeDown
It is sad and very embarrassing that the University of Ghana, the nation’s premier university actually allowed for a statue of Mahatma Gandhi to be erected in the heart of the school. There are so many things wrong with this action, it is hard to pick a starting point. Why should we honour our enemies? Someone that called black people an inferior race. People! Emancipate your mind from this aggressive propaganda machine that seeks to pollute your mind with such filth and make angels out of demons.
Gandhi’s first notable action as a “civil rights leader” was to protest against the apartheid South African government’s classification of Indians in South Africa as Kaffir. Kaffir is the South African equivalent for nigger. He argued that Indians were better than black people and the SA government should recognize that. He, however, supported South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Gandhi also believed in the Indian caste system which preached that all people were destined to remain in a certain group of people for the rest of their lives. This segregationist arrangement meant that you didn’t have the right to rise above the life you were born into. Just to touch on the ills of this system, the caste system, it legitimized slavery. They called a certain group of people Dalits, which roughly translates to mean The Untouchables, and they have been alienated and ostracized from society, with close to nil access to resources. For years the Indian economy has built on the backs, sweat and blood of these unfortunate folks. There are, till date, strong traces of this practice in the Indian society.
So do you still want to honour such a man? Do you still hold such a man in high esteem? That statue of Gandhi MUST be brought down. For a university that has some of the best teachers of political and social science on the continent, I’m gravely disappointed.
