Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ?

Gandhi was a young man in South Africa
                             
                               

A picture of Gandhi when he was practising as a lawyer in South Africa

                         

Mahatma Gandhi has been variously described as an anti-colonial protester, a religious thinker, a pragmatist,

a radical who used non-violence effectively to fight for causes,

a canny politician and a whimsical Hindu patriarch.

But was India's greatest leader also a racist?

The authors of a controversial new book on Gandhi's life and work in South Africa certainly believe so.

South African academics Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed spent seven years exploring the complex story of a man

who lived in their country for more than two decades - 1893 to 1914 -

and campaigned for the rights of Indian people there.

In The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire


Desai and Vahed write that during his stay in Africa, Gandhi kept the Indian struggle :

"separate from that of Africans and coloreds even though the latter were also denied political rights

on the basis of colour and could also lay claim to being British subjects".

In 1893, Gandhi wrote to the Natal parliament saying that a :

"general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are a little better, if at all,

than savages or the Natives of Africa".

In 1904, he wrote to a health officer in Johannesburg that the council "must withdraw Kaffirs" from an unsanitary slum called the

"Coolie Location" where a large number of Africans lived alongside Indians.

"About the mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians, I must confess I feel most strongly."

The same year he wrote that unlike the African, the Indian had no "war-dances, nor does he drink Kaffir beer".

When Durban was hit by a plague in 1905 :

Gandhi wrote that the problem would persist as long as Indians and Africans were being

"herded together indiscriminately at the hospital "

South Africans have always accused the man who led India to independence of working with the British colonial government

to promote racial segregation. In April, a man was arrested in connection with vandalising a statue of Gandhi.

A hashtag #Ghandimustfall (click)

White paint was used to deface a statue of Mahatma Gandhi and its plaque