San Francisco, Sept. 30, 2010 – Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI) will protest against the San Francisco Ferry Building Gandhi statue at 11:30am on October 2. Calling the statue a “contradiction and a source of dishonest history,” OFMI leaders say their goal is to get the statue replaced by one of either Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or low-caste Dalit leader Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.

During the protest, which falls on Gandhi’s 141st birthday, OFMI leaders will present the Ferry Building management with a memorandum demanding removal of the large bronze statue. “The popular image of Gandhi as an egalitarian pacifist is a myth,” said Bhajan Singh, one of the protest organizers. “We plan to challenge that myth by disseminating Gandhi’s own words to expose his racism and sham nonviolence.”

Organizers say Gandhi was instrumental in the bloody partition of India, which made religious nationalism the basis of the newly formed Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. During the 1947 partition, the Hindu religious leader ignored the needs of over 70 million so-called “Untouchables” and 40 million Buddhists, Christians and Sikhs. Political power was concentrated in the hands of the majority populations, leaving minorities no choice but to accept the dominance of Islam in Pakistan or Hinduism in India. This led to the largest mass migration in human history when the original Hindu and Sikh residents in what became Pakistan were compelled to swap places with the Muslim residents of northern India. At least 12 million people were displaced and over one million died in the chaos.

The group notes that the protest will focus on far more than just Gandhi’s life in India and plan to also emphasize issues such as Gandhi’s virulent anti-black racism, participation in a 1906 British war on blacks and his attempt to cover up the murder of an American citizen by his followers. Summarizing Gandhi’s lifelong pattern of behavior, P. Mahi stated: “The historical evidence is damning. For 21 years in South Africa, Gandhi never stopped advocating racial segregation from blacks. He campaigned for a three-tiered society, with whites at the top of the ladder, upper-caste Hindus just below, and blacks pushed to the bottom rung. This abusive behavior continued in India, which he fashioned into a country where all non-Hindus are viewed as foreigners.”

One incident cited by the group as proof of Gandhi’s racism occurred in the late 1800s in Durban, South Africa. In speeches about the deed, Gandhi revealed that the local post office had two doors: one for whites and the other for non-whites, including upper-caste Indians and black Africans. Offended at having to share a door with black people, Gandhi successfully petitioned the authorities to allow a third door for upper-caste Indian use only. For the next two decades, he published anti-black propaganda that portrayed native blacks as savage Neanderthals. He even volunteered to serve in the British Army specifically to assist its brutal suppression of Zulu freedom fighters, demanding throughout the conflict that he should be issued weapons.

Other Indian minorities have opposed Gandhi, some quite recently. In 2007, for instance, Dalit politician Mayawati blamed Gandhi for India’s ongoing caste problems, saying, “He divided Indian society into two categories – the weaker sections and upper castes.” Many years before that, beloved Dalit leader Dr. B. R. Ambedkar rose from abject poverty to become a highly respected academic. As a contemporary of Gandhi, he explained: “If a man with God’s name on his tongue and sword under his armpit deserved the appellation of a Mahatma, then Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a Mahatma.”

Supporters of Gandhi claim that the statue, installed on the Embarcadero in 1984 at the behest of the Indian consulate, represents peace, equality and the struggle for civil rights. Indian minorities tell a different story, however, noting that Gandhi’s legacy was actually one of hatred, prejudice and racial supremacy. These are not the values of secular, democratic societies, say OFMI leaders, who insist that a statue symbolizing prejudice and bigotry has no place in San Francisco.

In the words of humanist Arthur Koestler: “M. K. Gandhi was the greatest living anachronism of the twentieth century; and one cannot help feeling, blasphemous though it may sound, that India would be better off today and healthier in mind, without the Gandhian heritage.”

About OFMI – The Organization for Minorities of India was founded in 2006 to publicize issues relating to the oppression of Christians, Buddhists, Dalits, Muslims, Sikhs and other minorities, particularly those considered to be on the lowest rungs of the Hindu caste system. The group works to encourage secularism, protection of human rights, the liberation of oppressed peoples and the equality of all without exception.