Teachers rip down statue of Gandhi unveiled by Ghana's president - saying the independence leader was 'racist' as a young man in South Africa

The iconoclasts are right this time.  Gandhi had a very low opinion of Africans after living in Africa for some time

A statue of Mahatma Gandhi on a university campus in Ghana has been pulled down by lecturers arguing that India's most renowned independence leader was racist.

After campaigning for the statue's removal for two years, teachers at the University of Ghana in the country's capital Accra took matters into their own hands on Wednesday.

The statue was unveiled in June 2016 by India's former President Pranab Mukherjee, who also gave a speech encouraging students to 'emulate and concretise' Gandhi's ideals.

However shortly afterward lecturers started a petition to get rid of the statue, which had been located in the university's recreational quadrangle.

According to the BBC, the petition said that Gandi was 'racist' and called for African heroes to be honoured instead.

The professors said that the fact that the only historical figure memorialised on the university campus was not African was 'a slap in the face that undermines our struggles for autonomy, recognition and respect', The Guardian reported.

They also reportedly cited several of Gandhi's writings which refer to black South Africans as 'kaffirs' (a highly offensive racist slur), accuse the South African government of trying to 'drag down' Indians to the level of 'half-heathen natives' and describe Indians as 'infinitely superior' to black people.

Gandhi (1869 – 30 January 1948) is the most famous leader of India, where he is referred to as Bapu (papa). He led the country to independence from British rule, which it achieved in August 1947. He is remembered for his tactics of peaceful civil disobedience, which have inspired civil rights movements throughout the world.

From age 23, Gandhi spent two decades living and working as a human rights lawyer in South Africa, where he developed his political and ethical views.

While there he also faced persecution because of his race and served four prison terms totalling seven months for resisting racially-biased laws.

SOURCE