Ghana to remove Gandhi statue from university

A statue of India’s founder Mahatma Gandhi will be removed from a university campus in Ghana after its teachers launched a campaign calling him a racist person who fought to maintain the caste-system in South Africa, the Guardian reported.

The Indian president Pranab Mukherjee unveiled the statue in June this year to mark friendly ties between the two countries.

University staff in September began a campaign calling the Indian leader racist. A petition the leaders filed says “it is better to stand up for our dignity than to kowtow to the wishes of a burgeoning Eurasian super power”, and quotes passages written by Gandhi which say Indians are “infinitely superior” to black Africans.

The campaign which was signed by 1000 people says that Gandhi fought to maintain the caste-system in South Africa where he lived as a young man.

In 2003 a similar statue in South African city Johannesburg struck controversy.