Coming to terms with Gandhi’s complicated legacy

Gandhi’s non-violent resistance helped topple an empire, but he was also a racist.

Branding Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as “Mahatma” (great-souled) and marketing him to global audiences as an undisputed and all-inclusive icon of non-violent resistance was perhaps the most successful propaganda campaign ever carried out by the Indian state. Thus any attempt to critically challenge Gandhi’s legacy, even when it takes place in an obscure small town in America, causes much controversy in India and beyond. On the morning of January 27, a statue of Gandhi was found vandalised in the town of Davis, in the north of the US state of California. It was not immediately clear who sawed the bronze statue off its base and for what purpose, but the condemnations started flowing in right away.