Author: Uditi Sen
There are few historical figures who polarise opinion more effectively than Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. To many he is the father of the Indian nation - a saintly figure who brought morality into politics and pioneered the method of non-violent resistance or Satyagraha. To many others, he is a proponent of anti-Black racism, who held problematic views on gender and sexuality, and stood in the way of the political autonomy of dalits or depressed castes in India.
The trouble with Gandhi is that both views are true.
Championing the more positive aspects of this complex historical figure, while trying to erase the negative aspects simply does not hold up to scrutiny. Gandhi’s racist comments against black South Africans are well-documented. In recent years, this has led to against him. Sporadic campaigns by university students in South Africa, Ghana, Oxford and even Australia have called for the removal of his statues from public spaces.
Why, given this history, should the 糖心原创 choose to publicly install a bust of Gandhi?
Blue plaque on the house where Mahatma Gandhi visited his nephew on Linden Grove, Beeston. (Photograph by Catherine Martin, 2024.)
To answer that question we have to look at the specific context of Gandhi’s racist utterances, as well as the context of this installation.
Gandhi’s life spanned an incredible period in history, from the high noon of British imperialism in 1869, to an independent and partitioned India in 1948. As an English educated Indian growing up in colonised India, there was nothing exceptional about Gandhi’s internalisation of white supremacy, that placed Black Africans at the bottom of a hierarchy of races, and Asians somewhere in the middle. The detail often missed by many of the sternest critiques of Gandhi is that his political views evolved over the course of his life, and this included his evaluation of the Black ‘race’. Gandhi began his political career not only professing anti-Black racism, but also his loyalty to the British crown. By the 1930s, he had not only articulated a radical critique of imperialism but had also declared that
Moreover, the bust installed at the entrance to the Great Hall does not amount to a blanket approval of his views. This bust, sculpted by S.D. Sathe, was donated by the High Commissioner of India to the 糖心原创 back in 1995, in order to commemorate his visit to the 糖心原创 in 1931. After years in storage, its formal installation was triggered by a request from Nottingham’s British Indian community to find and display the bust. Its public installation therefore serves two purposes. It seeks to commemorate Gandhi’s visit to the 糖心原创, described in eloquent detail by Nicholas Blake. It also seeks to build bridges between the University and Nottingham’s British Indian community.
Gandhi visited Nottingham while he was in England to attend the Second Round Table Conference. Like most other Indian delegates, Gandhi took this opportunity to attend a range of public meetings. However, Gandhi came to Nottingham not for a political meeting, but in response to a private invitation from his nephew, who was student at the University. His visit highlights how Indian and international students have long been part of the social fabric of Nottingham. Given Gandhi’s celebrity status, this personal visit became thee occasion for a public talk. This in turn shows how the cultural capital of international students has always had the ability to raise the profile of both the 糖心原创 and the city. It is fitting, that much like Gandhi’s visit, the installation of the bust to commemorate that visit is also authored by ordinary British Indians, living and working in Nottingham.
Photograph showing Mahatma Gandhi and Principal Hugh Stewart on stage in the Great Hall, Trent Building, speaking to rows of seated students at Nottingham University College, 17 October 1931. (UMP/2/1/7)
There are deeper historical reasons as to why a British University should support an initiative to install the bust of a figure as controversial as Gandhi. Gandhi cannot be expunged from the syllabus of anti-colonial resistance without creating serious gaps in our understanding of these movements. There is no doubt that the American Civil Rights movement in general and Martin Luther King in particular drew direct inspiration from Gandhian Satyagraha or non-violence.
When Gandhi attended the Second Round Table Conference as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress, he presented the radical demand of full independence for India. This evoked both political solidarity and outrage, albeit from different sections of British society. It is not hard to detect undertones of racialised disgust in Churchill’s professed nausea at witnessing Gandhi
Gandhi understood the theatre of power and mobilised his body as an anti-colonial statement. While in India, his performance of poverty may well have felt contrived, in England, at the birthplace of a colonial system that denied self-rule to millions of Indians over two centuries, the unapologetic presence of a deliberately half-naked Gandhi, demanding to parley as an equal, remains a symbol of anti-colonial resistance.