Recently, a statue of Mahatma Gandhi was toppled by students at the University of Ghana in Accra. The reason? The students accused Gandhi of being a racist.
The notion that Mahatma Gandhi – one of the most venerated figures all over the world, could be a racist was enough to boggle the mind.
What were the students in Accra thinking of?
Mahatma Gandhi lived in South Africa as a young lawyer between 1893 and 1914. He was a socially active and outspoken man who quickly saw the difficulties that his fellow Indians had to live with in what was then a land of oppression, especially towards its black majority. According to a book titled “The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire”, published in 2015, authors Desai and Vahed averred that Gandhi “kept the Indian struggle separate from that of Africans…”. In a letter to the Natal Parliament in 1893, he was quoted as saying: “…a general belief seems to prevail in the colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa”.
The Gandhi portrayed here is difficult to reconcile with the Gandhi the world would later know, whose philosophy of “Satyagraha” – non-violent resistance, would spread universally, and become a major driving force in the Civil Rights movement and the push for the rights of oppressed people in all corners of the globe.
Devoted Gandhi-ists would want to “blank out” the racist Gandhi of 1983.
Another historical figure whose image has been called into question is Winston Churchill. He is known as the hero who rescued the UK from the jaws of defeat in the Second World War and led it to a famous victory over Nazi Germany. Some months ago, a London-businessman opened a Churchill-themed pub in Finsbury Park. Soon afterwards, a group of activists burst into the pub, startling breakfast diners by protesting that Winston Churchill was a war criminal and a racist who should not be dignified with a monument in that part of London, or anywhere else for that matter. They described the glorification of the man as “colonial” and pronounced themselves appalled that patrons were drinking from Churchill mugs underneath pictures of Spitfires and Union Jack flags. Many of the activists were students.
The truth was that Churchill was both the hero that saved England and the racist who once derided Mahatma Gandhi as a “half-naked fakir”. It is even said he withheld food from starving Indians at one time because he felt it was more important to concentrate on the war effort. In history books read till today by students from Alaska to Nigeria, Winston Churchill is hailed as a great hero.
Which is the true Churchill – the hero or the villain? Is it an act of treason for any Briton to question Churchill’s legacy, as some claim?
Back home, everyone accepts that the “Founding Fathers” of Nigeria were great men of unblemished character, and that if anything is wrong with the country today, the fault is in present generation, and not embedded in these untouchable icons of heroism and service
Back home, everyone accepts that the “Founding Fathers” of Nigeria were great men of unblemished character, and that if anything is wrong with the country today, the fault is in present generation, and not embedded in these untouchable icons of heroism and service.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo is one of the most adulated “founding fathers”. Ironically, what he wanted most, and the one thing he could not have, was the leadership of Nigeria, something that would come with minimal effort to a man of much less endowment – Olusegun Obasanjo. What would actually stamp Awolowo’s imprint on History was his tenure as Premier of the Western Region, which he himself regarded merely as a steppingstone. Having set up the first television station in Africa, having unleashed the people’s potential through Free Education, having positioned the Western Region head to head with the emerging giants of Asia – Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the question may well be asked: What might Awo have accomplished if he had stayed on the job- to think-through and sustain his big ideas?
Instead he would fizzle out in Lagos, and WNTV would become, not a First World pacesetter, but a shabby relic of a lost dream. Perhaps Nigeria itself would have developed like the Asian tigers, because his achievements would have spurred a healthy competition from other regions of the nation. Perhaps there would have been no need for a kangaroo ‘treasonable felony’ trial, no 1966 coup, no ‘revenge’ coup, and so on. History can be cruel.
Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, was a generous and inspirational leader with a clearly self-defined brief – to advance the cause of Northern Nigeria. How that ambition, and the strategy he chose to pursue it, would sit with a cosmopolitan, egalitarian Nigerian entity is a question that has not been answered to this day. His insights concerning other Nigerians were deep and deeply troubling, as shown in his Daily Star interview, the video of which is still available on U tube.
And the great Zik? He spoke English and Yoruba “like a native”, and was much beloved of Herbert Macaulay, whose political mantle he inherited. He was the quintessential “nationalist” Nigerian – or was he? It was said loyalty was not his forte – while some people were waiting to make a deal with him at Asaba, he was off somewhere else making a deal with another set of people. Even his dramatic return from “Biafra” left many questions hanging.
Is it fair to judge people outside their times? Most people cannot abide the complexity of “good and bad” heroes and are only comfortable with the pure hero who embodies all that is noble and good in his people. Unfortunately, that involves shutting out part of the truth, because that is not how it is in the real world. The writers of the book that demystified Gandhi were fellow Indians. Flawed heroes are easier to embrace, emulate and learn from than saintly mythical figures who never put a foot wrong.
