In 2011, the University of Ghana experienced intense debate about a book authored by Pranab Mukherjee, who was the president of India at the time. The whole staff and student body of the institution left the classroom and proceeded outside to demand the removal of a sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi. They sent petitions to the university administration as a group. On the grounds of racism, they asked for the sculpture to be taken down. They said that Gandhi was a "racist." Instead, a few educators and students wanted to pay tribute to African legends. The statue was taken down by the university administration in 2018.

Not just in Ghana, the sculptural hues of those engaged in racism were destroyed or uprooted as the anti-apartheid movement received new momentum with George Floyd's passing in 2020. One of them featured a statue of Mahatma Gandhi. Isn't it a little odd to level such accusations at him? He himself urged a nonviolent uprising against the oppressive British government. So why is he being accused of being racist? What happened back then?

In order to handle the legal concerns of the Indian companies in South Africa, the young Gandhi traveled there. But when he arrived, he saw that both Indians and black Africans were subject to prejudice on the part of white people. To protest inequality, he was also dropped off by train! For these reasons, he raised his objections to the white government in South Africa in the usual manner to end prejudice against Indians. The workers in the anti-apartheid movements in Africa and Europe had specific objections in this area. Mahatma Gandhi urged the British that Indians should not be subjected to discrimination. However, at the same time, he did little to stop the terrible partiality that the local African-Americans of color were experiencing. That is, in the eyes of his detractors, he desired the advantages of Indians and South African whites, but there was a lot of prejudice against blacks. On that subject, he said nothing.

A book titled "The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire" was written by two academics named Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed in 2015 after nearly seven years of research in South Africa. For the publication of this book, much study was done. At that time, Gandhi was in Africa. This book contains a lot of historical information from that era. Because of this work, the monastic genre about Mahatma Gandhi that Indian historians had built for so long underwent significant change.

In an article sent to the National Parliament in 1893, he said, "The general idea is that Indians are ethnically slightly higher than the African local barbarian population”. Gandhi wrote a letter to a health officer in Johannesburg in 1904, protesting that the British had designated the same place for Indians and Africans to live. In Durban, when the epidemic began to make public life worse, Gandhi wrote that as long as blacks and Indians continued to receive treatment in the same hospital, the epidemic would continue. He demanded a separate hospital for the Indians. He is also known to have directly assisted the British during the Zulu Rebellion.

When Gandhi first came to South Africa as a young man, he didn't really understand the racism there or the problems faced by black people. So he initially focused on fighting for the rights of his own people. This inspired black folks to start fighting for their rights too. But discussing the rights of black people was difficult in the early 1900s. Gandhi later came to the realization that his former beliefs were incorrect and started advocating for the rights of black people. This is the reason Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. both took identical actions. Despite the fact that Gandhi had made some contentious statements in the past, they learned from him.

People might assume Gandhi was racist if they learned that his period in South Africa was only briefly addressed in two professors' writings there. He argued that black individuals should not possess the same rights as white individuals. He thought of the black people as his inferiors. But after he realized what had happened, he battled for their justice. So, it will be incorrect to accuse Gandhiji of being a ‘racist’ as he fought for their justice later in his life. Hence, he will remain the symbol of peace, justice and equality for ages to come.