BBC:
“Topple the racist statue” campaign gains ground
A petition to remove a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Leicester has received nearly 5,000 signatures.
The online petition accuses the Indian independence campaigner of being “a fascist, racist and sexual predator”.
Last year, students from Manchester called for a similar statue of Gandhi to be removed because of his “well-documented anti-black racism”.
Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe called the petition a “massive distraction” from the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Labour politician said Gandhi “was part of creating a movement in the same way that Martin Luther King created a movement”.
“His form of peaceful protest, like Black Lives Matter, is a force for change,” she said.
“There is not any desire from the black community to move that symbol of change.”
Professor of Indian history at Oxford University, Faisal Devji, said he thought the debate to remove the statue was “absurd”.
