Stop the statue

Members of the Zoroastrian community must "do all they can for this once in a lifetime opportunity to honor the man who should be in Parliament Square,” noted an email from octogenarian historian Dr Kusoom Vadgama, founder of the Indo-British Heritage Trust, who has since the middle of August 2014 been spearheading a campaign to erect a statue of Dadabhi Naoroji in London instead of a second statue of Mahatma Gandhi who was never a British Parliamentarian. The first Indian origin Member of Parliament elected in 1892, it is Naoroji’s statue that deserves to stand alongside those of other great statesmen of the world and not Mahatma Gandhi, declared Vadgama.She has been garnering support to oppose the public announcement regarding the Gandhi statue made by the chancellor of exchequer George Osborne and the then foreign secretary William Hague on their recent trip to India to sell fighter jets.

Vadgama maintained, "The Indian diaspora needs a role model for all the positive values of Indo-British relations… (Naoroji) was a great supporter of the suffragettes who campaigned for Home Rule for Ireland. He represented the culture and spirit of India in Britain as no other Indian did. He was much loved and respected by Jinnah and Gandhi. He also happened to be the first Indian to represent the first Indian trading company in London in 1855 and the first professor of Gujarati in London University,” commented Vadgama in an interview with Bachi Karkaria in The Times of India (TOI) of August 16.
In a letter to Parsiana Vadgama wrote, "Bachi Karkaria has been the greatest supporter. And none of this would have happened without the initiative taken by (human rights campaigner, author and founder of Asha Foundation) Zerbanoo Gifford. It is thanks to her that we have this voice of opposition. Let us carry it through to the end…” She hoped members of the community "give me their support” for the online petition "Stop the Gandhi statue at Parliament Square” addressed to Osborne and Prime Minister David Cameron (http://www.change.org/p/george-osborne-mp-and-chancellor-of-the-exchequer-stop-the-gandhi-statue-at-parliament-square).
The chief objection raised by Vadgama is that the erection of a second Gandhi statue in London when there is already one barely a couple of miles away in Tavistock Square "would be honoring a man who dishonored women. In this respect he was not and is not a hero.” According to her, since Gandhi used young women for his "self-designed celibacy test,” his "disgraceful treatment of women is a darker and lesser-known side of his story. That disgrace still continues today: his legacy is a culture that (like him) fails to empathize with the victims of sexual abuse. The liberation process is still tragically incomplete for Indian women whose rights and dignity are still trodden underfoot.” As she conveyed in another interview in London, "It’s been 100 years since women got the vote, now let’s get our dignity back.” She was emphatic, "No woman should pay a penny to fund for Gandhi’s statue. Every penny raised will be a nail in the coffin of women’s dignity and honor.”
Having grown up "revering” Gandhi, Vadgama claimed, "I looked upon him as God…I used to fast when he fasted. I preached Gandhi-ism” but when she learnt that he would sleep naked in the company of young women, including his grand-niece, to test his self-control, she changed her mind. "No man, hero or a villain, has the right to put women to this level of debasement. What is unbelievable is that nobody dare point a finger at Gandhi. It has taken me decades to speak openly. I spoke up after the recent abuse, killing and hanging of women in India. It was such an emotional thing that I couldn’t remain silent anymore.” In the TOI interview Vadgama acknowledged, "I have no fear or hesitation in telling the truth about him. Ironically, it was he who instilled in me the mantra of ‘satyameva jayate (truth alone prevails).’”
As commented noted historian and author of a book on Gandhi, Ramachandra Guha, in the Hindustan Times of August 17, Vadgama’s "condemnation of Gandhi is extreme. Sleeping ‘naked with women’ was not a ‘habit’ with him. In the last year of his life, as communal riots erupted all over India, Gandhi thought it might have something to do with his own lack of moral purity. So he tested his celibacy afresh with two of his nieces. The experiment was, admittedly bizarre…And we know about this experiment only because Gandhi led his life in the open… Against this one-off abuse of women’s rights one must set the Mahatma’s lifelong work for women’s emancipation. Gandhi campaigned against sati and child marriage, he urged women to shed the purdah and take to education. He encouraged women to participate in political movements in South Africa and India…For Gandhi, Naoroji represented ‘the highest ideal of the Indian patriot’… Naoroji uniquely contributed to public life in two countries, helping to deepen democracy in the UK and to nurture nationalism in India. A statue of him in Westminster would suitably commemorate the long (if not always harmonious) history of Asians in Britain. I think Gandhi would have approved.”
Following Vadgama’s letter in the British media there were some supporting her remarks and others criticizing them. As noted Dr Daniel Eilon, "The rights and dignity of these women were sacrificed to the whims of an individual deemed to be beyond accountability, exemplifying the very evil that Dr Vadgama has sought to highlight: disgraceful disrespect towards India’s many female victims of sexual abuse.” Remarked another writer, "We know so much about everyone that all monuments — whether marble, bronze or concrete — have feet of clay.”