Bidisha Roy

NEW YORK (TIP): Mahatma Gandhi’s statue outside the Indian Embassy in Washington DC was desecrated by some miscreants. The statue was allegedly spray painted with expletives. Soon after the incident took place, the statue was covered with protective cloth and an investigation was launched by United States Park Police.

The Indian embassy spokesperson, in response to queries from The Indian Panorama,  June 4,stated that “Mahatma Gandhi statue at the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Plaza in front of the Embassy was vandalized with graffiti/spray paint by unknown persons during the late hours of Tuesday, 2 June 2020.

The Embassy has taken up the matter with the US Department of State for early investigation into the matter, as also with the Metropolitan Police and National Park Service. The Embassy is working with the US Department of State, Metropolitan Police and National Park Service for expeditious restoration of the statue at the park”.

Ken Juster, US Ambassador to India, has apologized for the incident. “So sorry to see the desecration of the Gandhi statue in Wash, DC. Please accept our sincere apologies. Appalled as well by the horrific death of George Floyd & the awful violence & vandalism. We stand against prejudice & discrimination of any type. We will recover & be better,” Juster said on Twitter.

Indian Americans are outraged for the ‘profane desecration.’ “A Molotov cocktail of profanity and hatred, cooked by the tear-filled pages of sad history across humanity existence in every culture and eco-system, was splashed across Mahatma Gandhi’s statue during the Tsunami of George Floyd’s protest” said New York based eminent attorney Ravi Batra.

 “That the root of non-violent civil protest was desecrated speaks not of any disrespect, as Mahatma Gandhi is free of such temporal stain as the sun is free of clouds, but of the intertwined pain of age-old racism that humanity sadly enjoys, horrible economic destruction from the Wuhan Virus, and criminals who remain society’s recurring illness. Add to that the pain from the fact that the American Dream is beyond the reach of many. So, the George Floyd protests, necessary for proper societal recalibration, have included criminality and elements of the 1789 French Revolution and storming the Bastille to overthrow a feudalist society. It is this last fact, not the restoration of the Gandhi statue – a given – that is concerning. Having been involved with Yogesh Gandhi to get the Gandhi statue erected in Union Square decades ago, I’m certain Mahatma Gandhi remains unruffled by the profane desecration, and only wishes to comfort hearts that are burning with such hatred so as to save them from being in jail”, he added.

One of the few statues of a foreign leader in Washington DC, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was dedicated by the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000, during his state visit to the US.