JOHANNESBURG: It was supposed to honour his resistance to racism in South Africa, but a new statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Johannesburg has triggered a row over his alleged contempt for black people.

The 2.5 metre high (8ft) bronze statue depicting Gandhi as a dashing young human rights lawyer has been welcomed by Nelson Mandela, among others, for recognizing the Indian who launched the fight against white minority rule at the turn of the last century.

But critics have attacked the gesture for overlooking racist statements attributed to Gandhi, which suggest he viewed black people as lazy savages who were barely human.

Newspapers continue to publish letters from indignant readers: “Gandhi had no love for Africans. To him, Africans were no better than the ‘Untouchables’ of India,” said a correspondent to The Citizen.

Others are harsher, claiming the civil rights icon “hated” black people and ignored their suffering at the hands of colonial masters while championing the cause of Indians.

Unveiled earlier this month, the statue stands in Gandhi Square in central Johannesburg, not far from the office from which he worked during some of his 21 years in South Africa.

The British-trained lawyer was supposed to have been on a brief visit in 1893 to represent an Indian company in a legal action, but he stayed to fight racist laws after a conductor kicked him off a train for sitting in a first-class compartment reserved for whites.

Outraged, he started defending Indians charged with failing to register for passes and other political offences, founded a newspaper and formed South Africa’s first organized political resistance movement.

His tactics of mobilizing people for passive resistance and mass protest inspired black people to organize and some historians credit Gandhi as the progenitor of the African National Congress, which formed in 1912, two years before he returned to India to fight British colonial rule.

However, the new statue has prompted bitter recollections about some of Gandhi’s writings.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.