Gandhi statue gets spot near Churchill

NEW DELHI — A statue of India’s pacifist freedom fighter Mohandas Gandhi will be placed in London’s Parliament Square alongside other famous statesmen, including his political adversary Winston Churchill, the British government said Tuesday.

Gandhi helped lead India’s campaign of civil disobedience to British colonial rule until India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947. The whiterobed pacifist was assassinated a few months later by a radical Hindu nationalist who objected to Gandhi’s secular vision for India.

“Gandhi remains a towering inspiration and a source of strength,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in announcing the planned statue during a visit Tuesday to New Delhi.

While many in India and across the world still see Gandhi as the country’s greatest hero, Churchill was no great fan. Instead, Churchill — who was Britain’s prime minister from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951-55 — was reportedly disturbed by Gandhi’s “striding half naked” into the British viceroy’s palace in 1931 “to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Emperor-King” while simultaneously conducting a resistance campaign.

He also famously derided the devout Hindu as a middling lawyer who was “posing as a fakir,” or holy man.

The Gandhi statue will join others of famous British and foreign statesmen, including Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela. The clipped green lawn of Parliament Square is also a site for demonstrations.

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