Mahatma Gandhi Statue Ontario defaced, Pro-Khalistani act
In Canada, a statue of Mahatma Gandhi has been damaged and spraypainted with Pro-Khalistan and anti-India graffiti, the latest in a string of such occurrences.
The vandalism occurred in the early hrs of Thursday near the City Hall in Hamilton, Ontario. The Mahatma Gandhi statue has stood there since 2012.
As per a video of the vandalism, the six-foot-tall bronze monument, which the Indian government gave, was splashed with paint and graffiti was scribbled around the base of the statue, including hatred of Gandhi himself and an assault on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A Khalistan flag was also placed on the statue’s walking stick.
Early in the morning, the damage was found, and city officials acted promptly to remove the graffiti and clean up the statue.
Hamilton Police informed the Hindustan Times that they had received a complaint in this respect on Thursday afternoon and were looking into it.
It was the fourth occurrence in eight months when a temple in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) was vandalised with anti-India.
Pro-Khalistan graffiti spray was painted on its back wall in February. The Shri Ram Mandir in Mississauga, in the Greater Toronto Area, was the focus of the vandalism.
Brampton’s Gauri Shankar Mandir was similarly vandalised on January 30. Before that, in July of last year, vandals vandalised a statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Richmond Hill’s Vishnu Mandir.
The Peace Park of the temple housed the 20-foot-tall bronze monument. A few weeks later, in September, a similar vandalism incident occurred at the Toronto BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir’s main entrance.
No arrests have been made yet due to any of these instances so far. Although some have connected them to the purported Punjab Referendum being planned by the separatist organisation Sikhs for Justice, or SFJ, Canadian law enforcement has yet to confirm that link.
Like in prior incidents, some accounts that appeared to support Pakistan posted a video of the incident on social media. The video appeared to have been taken at night when the vandalism occurred.
In response to the event in September, India’s foreign ministry sent a note verbale, a formal diplomatic communiqué, to Global Affairs Canada.
It wasn’t the first time a Mahatma statue had been vandalized in North America. Such a statue was severed in New York in February of last year, and in Davis, California, in January of 2021, another was vandalized.
Get all the latest news of Saurashtra on Indian daily post.
