Mahatma Gandhi’s statue outside the Indian embassy in Washington DC was vandalised by unknown miscreants with graffiti and spray painting, amid massive protests across the United States over the killing of African-American man, George Floyd, at the hands of the police in Minneapolis on May 25.
The incident is reported to have taken place on the intervening night of June 2 and 3 in Washington DC and has prompted the mission officials to register a complaint with the local law enforcement agencies.
The Indian embassy has informed the State Department and registered a complaint with local law enforcement agencies, which are now conducting an investigation into the incident.
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to India, Ken Juster, has apologised over the desecration of the Gandhi statue.
“So sorry to see the desecration of the Gandhi statue in Washington, DC. Please accept our sincere apologies,” Juster said on Twitter.
“Appalled as well by the horrific death of George Floyd and the awful violence and vandalism. We stand against prejudice and discrimination of any type. We will recover and be better,” he added.
On Wednesday, a team of officials from Metropolitan Police in consultation with the Diplomatic Security Service and National Park Police visited the site and are conducting inquiries.
Efforts are on to clean up the site at the earliest.
Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American, was handcuffed and pinned to the ground in Minneapolis by a white police officer who kneeled on his neck as he gasped for breath.
His death has triggered violent protests across the US, leading to the death of at least five persons, arrest of over 4,000 people and damage to property worth billions of dollars.
Several of these protests have turned violent which many times has resulted in damage of some of the most prestigious and sacred American monuments.
In Washington DC, protesters this week burnt a historic church and damaged some of the prime properties and historic places like the national monument and Lincoln Memorial.
One of the few statues of a foreign leader on a federal land in Washington DC, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was dedicated by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000 during his state visit to the US.
In October 1998, the US Congress had authorised the government of India to establish and maintain a memorial “to honour Mahatma Gandhi on Federal land in the District of Columbia.”
According to the Indian Embassy website, the sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi is cast in bronze as a statue to a height of 8 feet 8 inches.
It shows Gandhi in stride, as a leader and man of action evoking memories of his 1930 protest march against salt-tax, and the many padyatras (long marches) he undertook throughout the length and breadth of the Indian sub-continent.
The statue, the design of which was created by Gautam Pal, is a gift from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR).
The pedestal for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi is a block of new Imperial Red also known as Ruby Red a block originally weighing 25 tonnes reduced to a size of 9’x7’x3’4″. It now weighs 16 tonnes.
(With PTI inputs)