Thalia Gigerenzer

Tucked away in a parking lot behind San Francisco's Ferry Building stands a life-sized statue of Mohandas K. Gandhi, a worldwide symbol of non-violence.

Few people take notice of the Indian freedom fighter's statue, which functions as a pigeon roost, and as a storage space for cartons of heirloom tomatoes during the weekly farmer's market. But on October 2, Gandhi’s birthday, this normally inconspicuous statue became the backdrop of a protest as a group of mostly Sikh and low-caste Indians gathered to demand its removal.

“The whole world sees Gandhi as a symbol of non-violence,” said Bhajan Singh Bhinder at the protest, “but we are the victims of generations of his racist policies.” The group handed out fliers to baffled on-lookers, and accused Gandhi of supporting the caste-system and enabling India’s bloody partition in 1947.

The great peacemaker a bigot? It may sound sacrilegious in the United States, but anti-Gandhi sentiments have long been part of the low-caste political movement in India. But these groups have only recently become vocal among Indians in America, where upper-castes are in the majority. In the Bay Area and Northern California, an increasing number of low-caste organizations, temples and newspapers are becoming politically active, causing friction in the Indian community. They are joined by many Sikhs who also consider themselves an oppressed minority in India.

A contingent of Sikhs recently met with Mariko Yamada, who is running for California’s 8^th Assembly District, to protest talks of installing a Gandhi statue in front of the State Capitol in Sacramento. Members of the contingent were present at the Ferry Building protest, where the group filed a memorandum to the city's Arts and Ports commission requesting the replacement of the Gandhi statue with either Martin Luther King, Jr., or the low-caste Indian hero Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.

Many of the local Punjabi-language newspapers, which cater to Sikhs, now regularly publish anti-Gandhi articles. Rajkumar Raju, president of the low-caste temple Shri Guru Ravidass in Pittsburg, was a Gandhi fan until the newspapers began publishing these articles about three years ago.

“I don’t see what Gandhi did for India,” said Raju, a retired employee of an Oakland retread tire factory.

The protests highlight the growing divisions within the Indian community here in the Bay Area, which to outsiders often looks monolithic. And while low-caste Indians say caste discrimination is relatively non-existent in America, they say social divisions are still very much in place.

Rahul Sherwal, an engineer at Cisco Systems and member of the Dalit, or Untouchable, caste, says his upper-caste Hindu boss blocked his promotion at a previous software company. Sherwal, who lives in San Jose, remembers a particularly persistent Brahmin, or high-caste, co-worker.

“He couldn’t figure out my caste,” says Sherwal, “so one day he started tapping my back to see if I was wearing the sacred Brahmin thread under my shirt.”

Even after moving to America, Sherwal has gone to great lengths to distance himself from the stigma of his caste. Like many Untouchables in India, he converted to Buddhism, a casteless religion, on a special trip to India in 2005.

“I wanted to show people that I’m part of a different world now,” said Sherwal.

Vinod Kumar Chumber, a supervisor in a biotech company, is the president of the Shri Guru Ravidass Society of the Bay Area, a group of temples devoted to low-caste Indians and Sikhs.

There are currently five temples in California – three were built in the last 10 years – and the group is raising funds to build one in Fremont. Chumber says the increasing number of low-caste temples show that the old divisions still exist.

“If everybody thought the same way, we wouldn’t need our own temples,” says Chumber, whose organization includes 350 families in the Bay Area.

Gandhi isn’t the only subject of the increasingly vocal protests that are staged every year by members of the Sikh and low-caste community, many of whom came to the United States seeking political asylum. Every year on August 15, the anniversary of Indian independence, hundreds of people protest in Fremont. And Sikhs protest at the Indian Consulate on the anniversaries of Sikh massacres of 1984, which were triggered by the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguard.

But not all members of the Sikh and low-caste community are in favor of these political activities. The protests are the subject of weekly complaints to the Fremont Gurdwara (Sikh temple) made by members of its congregation, says Jasjeet Singh, publisher of the Punjabi-language newspaper Amritsar Times.

And while this group is growing more vocal, it is still a minority among the Indian community, for whom Gandhi is akin to a deity.

This caused some friction at the recent protest at the Ferry Building on Gandhi’s birthday. A group of Gandhi devotees – the Gujarati Samaj of the Bay Area – showed up with garlands and prayer books to pay their respects to the Mahatma, making the security guards hovering around the icon of non-violence especially nervous.

“It’s like calling God racist,” said Neeraj Bakshi of the protestors, who had moved to the south side of the Ferry Building to avoid the farmer’s market. Many Indians, including many upper-castes, feel Gandhi is being unfairly maligned and politicized.

“When we donated money for this statue in 1988, there weren’t these divisions in the community,” Naranji Patel, president of the Sunnyvale Hindu Temple, said sadly.

“I think we should all unite to honor everyone,” said Bakshi.

Videos:

The protestors were caught off-guard when they realized Gandhi's birthday coincided with San Francisco's largest farmer's market, which meant access to the great faster was barred on all sides by fresh produce. They quickly moved to the other side of the market.

But when a group of Gandhi devotees showed up to pay their respects to the Mahatma, things got a little comical. We went around the farmer's market and asked people what they thought of the statue.