Statues of Dis‘order’

The controversial statue of Gandhi which was at the epicentre of the #GandhiMustFall ( GMF ) campaign was ‘gifted’ to the University of Ghana as part of India’s long-standing diplomatic practice. The campaign led to the removal of Gandhi’s statue from the campus and demanded that they would prefer a statue of Ambedkar’s instead. Taking this diplomatic rupture as the point of departure, this article analyses the post-colonial gifting practices adopted by India. Do India’s diplomatic gifting practices warrant scrutiny of the overlap between the nationalist and Brahmanical lenses determining ‘choices’ of diplomatic gifts? The article explores the moment of gift refusal in India’s diplomatic partnership with Ghana to draw upon the transnational relatedness and disordering of graded hierarchies. It argues that the contention around the gifted Gandhi statue provides an opportunity to unpack gift refusal as a significant diplomatic practice from below, instantiating Afro-Dalit solidarities that go beyond nation states.