The Indian Overseas Congress (IOC) has told the US government that it will pay for restoring Mahatma Gandhi's statue that was desecrated last week during the protests against police brutality. The US Congress passed a bill in 1998 authorising the erection of the statue on government land. The 2.6-metre tall statue was designed by sculptor Gautam Pal and depicts Gandhi as he led the 1930 Salt Satyagraha and bears his quote, “My life is my message.” 

“Mahatma Gandhi being the practitioner and apostle of peace and harmony everywhere, to see a statue of such an icon being vandalized is very much disturbing and painful,” said Johnson Myalil, the president of the Washington chapter of the Indian Overseas Congress on Saturday.

At the same time, he said, the attacks on the Mahatma and his teachings anywhere in the world are deplorable.

Myalil wrote to National Park Service Acting Director David Vela that the IOC would bear the cost of restoring the Gandhi statue situated near the Indian Embassy.

The Park Service, in charge of maintaining the statue, that was dedicated in 2000 by Bill Clinton, who was then the US president, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Indian prime minister at that time.

US Ambassador to India Kenneth Juster apologised last week for the desecration of the statue.

Gandhi appears to draw the attention of some of the protesters against police brutality in the US.

A Bangladeshi restaurant that masqueraded as Indian with the name Gandhi Mahal, despite serving meat dishes, was burned in Minneapolis on May 28 by a section of protesters during their rampage.