It will be noted that, the statue, installed at the University of Ghana in capital Accra, was removed in the middle of the night earlier this week after protests from students and faculty.

The India's former president Pranab Mukherjee had unveiled the statue two years ago as a symbol of ties between the two nations.

But dons   at the university soon began a petition calling for its removal. They cited passages written by Gandhi depicting Indians as "infinitely superior" to black Africans and using the racist pejorative "kaffirs" to describe them.

One of Gandhi's writings cited in the petition read: "Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness."

The online protest was one of a number on university campuses in Africa and beyond about the enduring symbols of the continent's colonial past.