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Overthrowing the Ideals of the Past in the Post-covid Space: The Case of Mahatma Gandhi
At the upsurge of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has witnessed serious social transformations, and demolition of monuments is one of numerous evidences of this process. In this spirit, Mahatma Gandhi, world’s famous fi ghter for Indian independence who implemented famous methods of fi ghting with cruelty and violence into life, is also seen to be widely criticized. We cannot deny the relevance of Gandhism ideas in the contemporary world, and that not only contributed to the popularity of Gandhi’s personality, but also made it a subject of a strict evaluation. The current research is focused on how and why people criticize Mahatma Gandhi against a backdrop of social nihilism as well as the pandemic, moreover, it also focuses on the displays of public dissatisfaction with the fi gure of the Mahatma. The reasons for Gandhi image revision are different in India and in other countries of the world, the article mainly focuses on Gandhi’s statues defacement in European countries and the USA. The main problem of the article, that is the change in the usual perception of history by contemporary people, deals with the phenomenon of the historical memory revision, that raises the question “Whom and how should we remember now?”. The changes in the answers to this question are based on various societal factors, many of them became more explicit during the COVID-19 pandemic.
