Ramdas Gandhi (1897-1969), Devdas Gandhi (1900-1957)

Ramdas Gandhi (1897–1969) was the third son of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He was born in South Africa. He outlived his parents and all of his brothers. He and his wife Nirmal had three children; Sumitra Gandhi, Kanu Gandhi and Usha Gandhi. He was active in his father's Indian independence movement.

He had no taste for asceticism, yet participated in the grueling civil protests of the 1930s. Numerous jailings had serious effects on his health. Born and raised in South Africa, he never adjusted to the idealistic poverty imposed by his father. He had a taste for hunting. He died in the year of his father's centenary. At his father's funeral, Ramdas Gandhi was the one who lit the fire to start the cremation, as Mahatma had wished for. He was joined by his younger brother Devdas Gandhi at the funeral.

Devdas Gandhi (1900–1957) was the fourth and youngest son of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He was born in South Africa on the 2.October and returned to India with his parents as a young man. He became active in his father's movement, spending many terms in jail. He spent a lot of time with his father. He also became a prominent journalist, serving as editor of Hindustan Times.

Devdas fell in love with Lakshmi, the daughter of Rajaji, Devdas's father's associate in the Indian independence struggle. Due to Lakshmi's age at that time – she was only fifteen, whereas Devdas was twenty eight years – both Devdas's father and Rajaji asked the couple to wait for five years without seeing each other. After five years had passed, they were married with their fathers' permissions in 1933. Devdas and Lakshmi had four children, Rajmohan Gandhi, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Ramchandra Gandhi and Tara (Bhattacharya)

Alone of all the sons, Devadas stayed near his father, sometimes being granted the privilege of serving as his secretary.  

Mohandas acted as midwife at the delivery of his youngest son, Devadas Gandhi (1900-1957)..

Manilal Gandhi (contd-1)

Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie. Gandhi's Prisoner?: The Life of Gandhi's Son Manilal. Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2005. 419 pp. $27.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7957-0176-4.

Reviewed by Goolam Vahed (School of Anthropology, Gender and Historical Studies, University of Kwazulu-Natal)
Published on H-SAfrica (June, 2005)

Mohandas K. Gandhi died almost sixty years ago. The fascination with him continues even though he and others have written voluminously about every aspect of his life. Approximately thirty books are published on Gandhi annually. Gandhi's Prisoner? is ostensibly a biography of Gandhi's second son Manilal (1891-1956). At the core of the book, however, is the relationship of Gandhi, a universal figure, with his sons Manilal, Harilal (1888-1948), Ramdas (1897-1969), and Devdas (1900-1957), and the different ways in which they reacted to being the children of a Mahatma. The book's title is taken from a letter that Gandhi wrote to Manilal in 1918, asking him to consider him a "friend" rather than as his "prisoner." The question mark was added because opinions of Gandhi the family man range from those who feel his autocratic control ruined the lives of his sons, to those who consider him above criticism. This study is underpinned by a second important objective. Many names spring to mind when the politics of this era are discussed: Yusuf Dadoo, H. A. Naicker, George Poonen, Ismail Meer. Manilal is rarely mentioned in this august company and this biography seeks to restore a more prominent role for him in South African politics from the 1920s to the 1950s. Existing work, Dhupelia-Mesthrie asserts, "hardly does justice to Manilal's role.... As we celebrate our country's ten years of democracy and the heroes and heroines of the long preceding struggle, Manilal's name should now also come to the fore" (p. 23).

Dhupelia-Mesthrie has excellent credentials. She is Manilal's granddaughter and Gandhi's great-granddaughter, and an Associate Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. This accomplished historian has authored or edited Not Slave, Not Free (1992), From Canefields to Freedom : a Chronicle of Indian South African Life (2000); and Sita: Memoirs of Sita Gandhi (2003). In addition, her doctoral dissertation focused on the role of the Indian Agent in South Africa from the 1920s to 1940s. This knowledge is skillfully utilized to produce a comprehensive biography, set against the backdrop of important political developments in South Africa and India.

Manilal, born in Porbandar in 1891, joined his father in South Africa as a young child when Gandhi delayed his return to India. Gandhi comes across as a harsh patriarch at times, who sought to impose his philosophy of life on his descendents. En-route to South Africa the boys had to wear shoes and eat with knives and forks. Though unhappy, "they learnt to comply. This was the first of many lifestyle changes they would encounter; in Africa their father would impose many more" (p. 36). When Manilal was ten and forgot his glasses at home, Gandhi exhorted "we can't afford to forget such things, can we?" and made him walk back five miles to retrieve them. In 1901, Gandhi's wife Kasturbai, Manilal, and Harialal were made to hand back gifts from the local community when they were returning to India. An irate Kasturbai burst out that the boys "were dancing to Gandhi's tune" and that the imposition of his view of life "was turning them into sadhus (ascetics)" (p. 43). When Manilal sent a photograph of himself to Gandhi in 1912, he was censured for his dress: "It does not please me. It does not go with our way of living to dress like a fastidious Englishman. It would be even better if you made it a rule to wear the Indian-style cap" (p. 102). Gandhi punished himself by fasting for seven days when Manilal was caught kissing a teenage girl at Phoenix, the place of Gandhi's residence, north of Durban. As penance, Manilal promised not to marry until Gandhi freed him from this promise (p. 109). Manilal's actions were always tempered by the fact that Gandhi would punish himself through fasting when displeased with his actions. Whether Gandhi's austere disciplinary measures, strict regulations, and continuous attempt to control Manilal's life, even from India, can be construed as parental love in the traditional sense, or as extreme, is for the reader to decide.

Gandhi's punishments were public knowledge. His family learned that "there was no privacy in their lives; they were linked to a bigger community and all deeds were public" (p. 109). Harilal remarked to Gandhi later in life that instead of "reprimanding us publicly--we would have preferred if you caned us privately" (p. 109). Little pleasures were forbidden. Manilal was not allowed to learn to play the piano. He was refused permission to go up Table Mountain when he and Gandhi visited Cape Town shortly after being released from prison: "What is there so remarkable to see in Table Mountain? When you go home to India you can go up to the Himalayas which contain thousands of Table Mountains." Thus, "freed from prison, Manilal was still his father's prisoner" (p. 119). After they returned to India, Manilal gave financial assistance to his brother Harilal. When Gandhi found out, he punished Manilal by sending him to Madras virtually penniless and with instructions to return only when he had earned back the money he had given Harilal. He was warned not to use Gandhi's name to secure a job. Manilal sobbed years later when he recalled his struggles in Madras (p. 140). It is not surprising that when Manilal told tales of his childhood to his children "what he remembers were not fun and games but lessons in discipline" (p. 57). Gandhi was "stern, disciplinarian and driven by an ideal to mould Manilal in his own image" (p. 83). Gandhi insisted his actions were for Manilal's own good: "like a physician, I must make you swallow bitter draughts" (p. 119) and did not consider the measures "cruel" because he was acting "in your interest" (p. 83). Manilal spent time with the great Indian poet Rabidranath Tagore when he returned to India in 1914. Tagore observed that Gandhi's boys were "far too austere. They have a discipline where they should have ideals." He would have preferred it if they were not "so completely nice" (p. 136).

Gandhi cast a long shadow over Manilal's life as he sought to control every aspect of it. This was most blatant with regard to education. Gandhi educated his sons at home because he had little faith in formal education. As Gandhi developed into an advocate of satyagraha ("passive resistance") and his vision was transformed into a way of life, he established community living at Phoenix Settlement in 1904 and Tolstoy Farm (Gandhi's later residence near Johannesburg) in 1910. Determined to spare his sons the "mistakes" he had made, Gandhi made Manilal spend endless hours doing manual labor like farming, carpentry, cooking, and operating machines to develop character and humility. Gandhi believed that this was the most effective way to train for life, at the core of which were human relationships. For Gandhi education was about "knowledge of duty" rather than "knowledge of letters" (p. 79). Manilal, however, was anxious to study; yet when Gandhi had the opportunity to send one of his sons to Britain on a scholarship, he sent a nephew. Manilal felt "a sense of loss and lack of accomplishment" (p. 73) and was "troubled by a gnawing dissatisfaction" because of his lack of formal education (p. 75). This thwarting of Manilal's ambition of a good education resulted in him being "constantly bent over his books, the desire to study always foremost. A feeling of inferiority had taken root and was set to grow" (p. 132).

Responsibility was thrust on Manilal from a young age. With Gandhi spending long periods in prison and elder brother Hiralal preoccupied, Manilal was the "man of the house." His tasks, Gandhi reminded him in 1909, included being guardian of younger brothers Ramdas and Devadas, "looking after aunt Chanchi, nursing mother, and cheerfully bearing her ill temper" (p. 80). Gandhi wrote regularly to Manilal from jail, instructing him on what to read, work to do, and how to take care of the family. Manilal's political training began at the age of seventeen. Gandhi involved him in the satyagraha struggle between 1910 and 1913 to give him a "sense of purpose" and "calm his restless mind" (p. 85). Manilal served four prison sentences ranging from ten days to three months during this period. He was not a "passive puppet," Dhupelia-Mesthrie contends. Having helped edit Indian Opinion, he understood the issues and participated out of conviction (p. 89). Manilal returned to India in 1914 and helped establish Gandhi's ashram in Ahmedabad. Phoenix Settlement and the printing of Indian Opinion were entrusted to Albert West, Gandhi's British devotee. West informed Gandhi in 1918 that the paper's future was in jeopardy because Pragji Desai, who had edited the Gujarati section, had returned to India. Gandhi asked for a volunteer and Manilal returned to South Africa in 1918 at the age of 26. This was the making of Manilal. He replaced West as editor in 1920, a position he held until his death in 1956: "he saved the paper and the paper saved him, for here he found a purpose in life" (p. 156). As Manilal gained in confidence, he began writing his own editorials, gave greater coverage to African issues, covered the anti-imperial struggle in India, and reported vigilantly on anti-Indianism in South Africa. Manilal remained in South Africa until his death. It is not clear whether this was out of choice or duty to Gandhi. He visited India every three years and that is where his heart seemed to be: "The story of the survival of Indian Opinion was complicated by the desire of both Manilal and [his wife] Sushila to be with family and in India. [But] as Gandhi advised, they had to place dharma (duty) over desire" and their dharma was the continuation of Gandhi's legacy at Phoenix" (p. 251). Manilal also wanted to move from Phoenix but Gandhi refused to sanction this.

Gandhi's influential hand was also evident in Manilal's decision to marry. He had wanted to marry Fatima Gool, a Muslim from the Cape, but Gandhi objected because she was not Hindu: "it will be like putting two swords in one sheath" (p. 175). This seems anomalous considering that Gandhi had brought up his children to believe all religions equal. However, the boys were "shaped primarily by Hinduism" even though Gandhi respected all religions (p. 40). Gandhi was concerned about the impact the marriage would have on Hindu-Muslim relations in India. He warned Manilal that if he proceeded with the marriage he would have to stop editing Indian Opinion and would not be able to return to India. Gandhi advised Manilal to get over the "infatuation" and "delusions" of love: "our love is between brother and sister. Whereas here the main urge is carnal pleasure" (p. 176). Whatever Manilal might have felt, "in the end, though, he could not forget whose son he was. He did not have the courage to face the consequences of defiance; there really was no future without his father's blessing" (p. 176). Gandhi implored Manilal to remain celibate, but on this issue Manilal disagreed with his father and married in 1927, at the age of thirty-four. However, his wife was chosen by Gandhi. She was nineteen-year-old Sushila Mashruwala, also of the bania caste and daughter of a wealthy property-owner and fervent Gandhi supporter (p. 183). Gandhi therefore failed to impose his views on sex and marriage on his family. However, in the book, Gandhi's views on these matters and his family's disregard of them are not critically explored. We learn little about family debates on sex and marriage, except that Gandhi was very fond of his grandchildren.

Manilal was intimately involved in the Natal Indian Congress (NIC). From 1920 onward, he was a member of the NIC Committee and attended South African Indian Congress (SAIC) conferences as its representative. In India in 1930 he participated in salt marches and spent nine months in prison. This raised his political profile and he returned to South Africa a hero. The experience radicalized him and put him on a path of conflict with old friends like Sorabjee Rustomjee who remained wedded to the politics of compromise. Manilal conceded he had been wrong in placing faith in moderate politics. When the Indian and South African governments met in 1932 to discuss a colonization scheme for Indians, Manilal called it "nothing but a scrap of paper" (p. 219). Frustrated with NIC conservatism, he joined Albert Christopher in forming the Colonial Born and Settlers Indian Association in 1934. Manilal, once the mouthpiece of Congress, criticized the organization stridently. He referred to its leaders as "puppets dancing to the tune of the Agent" who were interested in nothing more than "tea parties" for persons in authority (p. 226). Manilal supported campaigns by young radicals like Dr. Yusuf Dadoo in the Transvaal and Dr. G. M. Naicker in Natal. He was close to Dadoo, a Muslim and communist, but a staunch supporter of Nehru, Gandhi, andsatyagraha (p. 253). Manilal did not support communism but emphasized common objectives. While he supported African resistance, Manilal, unlike Dadoo, was only prepared to collaborate where there was "a possibility of action" (p. 260). He participated in the 1946 passive resistance struggle against segregation, spending 23 days in jail. As far as India was concerned Manilal, through Indian Opinion, supported Gandhi and the Indian National Congress and vehemently opposed the creation of Pakistan.

Manilal seemed to emerge from Gandhi's shadow after his father's death: "Had Gandhi been alive, Manilal would have been in the background. Now he spread his father's message about the importance of fast and prayer" (p. 338). During 1948 he attended an Asian conference in Delhi and visited London, Europe, and the United States. In the United States, he sat in at a General Assembly session of the United Nations, met with Louis Fischer who was writing Gandhi's biography, and with Albert Einstein and numerous activist church groups. Reverend Donald Harrington of New York was "impressed with his immense spirituality and saintly qualities" (p. 337). Manilal also attended the World Pacifist Conference in India in 1949. He made a good impression on all he met, according to Dhupelia-Mesthrie, because "he had a good understanding of his father's philosophy and spoke in such a calm, convincing and humble way, that he drew people to him and was accorded special reverence. This was the other side of the coin of being a descendent of Gandhi" (p. 337). However, while he had a "good understanding of his father's philosophy," did he truly believe in it?

As apartheid gathered momentum in South Africa, Manilal advocated satyagraha as a means of resistance. Anger should not form the basis of resistance, he insisted. Whites should be won over through "love" and "self-suffering." His weapon of choice was "spiritual armaments" (p. 344). Manilal's pronouncements and publicly announced fasts did not have the same effect as Gandhi. He was not Gandhi and the National Party (NP) was not the British government. Manilal lacked the moral authority of his father and became increasingly isolated. One activist said that Manilal "did not understand the new Africa. So that when the resistance movement came, he was genuinely doubtful about the African's capacity to make a success of that weapon" (p. 349). Manilal's distrust of communists "obscured" his vision and kept him out of the mainstream of resistance. He disparaged communists for their beliefs and "predilection for parties, drink, and women," things that had to be avoided to become a "person with inner discipline. All material things must be made secondary to spiritual values" (p. 343). Manilal was ridiculed within the NIC for his views: his "penchant for individual activity and moralizing brought him little appreciation" (p. 354). As the rest of the country moved towards joint resistance, Manilal campaigned individually against petty apartheid laws. He had reservations about the Defiance Campaign of 1952 because he believed it would turn violent. He did, however, cover the campaign in Indian Opinion and fasted to show solidarity with resisters (p. 352).

Manilal eventually joined the campaign with a group of liberals under Patrick Duncan, son of a cabinet minister, who led resisters into the African location of Germiston in December 1952. They were arrested and Manilal, aged 61, served 38 days of a 50-day prison sentence. Manilal's new political circle came to include liberals like Alan Paton and Julius Lewin, a law professor at the University of Witwatersrand. Manilal, who had resisted Indo-European Councils and White liberals in the 1920s, converted to Liberal Party politics. This became his new political home and he formally became a member of the Liberal Party in 1954. The party's members were united by opposition to the NP and communism. Regular contributions to Indian Opinion by liberals like Jordan Ngubane, Homer Jack, and Christopher Gell widened the gap between Manilal and the Congress Alliance. One of Manilal's last public acts was to attend the Congress of the People in June 1955, where the Freedom Charter was adopted. He suffered a stroke in November 1955 and died on 5 April 1956.

Manilal's biography is an absorbing read. It examines Gandhi's complex relationship with his sons, who reacted differently. Harilal and Manilal represent opposite extremes. Harilal opposed Gandhi's asceticism, revolted against him, and became an alcoholic. He refused to "do things to please Gandhi than out of a genuine commitment to his ideals" (p. 73). Manilal remained loyal. Was he the true heir to Gandhi's spiritual and political legacy? Manilal displayed many characteristics of Gandhi. Like Gandhi, he shared in domestic chores without a sexual division of labor, valued discipline, and his affection towards his children was "always tempered with restraint" (p. 286). Does Dhupelia-Mesthrie resolve the dilemma that she posed regarding Manilal: was he his own man, or was he simply struggling to live up to the expectations of his father whose shoes he could never fill? Gandhi's influence on Manilal was considerable: "it was always his father who controlled, guided and advised" (p. 291). Was Manilal's compliance due to Gandhi's strong personality or his approval of Gandhi's ideals? The Collected Works of Gandhi contain some letters in which Manilal seeks advice from his father, leading observers to suggest that he was weak and relied heavily on Gandhi's counsel. Dhupelia-Mesthrie writes that Manilal's daughter Sita, who was the author's mother, son Arun, and younger daughter Ela, used words like "captive," "trapped," and "enslaved" to discuss Manilal's relationship with Gandhi. Arun maintains that Manilal was "totally subservient" and did not have any "desire of his own other than what Bapu (Gandhi) had chalked out for him" (p. 24). This study shows that Manilal mostly accepted, willingly or grudgingly, Gandhi's "advices." While Dhupelia-Mesthrie states in the introduction that she "seeks primarily to understand rather than judge," she does form a firm opinion, contending that Manilal had a genuine commitment to Gandhi's philosophy. For her, Manilal was not a "psychological prisoner with no personality of his own" (p. 399), but a man with strong views on many subjects. He propagated Gandhian philosophy not because "he was imprisoned by his father's ideals, but because he was a fervent "disciple" of "simple living, high thinking and passive resistance to injustice" (p. 400). The author is generous in her praise and admiration: "Manilal could not consider any life other than one of service" (p. 251); "He knew absolutely no fear when faced with injustice. The jails and police of the South African state held no terror for him; neither did the prospect of death in defence of a just cause" (p. 26).

For whom is Manilal's story important? For whom is it important to restore his reputation? The author? The Gandhi family? South African history? Readers? The author provides a clue in the introduction when she writes that her mother Sita "created such a vivid picture of him in my mind, that my heart found a place for a person I never knew. It was her particular wish that his biography be written. She felt that he had not received recognition for his role on Phoenix, and his thirty-six years as editor of Indian Opinion. I still remember her great disappointment in 1970 at the Gandhi birth centenary celebrations at Phoenix, when Manilal was not mentioned" (p. 22). While Manilal is given a personality of his own in the book, it is unfortunate for the reader that this relationship is seen primarily from Gandhi's perspective, as only a few of Manilal's letters to Gandhi exist. We gauge Manilal's attitude through his demonstration of fondness for Gandhi. In fact, the most poignant part of the biography is the description of the fifteen months that Manilal spent in India when negotiations for independence were reaching their conclusion. He was totally devoted to Gandhi. Sita wrote that her father "sat at his (Gandhi's) feet and helped him with his massage and bath and just sat by him and saw to it that his every need was supplied ... I felt that had he had his own way he would have spent every minute of his life with him" (p. 293). Aside from such expressions of warmth, there are few direct references in personal letters to ascertain Manilal's deepest and private thoughts.

How are we to judge Manilal politically? Unlike Gandhi, he achieved few tangible results in the struggle against apartheid. His name is rarely mentioned when the pantheons of anti-apartheid activists are discussed, even though he spent close to fourteen years in prisons in South Africa and India. Gandhi's credo of non-violence, which Manilal embraced, left him increasingly in the political wilderness because he was unsure how to react as the Congress Alliance moved towards confrontation with the apartheid government. He became sidelined from the anti-apartheid movement of which he should have been an integral part because of this and his revulsion for communism. It is ironic that his last home was the Liberal Party, which accepted partial segregation. Manilal's changing political affiliations caused his critics to refer to him as "Manilal the Jeckyl and Manilal the Hyde" (p. 226). Unfortunately for Manilal, his political vacillation took place in a context where strong personalities like Yusuf Dadoo, Ismail Meer, even the moderate A. I. Kajee and Albert Christopher, carried the day. Manilal was caught between non-violence and having a say in South African politics. His failure to adapt to changes within the Congress movement has taken some of the shine off his contribution. Manilal's anti-communism was an obsession but this study does not adequately explain why. While the ANC and Indian radicals adapted to working with communists, and even Gandhi was politically flexible, Manilal's intransigence left him out of the political loop. Dhupelia-Mesthrie attempts to correct this by suggesting that Manilal would have reverted to Congress politics had he not suffered a stroke. His publishing of the Freedom Charter is cited as support for the ideals of the Charter and Congress politics. Manilal, however, published many views with which he did not agree. The author seems, at times, to be caught between two stools, being a professional historian on the one hand and granddaughter of Manilal on the other. She states that in addition to the general problems with writing biography--"how to phrase what must be told, how to force the seals, twist back the locks, burgle the cabinet of the soul"--she had to "take care to consider the feelings of my family" (p. 27). Although she qualifies this by stating that "there has been no censorship," this raises the broader historiographical question of objectivity when one is so close to the subject.

Gandhi's Prisoner? is an absorbing study of the personal and political lives of Mahatma and Manilal Gandhi, as well as the Phoenix Settlement and Indian Opinion after Gandhi left South Africa. It also provides an excellent and detailed outline of political developments in South Africa and India during these decades. The book is rich in detail and we must be thankful that the author had access to new materials, including unpublished papers, private family letters, and interviews with family and friends. This, together with a careful reading of Indian Opinion, has resulted in a meticulously researched biography which offers many new insights into Gandhi the family man and his relationship with his family. We come to appreciate Manilal the man and politician independently of his father. He played an important role during the middle decades of the twentieth century, particularly when he used Indian Opinion to highlight injustices and promote Gandhian ideals and politics. As a father and family man, he was kind, genteel, and hospitable, certainly ahead of his time on issues of gender: "he worked in the garden and shared household chores. There was no sexual division of labour ... There was no task too lowly to perform" (p. 284). A large number of the splendid eighty-eight black-and-white photographs are from private collections and add considerable value. This book is beautifully narrated, and obligatory reading for anyone interested in Gandhi and his family, the story of Indians in South Africa, or even the story of racial segregation in South Africa. It opens new debates relevant to post-apartheid South Africa, in particular the relationship of Indians and Africans. Contemporary discussion of this sensitive issue is always framed with reference to Gandhi, and many South Africans of Indian origin may be tempted to ask: are we not all Gandhi's Prisoners?

Manilal Gandhi (1892-1956)

Last week October 29 was the birthday of Manilal Gandhi, Arun Gandhi’s late father and the second son of M.K. Gandhi.  Here is a brief look at Manilal’s own life and legacy drawn from a few select sources: Listen to a 1954 interview w/ Manilal Gandhi 

Manilal Mohandas Gandhi (28 October 1892 – 4 April 1956) was the second of four sons of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi. Manilal was born in Rajkot, India. In 1897 Manilal traveled to South Africa for the first time, where he spent time working at the Phoenix Ashram near Durban. After a brief visit to India, in 1917 Manilal returned to South Africa to assist in printing the Indian Opinion a Gujarati-English weekly publication, at Phoenix, Durban.

By 1918, Manilal was doing most of the work for the press and took over in 1920 as editor. Like his father, Manilal was also sent to jail several times by the British colonial government after protesting against unjust laws. He remained editor until 1956, the year of his death. Manilal Gandhi, throughout his life, struggled against segregation and worked toward the 'New African' ideals of greater equality and harmony among races. Manilal Gandhi was an activist and the longest-serving editor of an influential newspaper, the Indian Opinion.

Fearlessly, he protested apartheid laws, even at the cost of prison sentences. Manilal Gandhi, for his dedication to modern ideals, deserves recognition in the New African Movement, the historical intervention and evolution of emerging African influence, independence and development through political, cultural and intellectual impact in the construction of modern African which began in the nation of South Africa in the late 1920s.

The definitive biography of Manilal Gandhi – Gandhi's Prisoner? The life of Gandhi's son Manilal - was written by his great granddaughter, Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie, a Professor of History at Western Cape University in South Africa.  Here she tells of her quest to write about Manilal, published in the Journal of Natal and Zulu History 2006 -

Harilal Gandhi, eldest son M.K.Gandhi

Harilal Mohandas Gandhi , (1888 – 18 June 1948) was the eldest son of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Harilal wanted to go to England for higher studies and hoped to become a barrister as his father had once been. His father firmly opposed this, believing that a Western-style education would not be helpful in the struggle againstBritish rule over India. Eventually rebelling against his father's decision, in 1911 Harilal renounced all family ties.

He converted to Islam for brief period and took up name Abdullah.

Harilal was married to Gulab Gandhi. They had five children, two of whom died at an early age. Nilam Parikh, the daughter of Ramibehn, who was the eldest of Harilal's children has written a biography on him, titled Gandhiji's Lost Jewel: Harilal Gandhi.

He appeared at his father's funeral in such derelict condition that few recognized him. He died from liver disease on 18 June 1948 in a municipal hospital in Bombay, Union of India..

It was never really a battle, Parikh claims, who wrote a biography of her grandfather, Gandhiji's Lost Jewel, based on the family's memories and a collection of his letters they discovered after the death of his last surviving child, Manubehn.

"There was a mutual respect between them." Gandhi's letters to Harilal reveal his friend, faddist and parental hand.

"He was the best of Gandhi's four sons, both in intelligence and courage, the only one who had the guts to stand up to his father. If destiny hadn't willed otherwise, Harilal would have been Gandhi's true successor." Harilal, his grand-daughter insists, was truly the "jewel" that Gandhi and Kasturba lost early in their epic freedom struggle and spent the rest of their lives hoping to reclaim. It was a hope, Parikh says, the son shared with the father, trying honestly—if futilely—to cooperate with the Mahatma's efforts to cure his chronic alcoholism. "There was a mutual respect between them, and they both worked in their own way to repair the damage."

The pain Harilal inflicted on his parents and children by his drinking, womanising and his much-publicised (if short-lived) "stunt" of converting to Islam, Parikh attributes to his being "misguided" by Gandhi's many opponents. "He was a man who never stopped caring about his family, even after his downfall. He cared so deeply that he preferred to entrust his children to Gandhi and Kasturba, and stayed away from them rather than embarrass them with his degradation."

Parikh was only 15 when Harilal died: he was the frail, old man in dirty clothes carrying a copy of the Gita who turned up occasionally in their Bombay home and stayed a couple of days. Sometimes he lectured the children on self-reliance and sang with them during evening prayers. "He had a good voice and knew all the bhajans from Gandhi's ashram." Then, there was the version Harilal's three children—son Kanti, and daughters Ramibehn and Manubehn—passed on to the next generation: "Bhai (that is how Harilal's children addressed him) was an affectionate, clever, industrious, very intelligent and considerate person." Beyond that, they said little. "I tried to ask my mother about her father. But she wouldn't say a word. She suppressed all her emotions." As they grew up, Parikh, like her siblings and cousins, lost interest in finding out the truth. "We were too immersed in our own lives to bother about the past," she recalls ruefully.

It was only seven years ago, when Harilal began to gain fresh notoriety, first in a populist Gujarati novel, Mahatma Vs Gandhi, then in a play with the same title, that a perturbed Parikh began to search for the real facts. A devout Gandhian married to an equally Gandhian activist, she was torn by her loyalties: was Bapu, the revered figure she had been taught to worship, bending down to touch his feet each time he came to Bombay, the playful Mahatma who slapped her too hard on her back and spent five whole minutes playing with them before turning back to more urgent business, the Bapu who had practically raised her mother, uncle and aunt, as bad a father as he was being portrayed? Was Bhai, the tender grandfather who fiercely championed Gandhi, spoken of with such respect and affection by his children, really his sworn enemy? "How I wished I had questioned them (her mother, uncle and aunt) while they were alive," recalls Patil with tears. The search led her eventually to a little black rexine bag that lay unclaimed among her aunt's belongings.

It was a memorable moment: "The bag had a combination lock, and we were wondering how to break it open. Then I remembered that Kantimama's favourite number used to be 420. So we tried that number, and the lock sprang open." Inside was a cardboard file with nearly 100 letters in faded ink on paper so old that some of them came apart in her hands. Right there, seated on the bed in Manubehn's room, Parikh devoured the letters—from Gandhi to Harilal, from Harilal to his wife Gulab, Harilal to his sister-in-law, Balibehn, instructing her long-distance on how to raise the children, from Kasturba to Harilal and his children, from Gulab to Harilal, from Harilal to his youngest daughter—the tears flowing as the past sprung to life in all its tragic inevitableness.

Perhaps the most touching of them were the 29 letters Gandhi wrote to Harilal from the time he left for South Africa to when father and son were going in and out of jail. In the two-and-a-half years in South Africa before Harilal left in a huff because he didn't agree with his father's notions of education, Harilal spent one year, seven months in jail under the harshest conditions. "There is so much affection in them," says a visibly moved Parikh. But more than the affection, what stands out in these early letters Gandhi wrote to his eldest son is his curious mix of friend, faddist and heavy parental hand. While encouraging his son to speak freely, even on sex, he gives liberal doses of advice to the impressionable 20-year-old: on how to handle his wife and mother ("with Ba you have to enjoy a lot and remain cheerful, not serious. You should amuse her but also look after her"), improve his handwriting, spellings, his reading (the Gita for 30-45 minutes, rest of the night for 'other reading'), on financial management, diet, and the benefits of celibacy ("increases your power"). "Harilal went looking for a father," explains Parikh, "and always found a mahatma instead."

It was not his famous rebellion against his father who refused to send him to study abroad that broke Harilal, according to Parikh, but the absence of an alternate vision. "Clashes of opinions happen with every generation," says Parikh, who raised her only child, Samir, in the tribal school she set up in Surat's Bedkuwadoor village, until Samir decided to become a doctor instead, and who now runs a successful private eye hospital in Navsari. "We live in our way, and we have to let our children live in their way." The tragedy of Harilal's life was that after picking up the moral courage to rebel against his father, he lost his way. "He became one of those individuals," rationalises Parikh, "who failed at everything he undertook, and gradually got pulled into the vortex of failure until he believed it was his destiny to wander homeless forever."

The alcoholism, according to her, started only after his beloved Gulab died in a flu epidemic. "He was not just any rebellious son, he was rebelling against the Mahatma, who was setting ideals for an entire nation. He was running against the tide of revolution. On top of it, he lost the support a family provides. It was a double blow he could never recover from."


Nilam Parikh (second from left) with her family at son Samir's residence in Navsari, Gujarat

Both father and son understood each other better than anyone else, explains Parikh. That's why both Gandhi and Kasturba tried at first to use the pathetic plight of his children, neglected and shuttling from home to home, to arm-twist Harilal into giving up drinking. Gandhi hardened his own heart to the plight of his eldest son, stoically refusing to give him money even when he was penniless and hungry. But others, both friends and enemies of Bapu, gave in to Harilal, with disastrous results. Gandhi then encouraged Harilal's children to reform their father, hoping they would accomplish the miracle that he could not. "It was never Gandhi versus Gandhi, but Gandhi and Gandhi," says Parikh.

It almost worked: his son Kanti took him in while he was at medical college in Mysore, and for several months Harilal was a changed man. And then "destiny" intervened again: someone proffered him a large wad of thousand rupee notes which proved to be his undoing. He came home drunk, blabbered about sending his son abroad to become an eye surgeon, handed the money over to his daughter-in-law, and passed out. The next morning, a repentant Harilal disappeared, saying: "I am not a person who can be reformed. Tell Kanti to pardon me." He died the next year, on June 18, 1948, in Shivari Hospital in Bombay, with his two daughters and a son-in-law by his bedside.

It was a life, however, that was not all in vain. Says Parikh: "It was because of Harilal that Gandhi let his other sons choose their own careers instead of working in the villages as he wanted them to do. He learnt from the mistakes he'd made with Harilal. And when Kanti decided to become a doctor, Gandhi readily agreed, asking his three sons to contribute towards his expenses." Harilal's ghost should be pleased: there are more doctors settled abroad in this branch of the Gandhi clan than most well-to-do families can boast of.

Marriages of M.K.Gandhi, Jawaharlal and Subhas Chandra

In May 1883, the 13-year-old Mohandas was married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Makhanji (her first name was usually shortened to "Kasturba", and affectionately to "Ba") in an arranged child marriage, according to the custom of the region.Hindu Modh Baniya and his mother was from Pranami Vaishnava family. Religious figures were frequent visitors to the home.

 In the process, he lost a year at school. Recalling the day of their marriage, he once said, "As we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives." However, as was prevailing tradition, the adolescent bride was to spend much time at her parents' house, and away from her husband. In 1885, when Gandhi was 15, the couple's first child was born, but survived only a few days. Gandhi's father, Karamchand Gandhi, had also died earlier that year. The religious background was eclectic. Gandhi's father was

Mohandas and Kasturba had four more children, all sons: Harilal, born in 1888; Manilal, born in 1892; Ramdas, born in 1897; and Devdas, born in 1900. At his middle school in Porbandar and high school in Rajkot, Gandhi remained a mediocre student. He shone neither in the classroom nor on the playing field. One of the terminal reports rated him as "good at English, fair in Arithmetic and weak in Geography; conduct very good, bad handwriting." He passed the matriculation exam at Samaldas College in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, with some difficulty. Gandhi's family wanted him to be a barrister, as it would increase the prospects of succeeding to his father's post.

1903 From left to right, Harilal, Ramdas, Ba, Devdas and Manilal.
















Kamala Kaul Nehr 
(1 August 1899 – 28 February 1936) was a freedom fighter, wife ofJawaharlal Nehru (leader of the Indian National Congress), the first Prime Minister of India and the mother of Indira Gandhi. She was known to be deeply sincere, highly patriotic, serious minded and sensitive.

Kamala Nehru was born on 1 August 1899 and brought up in a traditional Kashmiri Brahmin middle-class family of old Delhi. Rajpati and Jawaharmal Kaul were Kamala Nehru's parents. Kamala, their eldest child, had two brothers, Chand Bahadur Kaul and the botanist, Kailas Nath Kaul, and a sister, Swaroop Kathju. All her schooling had been at home, under the guidance of a Pandit and a Maulvi, and she did not know a word of English.

Marriage

Kamala wedded Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru at the age of 17. Her husband went to a trip in the Himalayas shortly after their marriage^] In his autobiography, Jawaharlal Nehru, referring to his wife, stated "I almost overlooked her." Kamala gave birth to a girl child in November 1917, Indira Priyadarshini, who later succeeded her father as prime minister and head of the Congress party. Kamala gave birth to a boy in November 1924, but he lived for only a week.

Nehru in 1918 with wife Kamala and daughter Indira

Contribution to the Indian Freedom Movement

Nehru was involved with the Nehrus in the national movement, that she emerged into the forefront. In the Non Cooperation movement of 1921, she organized groups of women in Allahabad and picketed shops selling foreign cloth and liquor. When her husband was arrested to prevent him delivering a "seditious" public speech, she went in his place to read it out. The British soon realized the threat that Kamala Nehru posed to them and how popular she had become with women's groups all over India. She was thus arrested on two occasions for involvement in freedom struggle activities.^[2]

Friends

Kamala Nehru spent some time at Gandhi's ashram with Kasturba Gandhi where she built a close friendship with Prabhavati Devi.^{[citation needed]}

Death and legacy

Kamala died from tuberculosis in Lausanne, Switzerland on 28 February 1936, with her daughter and her mother-in-law by her side. Kamala was cremated at the Lausanne Crematorium. A number of institutions in India, such as  Kamala Nehru College, University of Delhi, Kamala Nehru Park, Kamla Nehru Institute of Technology (Sultanpur), Kamala Nehru Polytechnic (Hyderabad) are named after her.

Emilie Schenkl with Subhas Chandra Bose
Born	Emilie Schenkl 26 December 1910
Died	March, 1996
Spouse(s)	Subhas Chandra Bose (m. 1937)

Emilie Schenkl (26 December 1910 – March 1996), was the wife,^[1] or companion,^[2] of Subhas Chandra Bose—a major leader of Indian nationalism—and the mother of their daughter, Anita Bose Pfaff.^[1][3] Schenkl, an Austrian, and her baby daughter were, however, left without support in wartime Europe by Bose, after he moved from Germany to southeast Asia in February 1943, and subsequently died at the end of the war.^[4] After the war, both were met by Bose's brother Sarat Chandra Bose and his family in Vienna in 1948, and welcomed into the Bose family in an 

Early life

Emilie Schenkl was born in Vienna on 26 December 1910 in an Austrian Catholic family. Paternal granddaughter of a shoemaker and the daughter of a veterinarian, she started primary school late—towards the end of the Great war—on account of her father's reluctance for her to have formal schooling. Her father, moreover, later became unhappy with her progress in secondary school and enrolled her in a nunnery for four years. However, Schenkl decided against becoming a nun, and went back to school, finishing finally when she was 20. The Great Depression had begun in Europe; consequently, for a few years she was unemployed. She was introduced to Bose through a mutual friend, an Indian physician in Vienna by the name of Dr. Mathur. Since Schenkl could take short-hand, and both her English-language- and typing skills were good, she was hired by Bose, who was writing his book, The Indian Struggle. They soon fell in love and were married in a secret Hindu ceremony in 1937, but without a Hindu priest, witnesses, or civil record. Bose went back to India, but reappeared in Nazi Germany during the period April 1941–February 1943.

Berlin during the war

Soon, according to historian Romain Hayes, "the (German) Foreign Office procured a luxurious residence for (Bose) along with a butler, cook, gardener, and an SS-chauffeured car. Emilie Schenkl moved in openly with him. The Germans, aware of the nature of the relationship, refrained from any involvement." However, most of the staff in the Special Bureau for India, which had been set up to aid Bose, did not get along with Emilie. In particular Adam von Trott, Alexander Werth and Freda Kretschemer, according to historian Leonard A. Gordon,

"appear to have disliked her intensely. They believed that she and Bose were not married and that she was using her liaison with Bose to live an especially comfortable life during the hard times of war. For her part, Emilie Schenkl did not like Trott whom she accused of aristocratic snobbery. Whatever the personal sensitivities involved, there also was a strong class bias at work. The Foreign Office officials were highly educated and had aristocratic and upper-middle-class backgrounds. They looked down on the less educated lower or lower-middle-class secretary from Vienna whom they saw living and eating much better than they were in the midst of the war."

In November 1942, Schenkl gave birth to their daughter. In February 1943, Bose left Schenkl and their baby daughter and boarded a German submarine to travel, via transfer to a Japanese submarine, to Japanese-occupied southeast Asia, where with Japanese support he formed a Provisional Government of Free India and revamped an army, the Indian National Army, whose goal was to liberate India militarily with Japanese help. Bose's effort, however, was unsuccessful, and he, reportedly, died in a plane crash in Taipei, Taiwan, on 18 August 1945, while attempting to escape to the still Japanese-held town of Dairen (now Dalian) on the Manchurian peninsula.

Later life

Schenkl and her daughter survived the war, with no support or communication from Bose. During their nine years of marriage, they spent less than three years together, putting strains on Schenkl, which she bore without much complaint. Bose never publicly acknowledged the fact of his marriage, and privately, only acknowledged it to one brother. In the post-war years, Schenkl worked shifts in the Trunk Office and was the main breadwinner of her family, which included her daughter and her mother.^[10] In the 1950s and '60s as word got out of Bose's family, random Indian strangers began to turn up at Schenkl's home, causing some distress to the family.^[10] Although, some family members from Bose's extended family, including his brother, Sarat Chandra Bose welcomed Schenkl and her daughter and met with her in Austria, Schenkl never visited India, though she lived until 1996. According to her daughter, Schenkl was a very private person and tight lipped about her relationship with Bose.

Anita - only daughter of Subhas Chandra Bose

1.  Gordon 1990, pp. 344–345: Quote: "Although we must take Emilie Schenkl at her word (about her secret marriage to Bose in 1937), there are a few nagging doubts about an actual marriage ceremony because there is no document that I have seen and no testimony by any other person. ... Other biographers have written that Bose and Miss Schenkl were married in 1942, while Krishna Bose, implying 1941, leaves the date ambiguous. The strangest and most confusing testimony comes from A. C. N. Nambiar, who was with the couple in Badgastein briefly in 1937, and was with them in Berlin during the war as second-in-command to Bose. In an answer to my question about the marriage, he wrote to me in 1978: 'I cannot state anything definite about the marriage of Bose referred to by you, since I came to know of it only a good while after the end of the last world war ... I can imagine the marriage having been a very informal one ...' ... So what are we left with? ... We know they had a close passionate relationship and that they had a child, Anita, born 29 November 1942, in Vienna. ... And we have Emilie Schenkl's testimony that they were married secretly in 1937. Whatever the precise dates, the most important thing is the relationship."

A study of the early life of the three leaders

Among the three leaders a long ancestral history was only available in the case of Subhas Chandra Bose (about 31 clans) . In the case of M.K.Gandhi ( 5 clans ) and in Jawaharlal only upto the Grand Father is available.  All the three leaders were born in the last half of twentieth century and of financially well off families. All of them took higher studies in abroad (U.K.) They all were of nationalistic and religious minded. Moreover,

M.K.Gandhi was having a very soft, honest and truthful mind.

Mohandas was the youngest of the six children of Kaba Gandhi. He was the favourite child of the family and was called 'Moniya' by his fond parents and their friends. Moniya adored his mother. He loved his father too, but he was a little afraid of him.

As a child, Moniya seldom liked to stay at home. He would go home for his meals and then run away again to play outside. If one of his brothers teased him or playfully pulled his ears he would run home to complain to his mother. 'Why didn't you hit him? She would ask.

'How can you teach me to hit people, mother? Why should I hit my brother? Why should I hit anyone? 'Would be Moniya's prompt reply.

At about this time he also saw a play about Harishchandra, a King who was famous for his love of truth.

'Why shouldn't we all be truthful like Harishchandra?' he constantly asked himself.

 The Indian classics, especially the stories of Shravana and king Harishchandra, had a great impact on Gandhi in his childhood. In his autobiography, he admits that they left an indelible impression on his mind. He writes: "It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number." Gandhi's early self-identification with truth and love as supreme values is traceable to these epic characters.
Mohandas and Kasturba had four more children, all sons: Harilal, born in 1888; Manilal, born in 1892; Ramdas, born in 1897; and Devdas, born in 1900. At his middle school in Porbandar and high school in Rajkot, Gandhi remained a mediocre student. He shone neither in the classroom nor on the playing field. One of the terminal reports rated him as "good at English, fair in Arithmetic and weak in Geography; conduct very good, bad handwriting." He passed the matriculation exam at Samaldas College in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, with some difficulty. Gandhi's family wanted him to be a barrister, as it would increase the prospects of succeeding to his father's post.

In 1888, Gandhi travelled to London, England, where he studied law and jurisprudence and enrolled at the Inner Temple with the intention of becoming a barrister. His time in London was influenced by a vow he had made to his mother upon leaving India, in the presence of a Jain monk, to observe the precepts of sexual abstinence as well as abstinence from meat and alcohol. Gandhi tried to adopt "English" customs, including taking dancing lessons. However, he could not appreciate the bland vegetarian food offered by his landlady and was frequently hungry until he found one of London's few vegetarian restaurants. Influenced by Henry Salt's writing, he joined the Vegetarian Society, was elected to its executive committee, and started a local Bayswater chapter. Some of the vegetarians he met were members of the Theosophical Society, which had been founded in 1875 to further universal brotherhood, and which was devoted to the study of Buddhist and Hindu literature. They encouraged Gandhi to join them in reading the Bhagavad Gita both in translation as well as in the original. Not having shown interest in religion before, he became interested in religious thought.

Gandhi was called to the bar in June 1891 and then left London for India, where he learned that his mother had died while he was in London and that his family had kept the news from him.

Jawahar Lal Nehru described his childhood as a "sheltered and uneventful one." He grew up in an atmosphere of privilege at wealthy homes including a large palatial estate called the Anand Bhawan. His father had him educated at home by private governesses and tutors.Under the influence of a tutor, Ferdinand T. Brooks, Nehru became interested in science and theosophy. Nehru was subsequently initiated into the Theosophical Society at age thirteen by family friend Annie Besant. However, his interest in theosophy did not prove to be enduring and he left the society shortly after Brooks departed as his tutor. Nehru wrote: "for nearly three years [Brooks] was with me and in many ways he influenced me greatly."

Nehru's theosophical interests had induced him to the study of the Buddhist and Hindu scriptures. According to B.R. Nanda, these scriptures were Nehru's "first introduction to the religious and cultural heritage of [India]....[they] provided Nehru the initial impulse for [his] long intellectual quest which culminated...in the Discovery of India."

Nehru became an ardent nationalist during his youth. The Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War intensified his feelings. About the latter he wrote, "[The] Japanese victories [had] stirred up my enthusiasm ... Nationalistic ideas filled my mind ... I mused of Indian freedom and Asiatic freedom from the thraldom of Europe." Later when Nehru had begun his institutional schooling in 1905 at Harrow, a leading school in England, he was greatly influenced byG.M. Trevelyan's Garibaldi books, which he had received as prizes for academic merit. Nehru viewed Garibaldi as a revolutionary hero. He wrote: "Visions of similar deeds in India came before, of [my] gallant fight for [Indian] freedom and in my mind India and Italy got strangely mixed together."

Nehru went to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1907 and graduated with an honours degree in natural sciencein 1910. During this period, Nehru also studied politics, economics, history and literature desultorily. Writings ofBernard Shaw, H.G Wells, J.M. Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Lowes Dickinson and Meredith Townsend moulded much of his political and economic thinking.

After completing his degree in 1910, Nehru went to London and stayed there for two years for law studies at the Inns of Court School of Law (Inner Temple). During this time, he continued to study the scholars of the Fabian Society including Beatrice Webb. Nehru passed his bar examinations in 1912 and was admitted to the English bar

Subhas Chandra Bose was born on 23 January 1897 (at 12.10 pm) in Cuttack, Orissa Division, Bengal Province, to Prabhavati Devi and Janakinath Bose, an advocate. He was the ninth child of a total of fourteen siblings. He was admitted to the Protestant European School like his other brothers and sisters in January 1902. He continued his studies at this school which was run by the Baptist Mission up to the year 1909 and then shifted to the Ravenshaw Collegiate School. The day Subhas was admitted to this school, Beni Madhav Das, the then Headmaster of the school, understood how brilliant and scintillating was the genius of this little boy. After securing the second position in the matriculation examination in 1913, he got admitted to the Presidency College where he studied briefly. His nationalistic temperament came to light when he was expelled for assaulting Professor Oaten for the latter's anti-India comments. He later joined the Scottish Church College at the University of Calcutta and passed his B.A. in 1918 in philosophy. Bose left India in 1919 for England with a promise to his father that he would appear in the Indian Civil Services (ICS) Examination. He went to study in Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and matriculated on 19 November 1919. He came fourth in the ICS examination and was selected but he did not want to work under an alien government which would mean serving the British. As he stood on the verge of taking the plunge by resigning from the Indian Civil Service in 1921, he wrote to his elder brother Sarat Chandra Bose: "Only on the soil of sacrifice and suffering can we raise our national edifice". Finally, he resigned from his civil service job on 23 April 1921 and returned to India.