Lakshmi Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869-1948) was an Indian lawyer and political leader who led India's independence movement from British rule through nonviolent civil disobedience, a philosophy known as satyagraha. Born in Porbandar, Gujarat, to Karamchand and Putlibai Gandhi, he trained as a barrister in London, developed his methods of nonviolent resistance while working in South Africa, and returned to India in 1915 to lead campaigns such as the Salt March. He married Kasturba Gandhi in 1883 and the couple had four sons, Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas and Devdas, whose descendants carried forward his legacy in India and South Africa. Revered as the Father of the Nation in India, he is honored worldwide as Mahatma, meaning 'great soul'.

Harilal Gandhi (1888-1948) was the eldest son of Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi. His relationship with his father was troubled and often publicly strained: Gandhi discouraged him from pursuing a formal legal education in England, a decision Harilal resented for the rest of his life. Harilal struggled with business failures, alcoholism, and a public conversion to Islam and later return to Hinduism, all covered extensively in the Indian press of the time. He married Gulab (Chanchal) Gandhi, with whom he had several children, including a son, Kantilal Gandhi. Estranged from his father for much of his adult life, Harilal died in Mumbai in 1948, shortly after Gandhi's own death.

Manilal Gandhi (1892-1956) was the second son of Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi. He spent most of his adult life in South Africa, where he took over editorship of Indian Opinion, the newspaper his father had founded in 1903 to serve the Indian community, and continued it for decades from the Phoenix Settlement near Durban. He was active in the Natal Indian Congress and took part in passive-resistance campaigns against discriminatory legislation in South Africa, for which he was imprisoned several times. He married Sushila Gandhi, and their children, including Arun Gandhi and Ela Gandhi, continued the family's activist tradition in both India and South Africa. Manilal died in 1956.

Ramdas Gandhi (1897-1969) was the third son of Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi. He worked in business in central India, including a period managing a printing press and other enterprises in Nagpur, while remaining closely involved in his father's constructive-work and khadi (hand-spun cloth) programs. He accompanied Gandhi during parts of the independence movement and was present at various points in his father's later life. He married Nirmala Gandhi, and their daughter, Sumitra Kulkarni, went on to be associated with the preservation of Sabarmati Ashram, the Ahmedabad institution central to Gandhi's constructive-work philosophy. Ramdas died in 1969.

Ela Gandhi (born 1940) is a South African social worker and politician, a granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi through his son Manilal Gandhi and daughter-in-law Sushila Gandhi. Raised at the Phoenix Settlement near Durban that her grandfather had founded, she was active in the anti-apartheid movement and was later placed under a banning order by the South African government for her activism. Following the end of apartheid, she served as a Member of Parliament for the African National Congress from 1994 to 2004 and has continued work promoting nonviolence and restorative justice through the Gandhi Development Trust. She is the sister of peace activist Arun Gandhi.

Tushar Gandhi (born 1960) is an Indian author and social activist, a great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi through the line of his eldest son, Harilal Gandhi, and Harilal's son, Kantilal Gandhi. He is best known for his book 'Let's Kill Gandhi', a detailed account of the events and conspiracy surrounding his great-grandfather's death, and he has served as president of the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting Gandhian values. He has been an outspoken public commentator on nonviolence, communal harmony and the political uses and misuses of his great-grandfather's legacy in contemporary India.

Karamchand Gandhi, known as Kaba Gandhi, was the father of Mahatma Gandhi and served as diwan (chief minister) to the princely state of Porbandar and later to Rajkot and Vankaner in the Kathiawar region of present-day Gujarat. A respected local administrator, he came from a family with a long tradition of holding ministerial posts in the small Kathiawari states. He married several times; his last wife, Putlibai, was Mohandas Gandhi's mother. Karamchand died in 1885, when Mohandas was a teenager, an event Gandhi later wrote about in his autobiography as a formative and painful memory of his youth.

Putlibai Gandhi was the mother of Mahatma Gandhi and the fourth wife of Karamchand Gandhi, diwan of Porbandar. A devout Hindu of the Pranami Vaishnava tradition, she was known for her deep religiosity, frequent fasting, and strict personal discipline, qualities that Gandhi later credited as a profound early influence on his own commitment to truth, self-restraint, and nonviolence. She raised Mohandas in Porbandar and Rajkot alongside his siblings. Putlibai died in 1891 while Gandhi was studying law in London, and he learned of her death only after returning to India, a loss he described as one of the deepest sorrows of his early life.

Arun Gandhi (born 1934) is a peace activist and writer, a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi through his father, Manilal Gandhi, and mother, Sushila Gandhi. Raised partly in South Africa during the era of racial discrimination that preceded and continued into apartheid, he later moved to India and worked as a journalist before relocating to the United States. In 1991 he co-founded the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, through which he has written and lectured internationally on nonviolent conflict resolution, drawing on his childhood memories of his grandfather, which he recounted in books including 'The Gift of Anger' and other memoirs. He is the brother of South African politician Ela Gandhi.

Kasturba Gandhi (1869-1944), also known as Kasturba Makhanji Kapadia before marriage, was the wife of Mahatma Gandhi and an activist in her own right. Married to Mohandas in 1883 in an arranged child marriage customary at the time, she joined him in South Africa and later in India, participating in satyagraha campaigns, being jailed multiple times for civil disobedience, and organizing relief and education work among India's poor. The couple had four sons: Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas and Devdas. She died in 1944 while imprisoned with her husband at the Aga Khan Palace in Pune, during the Quit India movement. She is remembered as 'Ba', a term of affection and respect across India.

Kantilal Gandhi was a son of Harilal Gandhi and Gulab (Chanchal) Gandhi, making him a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi through the Harilal branch of the family. Comparatively little is documented about his own life and career, but he is recorded within the family's history as the father of Tushar Gandhi, the author and activist who has written extensively about his great-grandfather's life and, in particular, about the events surrounding Gandhi's death.