Public Family Trees/Mahatma Gandhi/Putlibai Gandhi
· Female · Porbandar, Gujarat, India
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Putlibai Gandhi
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…
Legacy
A defining role in the story of the Mahatma Gandhi family.
Died1891
The close of a life whose connections continue through the family record.
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Gen 4 · b. 1935
Rajmohan Gandhi (born 1935) is an Indian historian, biographer and former politician, a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi through his son Devdas Gandhi and daughter-in-law Lakshmi Gandhi. A prolific author, he has written biographies of his grandfather, including 'Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire', as well as works on other major figures in Indian history. He served as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India's Parliament, and has held academic positions at universities including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he has taught history and political science. He is the brother of Ramchandra Gandhi, Gopalkrishna Gandhi and Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee.
Gen 4 · b. 1940
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.
Gen 4 · b. 1945
Gopalkrishna Gandhi (born 1945) is an Indian diplomat, writer and former civil servant, a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi through his son Devdas Gandhi and daughter-in-law Lakshmi Gandhi. He had a long career in the Indian Administrative Service and Indian Foreign Service, serving as High Commissioner to South Africa and Sri Lanka and Ambassador to Norway and Iceland, before serving as Governor of West Bengal from 2004 to 2009. He was also the Vice-Presidential candidate for a coalition of opposition parties in India's 2017 election. He is the brother of Rajmohan Gandhi, Ramchandra Gandhi and Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee.
Gen 5 · b. 1960
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.
Gen 1
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.
Gen 4 · b. 1934
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.
Gen 2 · 1869 - 1944
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.
Gen 4 · b. 1934
Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee (born 1934) is a writer and social worker, a granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi through his son Devdas Gandhi and daughter-in-law Lakshmi Gandhi. She has spent much of her life engaged in Gandhian constructive-work programs and institutions dedicated to preserving and interpreting her grandfather's philosophy, including serving in leadership roles connected to Gandhi Smriti and related memorial trusts in Delhi. She has written and spoken widely on nonviolence and her grandfather's legacy, and is the sister of Rajmohan Gandhi, Ramchandra Gandhi and Gopalkrishna Gandhi.
Gen 4 · 1937 - 2007
Ramchandra Gandhi (1937-2007) was an Indian philosopher, a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi through his son Devdas Gandhi and daughter-in-law Lakshmi Gandhi. He taught philosophy at universities including the University of Hyderabad and Visva-Bharati, and was known for his work exploring Indian philosophy, Advaita Vedanta, and questions of nonviolence and spirituality in relation to his grandfather's legacy. He was a familiar public intellectual in Delhi's academic and cultural circles, engaging in wide-ranging writing and lecturing until his death in 2007. He was the brother of Rajmohan Gandhi, Gopalkrishna Gandhi and Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee.
Gen 4
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.
Gen 4
Sumitra Kulkarni (nee Gandhi) was a granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi through his third son, Ramdas Gandhi, and daughter-in-law Nirmala Gandhi. She was closely associated with Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, the institution her grandfather founded in 1917 as a base for his campaigns of nonviolent resistance and constructive social work, and she took part in efforts connected to preserving its buildings and legacy for later generations. Through her, the Gandhi family's third-son branch remained connected to one of the movement's most historically significant sites in India.
The House of Hohenzollern is the German dynasty that ruled Brandenburg from 1415, held the Prussian crown from 1701, and gave Germany its three emperors between 1871 and the fall of the monarchy in 1918. This tree follows the senior Prussian line in one unbroken descent, from Frederick William the Great Elector, through the kings of Prussia and the German Emperors, down to Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, the present head of the house. ## Origins The family takes its name from Hohenzollern Castle on a hill in the Swabian Alb, where a line of counts is recorded from the eleventh century. A Swabian Zollern married into the burgraviate of Nuremberg in 1192, and the Franconian branch that grew from it spent two centuries accumulating lands and credit with the Holy Roman Emperors. The decisive moment came in 1415, when Emperor Sigismund invested Frederick VI of Nuremberg as Elector of Brandenburg in return for his political and financial support. The Duchy of Prussia, a separate inheritance lying outside the Empire, passed to the Brandenburg electors in 1618, and Frederick William, the Great Elector, welded the two into a single functioning state after the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. ## Notable members Frederick I turned the electorate into a kingdom in 1701. His son Frederick William I, the Soldier King, built the army and the treasury that his own son, **Frederick the Great**, used to seize Silesia and to make Prussia a European power, while also composing music, building Sanssouci and corresponding with Voltaire. **Queen Louise** became the emotional centre of Prussian resistance to Napoleon. **Wilhelm I**, with Otto von Bismarck as his minister president, was proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles in 1871. His son **Frederick III** and the liberal English princess he married, Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria, reigned for only ninety nine days. **Wilhelm II**, the last Kaiser, abdicated in 1918 and died in Dutch exile in 1941. ## Significance No other German family shaped the modern state so directly. Hohenzollern rulers created the Prussian civil service, compulsory schooling and the general staff, sponsored the Berlin academies and the Humboldt university model, and then used Prussian power to unify Germany around themselves. The monarchy ended with the revolution of November 1918, but the house continues as a private family: the headship passed from Wilhelm II to his eldest son, then to Louis Ferdinand, and in 1994 to Georg Friedrich, whose own father and uncles are part of the succession story told in this tree. ## Quick facts | Fact | Details | |---|---| | Family name | Hohenzollern | | Place of origin | Hohenzollern Castle, Swabia, southern Germany | | Ruled | Brandenburg from 1415, Prussia from 1618, Germany from 1871 | | Royal title | King in Prussia from 1701, King of Prussia from 1772 | | Imperial title | German Emperor, 1871 to 1918 | | German Emperors | Wilhelm I, Frederick III, Wilhelm II | | Monarchy ended | 9 November 1918 | | Present head of the house | Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, since 1994 | | Principal residences | Berlin City Palace, Sanssouci and Cecilienhof at Potsdam, Charlottenburg | | Branch shown here | The senior Prussian line only, not Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen |
The Vanderbilts are an American family who rose from Dutch farming stock on Staten Island to hold the largest private fortune in the United States, built by Cornelius Vanderbilt, known as the Commodore, out of nineteenth century shipping and railroads, and known today for the Gilded Age houses their descendants built and for figures from Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, to the journalist Anderson Cooper. ## Origins on Staten Island The family descends from Jan Aertsen van der Bilt, a Dutch settler who reached New Netherland in the seventeenth century and whose descendants farmed on Staten Island for generations. Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was born there, the son of a boatman, and began work as a teenager carrying freight across New York Harbour in a single sailing barge. He married his first cousin Sophia Johnson in 1813. ## The railroad fortune Vanderbilt moved from sail to steam, dominated the Hudson River and coastal trade, and after the Civil War turned to railroads, consolidating the New York Central system and building Grand Central Depot. He left almost the whole fortune to one son, William Henry Vanderbilt, who nearly doubled it in eight years before dividing it evenly among his own eight children. They built the family's great houses: The Breakers and Marble House at Newport, Biltmore House in North Carolina, Hyde Park on the Hudson, Florham in New Jersey and Shelburne Farms in Vermont. ## Notable members The third and fourth generations produced Consuelo Vanderbilt, who married the 9th Duke of Marlborough and became a social reformer in England; the sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who died in the sinking of the Lusitania; and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, who won the America's Cup three times and invented contract bridge. The modern line runs through Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt to the designer Gloria Vanderbilt and her son, the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. ## Significance No American family is more closely identified with the Gilded Age. The Vanderbilts set the pattern for how new industrial wealth was spent, and then for how quickly such a fortune disperses across many heirs. What endures is institutional: Vanderbilt University, the Whitney Museum, and the houses at Newport, Hyde Park, Shelburne and Asheville that are now museums and public estates. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder | Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), the Commodore | | Origin | Staten Island, New York, of Dutch descent | | Source of wealth | Steamboat shipping, then the New York Central railroads | | Famous houses | The Breakers, Marble House, Biltmore House, Hyde Park | | Best known members | Consuelo Vanderbilt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Gloria Vanderbilt, Anderson Cooper | | Generations covered | Five, from the Commodore to Anderson Cooper |
The House of Tudor was the royal family that ruled England and Wales from 1485 to 1603, founded by Henry VII after his victory at Bosworth Field and ending with the death of his granddaughter Elizabeth I. In five reigns the dynasty took England out of the Roman Catholic church, made the monarch the head of a national religion, and turned a peripheral kingdom into a naval and literary power. This tree follows the line from the Welsh courtier Owen Tudor and the dowager queen Catherine of Valois down to Elizabeth I, together with the Brandon, Grey and Clifford cousins and the Scottish line that ended in James VI and I. ## Origins The family name comes from Penmynydd in Anglesey, north Wales, where the Tudors were landed gentry in the service of the princes of Gwynedd. Owen Tudor came to the English court in the 1420s and married Catherine of Valois, the widow of Henry V. Their sons Edmund and Jasper Tudor were half-brothers of Henry VI, who raised them to earldoms in 1452. Edmund's marriage to Lady Margaret Beaufort, a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, added the senior Lancastrian claim to the throne, and their only child, born after his father's death, became Henry VII. His marriage to Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV, joined the two houses whose rivalry had driven the Wars of the Roses and gave the dynasty its red and white rose. ## Notable members Henry VII rebuilt the crown's finances and secured the new dynasty through marriage alliances with Spain and Scotland. Henry VIII married six times and broke with Rome, and his three surviving children each reigned in turn: Edward VI as a Protestant boy king, Mary I as the first queen to rule England in her own right, and Elizabeth I for forty-four years. Around them stand the cousins who carried royal blood without the crown, among them Lady Jane Grey, queen for nine days, her sisters Catherine and Mary Grey, and Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, one of the last Plantagenets. ## The Scottish and Suffolk lines Henry VII's daughters carried the blood outward. Margaret Tudor married James IV of Scotland, and her line runs through James V and Mary, Queen of Scots, to James VI and I, who inherited England in 1603. Mary Tudor married Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and their daughters Frances and Eleanor Brandon produced the Grey and Clifford claimants whom Henry VIII's will preferred over the Scottish descendants of his elder sister. ## Significance No English dynasty changed the country more in so few generations. The Tudors created the Church of England, absorbed the wealth of the monasteries into the crown, brought Wales formally into the English legal and parliamentary system, and built the navy that met the Spanish Armada. The Elizabethan settlement shaped English religion for centuries, and the Elizabethan decades produced Shakespeare, Spenser and the first English voyages to the Americas. When Elizabeth I died unmarried in 1603, the throne passed peacefully to her Scottish cousin, and the two crowns were joined in one person for the first time. | Fact | Details | |---|---| | Origin | Penmynydd, Anglesey, Wales | | Ruled | England, Wales and Ireland, 1485 to 1603 | | Founder | Owen Tudor, through his son Edmund Tudor | | Monarchs | Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I | | Emblem | The Tudor rose, red and white combined | | Principal seats | Richmond, Greenwich, Hampton Court and Whitehall palaces | | Ended | Death of Elizabeth I in 1603, succeeded by James VI of Scotland |
The House of Habsburg was one of the most powerful royal dynasties in European history, ruling Austria from 1282, supplying almost every Holy Roman Emperor between 1438 and the empire's dissolution in 1806, and reigning over Spain and its overseas empire from 1516 to 1700. Named for a castle in what is now Switzerland, the family rose from modest Swabian counts to sovereigns of lands stretching from the Danube to the Andes, and its senior line ended only in 1918 with the fall of Austria-Hungary. ## Origins The dynasty takes its name from Habsburg Castle in the Aargau, in present-day Switzerland, held by a family of counts with scattered lands in Swabia and Alsace. Its fortunes changed in 1273, when the prince-electors chose Rudolf I as King of the Romans after a long interregnum. Rudolf defeated Ottokar II of Bohemia in 1278, took the duchies of Austria and Styria, and granted them to his sons, moving the family's centre of gravity permanently to Vienna. Two centuries later the marriage of Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy, and of their son Philip the Handsome to Joanna of Castile, converted a regional Alpine power into a continental one within a single generation. ## Notable members Charles V inherited Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Naples and the Spanish Americas, and on his abdication in 1556 divided them: Spain and the Low Countries to his son Philip II, the Austrian lands and the imperial title to his brother Ferdinand I. The Spanish branch ran from Philip II through Philip III and Philip IV to Charles II, whose death in 1700 without an heir set off the War of the Spanish Succession. The Austrian branch ran from Ferdinand I through Ferdinand II and Ferdinand III to Charles VI, whose daughter Maria Theresa became the only woman to rule the Habsburg lands in her own right. Her marriage to Francis I Stephen of Lorraine founded the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, which produced Joseph II, Leopold II, Marie Antoinette, Francis II, and the long-reigning Franz Joseph I. ## Significance For six centuries the Habsburgs shaped the map of Europe less by conquest than by marriage, holding together a multilingual realm of Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Italians, Croats and others under a single crown. They led the Counter-Reformation, halted Ottoman expansion at Vienna in 1683, and gave Europe both the Thirty Years' War and the Congress system that followed Napoleon. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 triggered the First World War, and the abdication of Charles I in 1918 ended Habsburg rule. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder of the royal line | Rudolf I of Habsburg, King of the Romans from 1273 | | Family seat | Habsburg Castle, Aargau; later Vienna, Graz and Madrid | | Height of power | Charles V (1500 to 1558), ruler of Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Naples and Spanish America | | Spanish line | Philip II to Charles II, 1556 to 1700 | | Austrian line | Ferdinand I to Charles VI, 1521 to 1740 | | Habsburg-Lorraine | From Maria Theresa and Francis I Stephen, 1736 onward | | Last reigning monarch | Charles I of Austria, who left government in 1918 | | Principal titles | Holy Roman Emperor, Emperor of Austria, King of Spain, Hungary and Bohemia |
Putlibai Gandhi has 1 recorded child: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
Putlibai Gandhi is recorded as Homemaker in the Mahatma Gandhi family tree.
Putlibai Gandhi's recorded native place is Porbandar, Gujarat, India.
0 ancestors and 14 descendants of Putlibai Gandhi are recorded so far, within a tree of 21 people.
Putlibai Gandhi is recorded in the Mahatma Gandhi family tree on My rOoOts, alongside 20 other people.
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