Public Family Trees/Mahatma Gandhi/Putlibai Gandhi
Putlibai Gandhi
· Female · Porbandar, Gujarat, India
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14
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Expand full treePutlibai Gandhi
Biography
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…
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Homemaker
A defining role in the story of the Mahatma Gandhi family.
Died1891
Died
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More people in the Mahatma Gandhi family tree
View all 21 peopleRajmohan Gandhi
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.
Ela Gandhi
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.
Gopalkrishna 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.
Tushar Gandhi
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.
Karamchand Gandhi
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.
Arun Gandhi
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.
Kasturba 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.
Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee
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.
Ramchandra 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.
Kantilal Gandhi
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.
Sumitra Kulkarni
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.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who were Putlibai Gandhi's children?+−
Putlibai Gandhi has 1 recorded child: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
What did Putlibai Gandhi do?+−
Putlibai Gandhi is recorded as Homemaker in the Mahatma Gandhi family tree.
Where was Putlibai Gandhi from?+−
Putlibai Gandhi's recorded native place is Porbandar, Gujarat, India.
How many relatives of Putlibai Gandhi are recorded?+−
0 ancestors and 14 descendants of Putlibai Gandhi are recorded so far, within a tree of 21 people.
What family tree does Putlibai Gandhi belong to?+−
Putlibai Gandhi is recorded in the Mahatma Gandhi family tree on My rOoOts, alongside 20 other people.
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