Manilal Gandhi

Manilal Mohandas Gandhi (28 October 1892 – 5 April 1956) was the second son of Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi.

Biography Manilal was born in Rajkot, British India, the second of four sons of Mohandas Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi. He had an older brother, Harilal, and two younger brothers, Ramdas and Devdas.

Manilal's early years were spent in Rajkot, and it was in 1897 that he traveled to South Africa for the first time (his father having moved there several years previously). The family lived for a time in Durban and Johannesburg. Between 1906 and 1914, he lived at the Phoenix Settlement (in KwaZulu-Natal) and Tolstoy Farm (in Gauteng), both settlements established by his father. Manilal died from a cerebral thrombosis following a stroke.

Like his father, Manilal was also sent to prison several times by the British colonial government after protesting against what he perceived as unjust laws. He was one of the initial 78 marchers to accompany Gandhi on the 1930 Salt March, for which he was imprisoned. In 1927, Manilal married Sushila (24 August 1907 – 1988), a woman from his own community and similar background, in a match arranged by their families in the usual Indian way. Sushila was the daughter of Nanabhai Mashruwala of Akola, Bombay State, and the niece of Kishorlal Mashruwala, a close associate of Gandhi and a resident of Sevagram ashram. It was Mahatma Gandhi who sought her hand for his second son; the match was arranged, and after the wedding, Sushila duly joined her husband in South Africa. They had three children: Sita Dhupelia (1928-1999), elder daughter Arun Manilal Gandhi (1934–2023), son Ela Gandhi Ramgobin (b. 1940), younger daughter

Legacy Manilal's children Arun and Ela were also social-political activists. Uma D. Mesthrie, Sita's daughter, published a biography on Manilal.