The film's release coincides with the publication of a monumental new biography by Rajmohan Gandhi, a historian and grandson of the Mahatma. The story of Gandhi is not only the story of India and partition: it is also the story of a father with high expectations and four sons who found it hard to measure up. There are estimated to be living relatives of Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi. They are the descendants of the four sons - Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas and Devdas, Rajmohan's father - that Gandhi had with his wife Kasturba, whom he married when he was Most of the descendants are not in the public eye but, according to great-grandson Tushar Gandhi, they are all aware of the significance of their heritage.
It is a familiar narrative - the son who fails to shine in the face of his father's brilliance - but the particular tensions between Harilal and his father sprang from the inescapable conflict between the demands of being the father of a nation and a father to his children. Mohandas Gandhi was only 18 when his first son was born, and Harilal was six months old when his father left his family in South Africa in September to train as a barrister in London.
Gandhi came to recognise the importance of spending time with his later sons, but he was absent during Harilal's early years. This was not the only way in which the eldest son's experiences differed from his brothers'. He was aware of his father's comfortable life, both socially and financially.
When Gandhi became more involved in the political struggle and took a vow of celibacy and poverty, it was a real jolt to young Harilal in a way that it was not for his younger brothers, who did not recall the earlier good life. Gandhi's political philosophy was based on the belief that there was a larger good for society which demanded that each individual makes sacrifices.
The necessity not to appear hypocritical meant that his sons were schooled at home when the family lived in South Africa. He could not have sent the boys to the private European schools without alienating himself from the Indian community, but in remaining true to his principles, he angered his children, who would meet other youngsters demanding to know which school they attended. When an Indian friend offered Gandhi the opportunity to send one of his sons to England on a scholarship, Gandhi inquired whether the scholarship was truly for one of his boys or for the most deserving young person from the Indian community in South Africa.
The man reluctantly agreed that the scholarship could go to the most deserving young person. Gandhi promptly suggested two other boys who he believed were more deserving and these were sent to England in the place of his own children. So, one day, Tara, all of eight years, wrote a letter to her grandfather, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and dropped it in the box. The reply came soon enough. Please improve your handwriting. And write again. I tore it and threw it away. To her, he is simply Bapu.
Later, when I wondered why, I realised I was only a product of those times. The entire country was involved in the freedom movement and all those girls came from one political flow or the other. But a majority of people of that generation were brought up with identical values. Not every Gandhi, though. At 85, his father Arun Gandhi, a former journalist who grew up in South Africa and who now lives in Upstate New York, criss-crosses geographies — Beirut one day, Toronto the other — talking of the Mahatma.
Mahatma Gandhi's descendants living in South Africa are in news nowadays after a Durban court sentenced his great-grand daughter Ashish Lata Ramgobin, renowned for her community work, to seven years in prison for her role in a six-million rand fraud and forgery case. Also read Mahatma Gandhi's great-granddaughter jailed for 7 years in a fraud case Mahatma Gandhi lived in South Africa before heading the Indian freedom movement to oppose injustice and class divide.
Gandhi quickly rose to prominence as the leader of the South African Indian community. His participation in the nonviolent movement in South Africa had such an influence that he is still regarded as a leader there. The Mahatma and Kasturba Gandhi had four children, all sons: Harilal, born in ; Manilal, born in ; Ramdas, born in ; and Devdas, born in
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