Writing the Life of Manilal Mohandas Gandhi

Abstract

Manilal Gandhi was the second son of Mohandas (later Mahatma) and Kasturba Gandhi. Unlike his father who spent just over two decades in South Africa, Manilal spent close to five decades of a life (which spanned sixty-four years) in South Africa. Most of these years, in particular, were lived at Phoenix Settlement in the Inanda countryside on the communal farm that Gandhi had started in 1904. For thirty-six years of his life (1920-1956) Manilal was editor of the newspaper Indian Opinion which his father had had a crucial hand in establishing in 1903. This Gandhi, however, is relatively unknown in South Africa. To remedy that I wrote his biography, published in 2004.1 Sufficient time has passed for me to reflect on the writing of the book, its objectives, the sources used, the reception of the book and especially its portrayal in the media in South Africa and in India. This reflection provides an opportunity for the historian to examine the practices of biographical writing but also to cast some understanding on what Judith Brown referred to as the “Gandhi phenomenon” that hit India in the 1920s but which continues to manifest itself world-wide despite the fact that the Mahatma died almost six decades ago.