Short description
Manilal Gandhi was the second of Gandhi's four sons. Born in India, he spent a crucial part of his childhood and adolescence in South Africa.
Long description
Manilal Gandhi was the second of Gandhi's four sons. Born in India, he spent a crucial part of his childhood and adolescence in South Africa. This was an important period in the life of his father who emerged as a mass-movement leader with his philosophy of Satyagraha (the force of truth). Satyagraha was not only a political weapon but also a way of life epitomised by the communal settlements Gandhi established, Phoenix settlement and Tolstoy farm. The lives of his sons were directly affected by Gandhi's transformations. Manilal's life was shaped by his experiences at these two farms. Gandhi returned with his family to India in 1914 but within three years Manilal was sent back to South Africa to assist with the publication of the Gujarati-English weekly, Indian opinion, which was published at Phoenix. For almost four decades, Manilal, as editor of Indian opinion, maintained his father's legacy at Phoenix. Following in the Gandhian tradition he was an activist editor who went to prison several times over in protest at unjust laws. This title seeks to explore a side of Gandhi that biographers have either neglected, misunder- stood or judged harshly due to their select focus on Gandhi's controversial relationship with his eldest son, Harilal. Based on hundreds of letters between Gandhi and his four sons the title seeks to understand the relationship between father and sons. It analyses, in particular, the extent to which Manilal was bound by his father in crucial matters of his life and the consequences of this. Drawing on Manilal's unpublished letters to family and friends, a careful reading of the newspaper he edited, as well interviews with the extended Gandhi family, this title provides an untold history of both Phoenix settlement and Indian opinion after Gandhi left South Africa. It points to the difficulties and successes that Gandhi's heirs had in continuing his legacy in South Africa.