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Mohandas K. Gandhi died almost sixty years ago. The fascination with him continues even though he and others have written voluminously about every aspect of his life. Approximately thirty books are published on Gandhi annually. Gandhi’s Prisoner? is ostensibly a biography of Gandhi’s second son Manilal (1891-1956). At the core of the book, however, is the relationship of Gandhi, a universal figure, with his sons Manilal, Harilal (1888-1948), Ramdas (1897-1969), and Devdas (1900-1957), and the different ways in which they reacted to being the children of a “Mahatma.”
The book’s title is taken from a letter that Gandhi wrote to Manilal in 1918, asking him to consider him a “friend” rather than as his “prisoner.” The question mark was added because opinions of Gandhi the family man range from those who feel his autocratic control ruined the lives of his sons, to those who consider him above criticism. This study is underpinned by a second important objective. Existing work on South Africa from the 1920s to the 1950s, Dhupelia-Mesthrie asserts, “hardly does justice to Manilal’s role.... As we celebrate our country’s ten years of democracy and the heroes and heroines of the long preceding struggle, Manilal’s name should now also come to the fore” (p. 23).
Dhupelia-Mesthrie has excellent credentials. She is Manilal’s granddaughter and Gandhi’s great-granddaughter, and an Associate Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. The author seems, at times, to be caught between two stools, being a professional historian on the one hand and granddaughter of Manilal on the other. She states that in addition to the general problems with writing biography — “how to phrase what must be told, how to force the seals, twist back the locks, burgle the cabinet of the soul” – she had to “take care to consider the feelings of my family” (p. 27). Although she qualifies this by stating that “there has been no censorship,” this raises the broader historiographical question of objectivity when one is so close to the subject.
Manilal, born in Porbandar in 1891, joined his father in South Africa as a young child when Gandhi delayed his return to India. Gandhi comes across as a harsh patriarch at times, who sought to impose his philosophy of life on his descendents. En-route to South Africa the boys had to wear shoes and eat with knives and forks. Though unhappy, “they learnt to comply. This was the first of many lifestyle changes they would encounter; in Africa their father would impose many more” (p. 36). When Manilal was ten and forgot his glasses at home, Gandhi exhorted “we can’t afford to forget such things, can we?” and made him walk back five miles to retrieve them.
Gandhi cast a long shadow over Manilal’s life as he sought to control every aspect of it. Little pleasures were forbidden. Manilal was not allowed to learn to play the piano. Gandhi punished himself by fasting for seven days when Manilal was caught kissing a teenage girl at Phoenix, the place of Gandhi’s residence, north of Durban. As penance, Manilal promised not to marry until Gandhi freed him from this promise (p. 109). Manilal’s actions were always tempered by the fact that Gandhi would punish himself through fasting when displeased with his actions.
After they returned to India, Manilal gave financial assistance to his brother Harilal. When Gandhi found out, he punished Manilal by sending him to Madras virtually penniless and with instructions to return only when he had earned back the money he had given Harilal. He was warned not to use Gandhi’s name to secure a job. Manilal sobbed years later when he recalled his struggles in Madras (p. 140). Whether Gandhi’s austere disciplinary measures, strict regulations, and continuous attempt to control Manilal’s life, even from India, can be construed as parental love in the traditional sense, or as extreme, is for the reader to decide.
Responsibility was thrust on Manilal from a young age. With Gandhi spending long periods in prison and elder brother Hiralal preoccupied, Manilal was the “man of the house.” His tasks, Gandhi reminded him in 1909, included being guardian of younger brothers Ramdas and Devadas, “looking after aunt Chanchi, nursing mother, and cheerfully bearing her ill temper” (p. 80). Gandhi wrote regularly to Manilal from jail, instructing him on what to read, work to do, and how to take care of the family. Manilal’s political training began at the age of seventeen. Gandhi involved him in the satyagraha struggle between 1910 and 1913 to give him a “sense of purpose” and “calm his restless mind” (p. 85). Manilal served four prison sentences ranging from ten days to three months during this period. He was not a “passive puppet,” Dhupelia-Mesthrie contends. Having helped edit Indian Opinion, he understood the issues and participated out of conviction (p. 89).
Manilal returned to India in 1914 and helped establish Gandhi’s ashram in Ahmedabad. Phoenix Settlement and the printing of Indian Opinion were entrusted to Albert West, Gandhi’s British devotee. West informed Gandhi in 1918 that the paper’s future was in jeopardy. Gandhi asked for a volunteer to help and Manilal returned to South Africa in 1918 at the age of 26. This was the making of Manilal. He replaced West as editor in 1920, a position he held until his death in 1956: “he saved the paper and the paper saved him, for here he found a purpose in life” (p. 156). As Manilal gained in confidence, he began writing his own editorials, gave greater coverage to African issues, covered the anti-imperial struggle in India, and reported vigilantly on anti-Indianism in South Africa.
Gandhi’s influential hand was also evident in Manilal’s decision to marry. He had wanted to marry Fatima Gool, a Muslim from the Cape, but Gandhi objected because she was not Hindu: “it will be like putting two swords in one sheath” (p. 175). This seems anomalous considering that Gandhi had brought up his children to believe all religions equal. However, the boys were “shaped primarily by Hinduism” even though Gandhi respected all religions (p. 40). Gandhi was concerned about the impact the marriage would have on Hindu-Muslim relations in India. He warned Manilal that if he proceeded with the marriage he would have to stop editing Indian Opinion and would not be able to return to India. Gandhi advised Manilal to get over the “infatuation” and “delusions” of love: “our love is between brother and sister. Whereas here the main urge is carnal pleasure” (p. 176). Whatever Manilal might have felt, “in the end, though, he could not forget whose son he was. He did not have the courage to face the consequences of defiance; there really was no future without his father’s blessing” (p. 176).
Gandhi implored Manilal to remain celibate, but on this issue Manilal disagreed with his father and married in 1927, at the age of thirty-four. However, his wife was chosen by Gandhi. She was nineteen-year-old Sushila Mashruwala, also of the bania caste and daughter of a wealthy property-owner and fervent Gandhi supporter (p. 183). Gandhi therefore failed to impose his views on sex and marriage on his family. However, in the book, Gandhi’s views on these matters and his family’s disregard of them are not critically explored. We learn little about family debates on sex and marriage, except that Gandhi was very fond of his grandchildren.
Manilal was intimately involved in the Natal Indian Congress (NIC). From 1920 onward, he was a member of the NIC Committee and attended South African Indian Congress (SAIC) conferences as its representative. In India in 1930 he participated in salt marches and spent nine months in prison. This raised his political profile and he returned to South Africa a hero. The experience radicalized him. Manilal supported campaigns by young radicals like Dr. Yusuf Dadoo in the Transvaal and Dr. G. M. Naicker in Natal. He was close to Dadoo, a Muslim and communist, but a staunch supporter of Nehru, Gandhi, and satyagraha (p. 253). While he supported African resistance, Manilal, unlike Dadoo, was only prepared to collaborate where there was “a possibility of action” (p. 260). He participated in the 1946 passive resistance struggle against segregation, spending 23 days in jail. As far as India was concerned Manilal, through Indian Opinion, supported Gandhi and the Indian National Congress and vehemently opposed the creation of Pakistan.
Manilal seemed to emerge from Gandhi’s shadow after his father’s death: “Had Gandhi been alive, Manilal would have been in the background. Now he spread his father’s message about the importance of fast and prayer” (p. 338). As apartheid gathered momentum in South Africa, Manilal advocated satyagraha as a means of resistance. Anger should not form the basis of resistance, he insisted. Whites should be won over through “love” and “self-suffering.” His weapon of choice was “spiritual armaments” (p. 344).
Manilal lacked the moral authority of his father and became increasingly isolated. One activist said that Manilal “did not understand the new Africa. So that when the resistance movement came, he was genuinely doubtful about the African’s capacity to make a success of that weapon” (p. 349). As the rest of the country moved towards joint resistance, Manilal campaigned individually against petty apartheid laws. He had reservations about the Defiance Campaign of 1952 because he believed it would turn violent. He did, however, cover the campaign in Indian Opinion and fasted to show solidarity with resisters (p. 352). Manilal eventually joined the campaign with a group of liberals under Patrick Duncan, son of a cabinet minister, who led resisters into a banned location in December 1952. They were arrested and Manilal, aged 61, served 38 days of a 50-day prison sentence.
Manilal’s new political circle came to include liberals like Alan Paton and Julius Lewin, a law professor at the University of Witwatersrand. Manilal, who had resisted Indo-European Councils and White liberals in the 1920s, converted to Liberal Party politics. This became his new political home and he formally became a member of the Liberal Party in 1954. The party’s members were united by opposition to the NP and communism. One of Manilal’s last public acts was to attend the Congress of the People in June 1955, where the Freedom Charter was adopted. He suffered a stroke in November 1955 and died on April 5, 1956.
How are we to judge Manilal politically? Unlike Gandhi, he achieved few tangible results in the struggle against apartheid. His name is rarely mentioned when the pantheons of anti-apartheid activists are discussed, even though he spent close to fourteen years in prisons in South Africa and India. Gandhi’s credo of non-violence, which Manilal embraced, left him increasingly in the political wilderness because he was unsure how to react as the Congress Alliance moved towards confrontation with the apartheid government. He became sidelined from the anti-apartheid movement of which he should have been an integral part because of this and his revulsion for communism.
Gandhi’s Prisoner? is an absorbing study of the personal and political lives of Mahatma and Manilal Gandhi, as well as the Phoenix Settlement and Indian Opinion after Gandhi left South Africa. It also provides an excellent and detailed outline of political developments in South Africa and India during these decades. A large number of the splendid eighty-eight black-and-white photographs are from private collections and add considerable value. This book opens new debates relevant to post-apartheid South Africa, in particular the relationship between Indians and Africans. It is beautifully narrated, and is obligatory reading for anyone interested in Gandhi and his family, the story of Indians in South Africa, or the history of racial segregation in South Africa.