New Delhi: Doctors, philanthropists, authors, a NASA scientist, a TV anchor, and a hugely popular radio jockey. Of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s more than 100 descendants, most opted for a life away from the limelight, following their own paths. Only about half a dozen ventured into public life.
On this Gandhi Jayanti, ThePrint traces all the descendants of ‘Bapu’ across generations and continents, through publicly available sources, as well as conversations with family members. Younger members of the family and specific companies they are associated with have not been named to maintain their privacy.
Affectionately referred to as the ‘Mahatma’, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and his wife Kasturba had four sons: Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas and Devdas.
Their descendants include a professor at Brown University, a Delhi-based filmmaker and photographer, a Canada-based software engineer, a London-based lawyer, and a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon in the US, among others.
Of those from the Gandhi clan who did enter the political arena, one served as a Member of Parliament in South Africa, and another as a Republican member of the Kansas House of Representatives. But the most prominent among them is Rajmohan Gandhi.
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Gandhi clan in politics
Son of Gandhi’s youngest son Devdas, Rajmohan Gandhi began his political career in 1980, when he contested the Jabalpur seat as a Janata Party candidate, but was defeated by more than 77,000 votes. In 1989, he unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha election from Janata Dal against Rajiv Gandhi in Amethi. He also contested the 1991 general elections from the Sabarkantha constituency in Gujarat, but came in third. He was a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha from 1990 to 1992. In 2014, he joined the Aam Aadmi Party, and unsuccessfully contested for the Lok Sabha from the East Delhi constituency.
Another prominent member of the clan who took the plunge into politics was Sumitra Kulkarni. Daughter of Gandhi’s third son Ramdas, she was a Rajya Sabha MP in the Indira Gandhi years, but quit the Congress during the Emergency and joined the Opposition chorus for Indira’s ouster—a development that was reported internationally. Kulkarni eventually joined the BJP in 1999, but has since retired from politics. In 2024, she wrote in a column for the Times of India that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has “rejuvenated Gandhiji’s ideals by actually integrating them into modern Bharat’s development agenda”.
Outside India, Ela Gandhi, daughter of Bapu’s second son Manilal, served as a Member of Parliament in South Africa from 1994 to 2004, where she aligned with the African National Congress (ANC) party representing Phoenix area of Inanda in the KwaZulu-Natal province.
Shanti Gandhi, grandson of Bapu’s eldest son Harilal, is a former Republican member of the Kansas House of Representatives, representing the 52nd District from 2013 to 2015.
Manilal’s grandson Tushar Gandhi also tried his hand at politics. He contested the 1998 Lok Sabha elections on a Samajwadi Party ticket against Madhukar Sirpotdar of the Shiv Sena from Mumbai North West constituency, as a joint candidate for the SP and Congress. However, Tushar says that he soon got disillusioned with party politics.
“I was disillusioned by the compromises that one had to make in electoral politics and when you are in party politics. I couldn’t think of me becoming that way. I did try for four years, but then it dawned on me that this is not my cup of tea,” he tells ThePrint.
On why not many of Gandhi’s descendants chose to get into politics, Tushar says that the break from politics began with Gandhi’s sons early on. “There was a very clear break right at the beginning, when the sons decided not to enter politics. They would have had a red carpet rolled out for them, but that decision was made early.”
Tushar reveals that his grandfather Manilal was ruled out for a career in politics because he lived in South Africa. “Harilal kaka passed away months after Bapu. Devdas and Ramdas kaka did not want that kind of a career any longer. Devdas was very close to the powers that be, since he was Managing Editor of Hindustan Times at the time of his death. He would have been the most ideally suited person to start a political career,” he explains.
Gandhi’s descendants are spread out across continents, most of them leading relatively low-key lives.
The Harilal clan
Harilal, Gandhi’s eldest son, has been at the centre of intense attention for decades, with a movie and book also based on the friction between him and his father. Harilal participated in India’s freedom struggle initially in South Africa and was also jailed at least six times there as a Satyagrahi. According to Rajmohan Gandhi’s book, ‘Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire’, “Harilal’s cheerful personality and his readiness to endure prison terms earned him the sobriquet ‘Chhote (Little)’ Gandhi”.
Among other things, a major source of resentment between the father and the son was Gandhi’s decision to send Chhaganlal, Bapu’s first cousin, rather than Harilal, to study law in England with a scholarship provided by Pranjivan Mehta, a Mumbai-born physician, lawyer, jeweller and Gandhi’s close friend. Harilal renounced family ties in 1911, and later struggled with alcoholism as well. Harilal and his wife Chanchal (also known as Gulab) had five children: Rami, Kantilal, Rasik, Shanti and Manu. Rasik and Shanti died at a young age.
Not much information is publicly verifiable for Rami, except for her marriage to Kunverji Parekh. She had four children: Ansuya, Prabodh, Nilam and Navmalika alias Sudha.
Ansuya’s daughter Lekhavati Parikh is a medical technologist at a private hospital in the US, and her son Rahul was an administrator at Washington University. Both Rahul and Lekhavati have two children each.
Prabodh’s daughter, Sonal, is a writer and a poet, having translated her grand uncle Arun Gandhi’s book, ‘The Forgotten Woman: The Untold Story of Kastur, the Wife of Mahatma Gandhi’, into Gujrati. Sonal won the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize for the book, titled ‘Ba: Mahatmani Ardhangini’. Prabodh’s son Parag is based in Morbi, Gujarat. Both Sonal and Parag have two children each. Sonal’s daughter Rachna is a doctor, and her son Gaurav works in tech.
Rami’s daughter Nilam was an author and social activist based in Gujarat. She followed the Gandhian principles and worked extensively for the betterment of tribal women through Dakshinapatha, an organisation she started. Her son Sameer is an eye doctor based in Gujarat. Sameer also has three children, one of whom is a dentist.
Navmalika, the fourth of Rami’s children, is a homemaker based in Gujarat. She has three children: Parul, a Canada-based physiotherapist; Manisha, a Nagpur-based physiotherapist; and Ravi, a Canada-based engineer. All three have two children each.
Harilal’s second son Kantilal was a doctor. His son Shanti Gandhi is an American cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon, and a politician. Shanti has four daughters: Anjali; Anita, a US-based Analytics professional; Alka, a US-based economics lecturer; and Anne, a US-based clinical research nurse coordinator.
Kantilal’s second son Pradeep is an accountant in Washington DC. Pradeep’s daughter Priya is a US-based clinical manager and pediatric nurse practitioner. His second daughter Medha is a radio jockey and co-host of the wildly popular Elvis Duran and the Morning Show, with 244,000 followers on Instagram. Medha is also involved with various charitable organisations, including the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) and The Alzheimer’s Association, among others.
Tennessee tried to execute a death row inmate TWICE and she woke up both times… 😳 Christa Pike has survived two lethal doses with witnesses accounting for her snoring and surviving the execution. pic.twitter.com/tSm7QOWU6U
— Elvis Duran Show (@ElvisDuranShow) October 1, 2026
Not much information is publicly verifiable for Manu Gandhi as well, except for her marriage to Surendra Mashruwala. This was reported as the first inter-caste marriage conducted by Bapu himself in Karnataka’s Belagavi in 1937, in violation of orders imposed by British police.
Manu’s daughter Urmi is a physiotherapist based in Gujarat. Urmi has two children. Mrinal is a cinematographer, who has worked on several acclaimed projects, including Slumdog Millionaire, and the 2014 film, Court. Urmi’s other daughter Renu is an urban scholar, with a PhD in architecture, based in Gujarat.
The Manilal clan
Manilal was born in Rajkot, and traveled to South Africa for the first time in 1897, to work at the Phoenix Ashram near Durban. After a brief visit to India, he returned to South Africa in 1917, to assist in printing the ‘Indian Opinion’, a Gujarati-English weekly publication, at Phoenix, Durban. He took over as Editor of the publication soon after. He was also jailed several times by the British colonial government for protesting against unjust laws, and was a fierce advocate of non-violence in the South African struggle.
Manilal and his wife Sushilaben had three children: Sita, Arun and Ela.
Sita grew up in the Phoenix Settlement in Durban, which was the first ashram-like settlement established by Mahatma Gandhi, and remained closely associated with the Ashram. She had three children: Satish, Uma and Kirti.
Satish was an anti-apartheid activist, and a humanitarian. He was trained as a teacher, but left teaching to pursue a career in photography. He was also a trustee of the Phoenix Settlement, the farm started by Bapu in Durban, served on the management committee of the Gandhi Development Trust, which was started by his aunt Ela Gandhi, and was a Board Member of the 1860 Heritage Centre. Satish has three children: Misha, Shashika and Kabir. All three of them are based in South Africa. Misha is a communications executive, Shashika has worked as a customer and operations support executive, and Kabir is a banker.
Sita’s daughter Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie is an Emeritus Professor in the History department at the University of the Western Cape. She has various publications in her name, including books titled ‘Gandhi’s Prisoner?: The Life of Gandhi’s Son Manilal’, ‘Sita: Memoirs of Sita Gandhi: [Growing Up at Phoenix and in the Shadow of the Mahatma]’, ‘Gandhi’s African Legacy: Phoenix Settlement 1904 to 2024. A History Through Letters’, and ‘From Cane Fields to Freedom: A Chronicle of Indian South African Life’. Her daughter Sapna specialises in criminal justice and is a lecturer, as well as Attorney of the High Court of South Africa.
Sita’s other daughter Kirti Menon is an activist, educator and writer based in Johannesburg, and is currently a Senior Director of Academic Planning, Quality Promotion and Academic Staff Development at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). She has several publications in her name. Her daughter Sunita was a journalist and is now a PhD candidate in political science.
Manilal’s son Arun Gandhi was an author, lecturer, philanthropist and socio-political activist. He founded the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in the US, and established ‘Season for Nonviolence’, an annual event celebrating the philosophies and lives of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He also worked as a journalist for The Times of India for 30 years. He authored several books, including, ‘The first, A Patch of White’, ‘Grandfather Gandhi’, and ‘The Forgotten Woman: The Untold Story of Kastur, the Wife of Mahatma Gandhi’, which he co-authored with his wife Sunanda.
Arun had two children, Archana and Tushar. Archana is a librarian in Rochester, New York. Her first son Paritosh is a doctor in New York, and second son Anish is a business strategy consultant in Denver, Colorado. Paritosh has two children.
Tushar is a social activist and an author, deeply involved in initiatives centred around Gandhian values. He established the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation and is its president. He also founded the civil society organisation, ‘Hum Bharat ke Log’, and is president of ‘Lok Seva Trust’, set up for the welfare of Mumbai’s textile mill laborers. He is also a director at the Gandhi Research Foundation based in Jalgaon, and is an Ambassador for “Return to Palestine”. He is the author of ‘Let’s Kill Gandhi’, and ‘The Lost Diary of Kastur, My Ba’.
આજે મારા પુસ્તક “લેટ્સ કિલ ગાંધી!” ની ગુજરાતી આવૃત્તી મે હીદય કુંજ સાબરમતી આશ્રમ માં બાપુને અર્પણકરી એમના આશીર્વાદ મેળવ્યા, ધન્ય થયો. pic.twitter.com/cIFVRB9ane
— Tushar Gandhi (@TusharG) January 24, 2026
Tushar’s son Vivan is lawyer, with an LLM in International Human Rights Law, currently based in London. His daughter Kasturi is a researcher, writer and filmmaker. She has worked in the social sector in the past, with work spanning across research, management, and communication roles. She has also worked on documentaries on rural communities.
Ela, Manilal’s other daughter, is a South African peace activist and former politician. She married Mawalal Ramgobin, who was also a South African politician and former anti-apartheid activist. They had five children: Kidar, Kush, Asha, Ashish and Arti.
Kidar worked as a director in a company working on education, skill development, IT/ITes/ICT, power and energy. Kush, an anti-apartheid activist, was shot dead at his home in 1993 in an apparent robbery. Asha works as an executive director in a non-profit based in South Africa. Ashish was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2021, in a six-million rand (Rs 3.22 crore) fraud and forgery case. Arti worked as a compliance specialist in HR and B-BBEE, which stands for Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment, a government programme for addressing severe economic inequalities left behind by the apartheid era.
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The Ramdas clan
Ramdas Gandhi was also a freedom fighter and social worker, jailed multiple times for his participation in India’s freedom struggle. According to Rajmohan Gandhi’s book, Ramdas was the one who lit his father’s pyre at Rajghat.
Until 1951, Ramdas managed a branch office of Tata Oil Mills in Nagpur, not far from Wardha’s Sevagram Ashram. “His home provided hospitality to visitors from the ashram,” the book notes.
Ramdas and his wife Nirmalaben had three children: Sumitra, Kanu alias Kahandas and Usha.
Sumitra Kulkarni was an IAS officer before joining politics. She has three children: Ramchandra, Shrikrishna and Sonali. While not much is verifiably known about Ramchandra, Shrikrishna studied in Japan, specialising in control engineering, a key aspect of automation and robotics. He then worked as the CEO assistant to Group Chairman Dr. S. Inaba, who was founder-president of FANUC, and went on to serve in various leadership positions at Panasonic India. He was also the Chairperson of Board of Governors at IIM, Calcutta, from 2017 to 2025. Sonali was the president and CEO of FANUC India, the local unit of the Japanese industrial robots maker.
Ramdas’ son Kanu alias Kahandas Gandhi studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His education was sponsored by then US Ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith. Kanu went on to work with NASA and the US Defence Department on wing structures of fighter aircraft.
Usha Gokani, Ramdas’ other daughter, was a social worker and propagated Gandhian values. She spent her childhood in Wardha’s Sevagram Ashram and was former chairperson of the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, an initiative of Mani Bhavan, Mumbai. She had two sons: Anand and Sanjay.
Dr Anand Gokani is an endocrinologist and a diabetologist based in Mumbai. He has been associated with the Bombay Hospital & Medical Research Centre for more than three decades, and has written a book titled ‘A Fistful of My Sky – Memories of Jawhar’. He has two children: Karan and Arjun. Karan left his legal career to pursue a career in hospitality. He is currently the co-founder & creative director of Hoppers Restaurants in the UK, and has written a cookbook, ‘Indian 101: Real Indian Recipes Made Simple’. Arjun is an ophthalmologist based in Mumbai.
Usha Gokani’s other son, Sanjay, is a software engineer based in Canada. He has two children: a son who works in an AI, data and analytics firm in Canada; and a daughter, who is a law student in Canada.
The Devdas clan
Gandhi’s youngest son Devdas was born in South Africa and returned to India with his parents. He also faced imprisonment multiple times, for his association with the Indian freedom struggle.
He was married to Lakshmi, daughter of C. Rajagopalachari, and was an editor of Hindustan Times. He served as the first pracharak of the Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha, established by his father in 1918 to promote Hindi in southern India.
Devdas and Lakshmi had four children: Tara, Rajmohan, Ramchandra and Gopalkrishna.
Tara married Dr Jyoti Prasad Bhattacharjee, a leading economist. She has dedicated her life to working for the Kasturba Gandhi National Memorial Trust set up by Mahatma Gandhi, for the welfare of women and children in rural India. She has also been closely associated with the Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti. In 2016, she was decorated with The Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her contribution in promoting peace, solidarity, culture, education, and development. She is also an author, having written at least three books, namely ‘Reflections of An Extraordinary Era’, ‘L’arcolaio del Mahatma Gandhi’ and ‘Charkha: The Hand Spinning Wheel’.
Tara has two children: Sukanya Bharatram and Vinayak Bhattacharjee. Sukanya is a trustee of the Shri Ram Education Trust, and the Sarvodaya International Trust, Delhi. She has also been a member of the governing council of Lady Shri Ram College from 1992 and a trustee of the Akshar Cultural Trust, Delhi. Like her mother Tara, Sukanya is also closely associated with the Kasturba Gandhi Memorial Trust. She was also nominated to join the Ministry of Women and Child Development’s Working Group on preschool children and adolescents in the 12th Five-Year Plan to understand better issues relating to young girls and women.
Tara’s son Vinayak has been an investment banker and an economist, and is currently at a senior position in the fund management industry in Europe. Sukanya’s son Vidur Bharatram is a filmmaker and photographer now based in New Delhi.
Rajmohan is the only politician in the Devdas clan. He is also a biographer and historian. A former Rajya Sabha MP, he has authored more than 15 books. He taught history and politics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign almost continuously from 1997 to 2022. He has also taught at IIT-Bombay, IIT-Gandhinagar, and Michigan State University, has served as Research Professor with the New Delhi think-tank, Centre for Policy Research, and also edited The Indian Express in Chennai, from 1985 to 1987.
Rajmohan has two children: Supriya and Devadutta. Supriya Gandhi is the Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Assistant Director of Graduate Studies for Islamic Studies at Yale. Her research examines the histories of Islam and Hinduism in South Asia.
She is also an author, having written the book, ‘The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India’. According to the Yale website, her current project explores discourses of universal religion from Mughal India through the period of British colonial rule.
Devadutta, meanwhile, specialises in immigration policy and is based in the US.
Devdas’ second son Ramchandra was a philosopher and an author. He wrote five books, namely ‘The Availability of Religious Ideas, I Am Thou: Meditations on the Truth of India’, ‘Sita’s Kitchen: A Testimony of Faith and Inquiry’, ‘Svaraj: A Journey with Tyeb Mehta’s Shantiniketan Triptych’, and ‘Muniya’s Light: A Narrative of Truth and Myth’. His daughter Leela is a writer, and literary and culture theorist based in the US. She is currently the John Hawkes Professor of the Humanities and English, and Director of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Brown University.
Gopalkrishna, Devdas’ youngest, is a former IAS officer and diplomat. He served as the Governor of West Bengal from 2004 to 2009, and was also handed over additional charge as Governor of Bihar for a few months in 2006. He, too, has authored, edited and compiled a dozen books, including ‘Gandhi and South Africa’, ‘Gandhi and Sri Lanka’, ‘Nehru and Sri Lanka’, and ‘Gandhi Is Gone. Who Will Guide Us Now?’.
Gopalkrishna has two daughters: Divya and Amrita. Divya is a journalist with The Hindu, and Amrita is an author, television anchor, producer and former travel show host. She is widely known for her show, ‘Royal Reservation’ on NDTV Good Times, for which she visited dozens of palaces, staying as the house guest of royal families all over India. She has a Masters and Bachelors degree in Anthropology from the UK and lives in San Diego, California with her family.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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