Gandhi was a miserable parent
Father of the nation he might have been, but father to his own sons he certainly was not. When Gandhi made the decision to remain in South Africa after his term of contract, to act on behalf of the Indian community of South Africa, he left his family in India. At a certain point, he returned to India, ostensibly to collected his family, but really to introduce himself to the nationalist moment in India, and it to the work underway in South Africa.
He sailed not to Bombay, however, but directly to Calcutta, and there he entered upon an overland journey by train to raise awareness. It was only after some considerable time that he wound his way to Porbandar, and almost as an afterthought that he packed the all up and brought them to South Africa.
Harilal Gandhi was born in 1888, shortly after Gandhi set sail for London to begin his studies, and until he was reunited with his father in South Africa, the two hardly resided in the same country at all. Even in South Africa, the Gandhi family were annexed at Gandhi’s compound in Phoenix, just outside Durban, where he himself was very infrequent visitor. Initially, Harilal followed dutifully in his father’s footsteps, suffering the consequences of passive resistance, and walking the walk.
At a certain point, however, he began to rebel. The breach seemed to have occurred over the matter of Harilal appealing to his father to use his growing influence to secure a scholarship for Harilal to study law in England, as his father had. Gandhi refused, citing nepotism if he did, but also because he had by then began to regard British law as an institution of the enemy, and an antithesis to the development of a pure spirituality.
Quite naturally, Harilal took this very poorly, and at every turn he began to decry and denigrate everything that his father stood for. He became an alcoholic gambler, trading in British goods, as his father was trying to organize a boycott, and eventually converting to Islam, and changing his name to Abdullah.
The two were eventually fully estranged, and just six months after Gandhi was assassinated, Harilal expired from a combination of alcohol, tuberculosis and depression. He was also, of course, stricken with liver disease from alcohol, and probably syphilis. It certainly is not a pretty picture, and added to the many other oddities of Gandhi’s nature, paint a picture of a man with numerous contradictions, as all great people, one way or another, are.
Where did we get this stuff? These are our sources:
“How many children did Mahatma Gandhi have?” Inspirational Musings, December 2006
“Kasturba Gandhi, the larger than life shadow of Mahatma Gandhi.” Your History, Tanvey Dubey. October 2015
“Mahatma Gandhi’s racist quotes about black South Africans.” Original People, March 2015
“An odd kind of piety: The truth about Gandhi’s sex life.” Independent, January 2012