Character guide

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

major

Also known as Mr. Gandhi, Gandhi, Mahatma, Gandhibhai

Born the youngest son of a short-tempered but incorruptible diwan, he stumbles through childhood — stealing, smoking, and once eating goat's meat to prove his courage — while haunted by remorse. His marriage to Kasturbai at thirteen and his father's deathbed become early wounds he never stops examining. What makes him compelling is not saintliness but the stubborn habit of turning every failure into an experiment, which is why the book's first half reads less like a monument and more like a confession.

Kasturbai Gandhi

major

Also known as Kasturbai, Kasturba, Mrs. Gandhi

As a child bride she was pulled from her family and thrust into a household where her husband policed her movements, resented her independence, and later demanded celibacy she had no say in. She pushed back — sneaking out to temples, refusing to be lectured — and their quarrels expose the young Gandhi at his most possessive. Her quiet endurance and flashes of defiance make her the book's most human counterweight to his relentless self-improvement.

Gopal Krishna Gokhale

major

Also known as the late Mr. Gokhale, Gokhale

Gokhale was the moderate, exacting figure Gandhi sought out in India after returning from South Africa, a man whose approval mattered more than any crowd's. He imposed conditions — a year of silence, no public speaking, careful listening — that Gandhi found humbling and formative. His mentorship gives the narrative a rare glimpse of Gandhi as a disciple rather than a leader, and his death leaves a vacuum Gandhi must fill alone.

Raychandbhai

supporting

Also known as Raychandbhai

Raychandbhai was no ascetic lecturer but a householder who spoke of religion the way others speak of weather, calmly and without performance. Gandhi brought him his hardest questions — about renunciation, about the soul, about whether to leave his family — and often left unsatisfied yet steadied. He matters because he represents the Indian spiritual tradition Gandhi never abandoned, even as he tested it against Tolstoy, the Bible, and his own restless conscience.

Narayan Hemchandra

supporting

Also known as Narayan Hemchandra

Narayan Hemchandra arrived in London with no money, no polish, and no interest in acquiring either, cheerfully demanding introductions to editors and refusing to be embarrassed by his rough manners. Gandhi, still fussing over collars and vegetarian restaurants, found him both exasperating and instructive. Their friendship becomes an early lesson in the book: that self-respect does not depend on English approval, a theme that will grow into something much larger.

Parsi Rustomji

supporting

Also known as the late Parsi Rustomji, Rustomji, Parsi Rustomji, The good Parsi, the old Parsi

Rustomji was the kind of supporter every movement needs — wealthy, well-connected, and generous to the point of recklessness — but he was also human, and once smuggled goods in a moment of weakness that Gandhi refused to cover up. Their confrontation over that lapse tests whether Gandhi's ethics applied to friends as strictly as to enemies. He matters because he shows the early satyagraha as a fragile coalition of imperfect, loyal men rather than a chorus of saints.

Sir Pherozeshah Mehta

supporting

Also known as Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, Pherozeshah Mehta, Sir Pherozeshah

Pherozeshah Mehta looms over Gandhi's early Bombay years as the gold standard of legal brilliance — the man whose acumen, memory, and ability seem to make an ordinary career impossible. When a kindly Englishman tells the anxious young barrister that Pherozeshahs are rare and honesty plus industry will suffice, Mehta becomes less a rival than a relief. His distant eminence frames Gandhi's quiet discovery that greatness need not be his model.

Hermann Kallenbach

supporting

Also known as Mr. Kallenbach, Kallenbach

Kallenbach is the friend who refuses to let Gandhi travel alone when news of a moral failure among the ashram youth shatters him. When Gandhi imposes a seven-day fast and months of one meal a day as penance, Kallenbach argues against it, then insists on joining. His devotion turns private grief into shared discipline, showing how the satyagraha community bound itself through voluntary suffering rather than punishment.

Albert West

supporting

Also known as Gilbert, Mr. Albert West, Mr. West, West

West belongs to the small circle of Europeans who cast their lot with Gandhi's South African experiments, tending the daily life of Phoenix while its founder shuttles between Johannesburg and the coast. His presence embodies the strange coalition Gandhi built — Englishmen, Jews, Indians, and children — held together less by doctrine than by willingness to share hardship. Without such hands, the ashram's ideals would have remained paper.

Henry Polak

supporting

Also known as Mr. Henry Polak, Mr. Polak, Polak

Polak moves through Gandhi's South African years as confidant, publicist, and fellow seeker after a disciplined life. His interest in vegetarianism and health reform intersects with Gandhi's own evolving experiments, where diet begins as bodily care and ends as spiritual practice. He represents the network of sympathetic outsiders whose intellectual companionship shaped Gandhi's public work and private discipline alike.

Maganlal Gandhi

supporting

Also known as Maganlal Gandhi, Gandhi, Maganlal

Maganlal belongs to the family-and-ashram web that made Gandhi's public life possible, taking on the unglamorous labor of running settlements and instructing the young. His role sits at the intersection of kinship and conviction, where relatives became coworkers in an experiment that demanded as much of them as of strangers. The farms' survival depended on such steady hands, not on Gandhi's charisma alone.

Manilal Gandhi

supporting

Also known as Manilal

Manilal grows up as both son and pupil in a household where fatherhood and moral instruction were inseparable, and where the children of the community received the same exacting care as Gandhi's own. His presence shadows the autobiography's reflections on education, responsibility, and the cost of a father who belonged first to his experiments. The early chapters on family quietly set up the tensions that will shape his later life.

Dadabhai Naoroji

supporting

Also known as Dadabhai Naoroji, Dadabhai

In London, Dadabhai Naoroji looms as the elder statesman every young Indian student is urged to consult, yet Gandhi's own shyness turns the offered mentorship into a test of self-reliance. The gap between the advice he could have sought and the advice he actually took shapes his early London years, where he leans instead on strangers like Mr. Pincutt. Naoroji matters less for what he says than for what he represents: the distant standard of Indian public life that Gandhi measures himself against.

Lokamanya Tilak

supporting

Also known as Lokamanya Tilak, the Lokamanya, Tilak, Lokamanya, the late Lokamanya

Tilak belongs to the world of assertive Indian politics that Gandhi encounters on his return from South Africa, a figure whose reputation precedes him even in brief meetings. The autobiography treats him less as a developed personality than as a landmark Gandhi passes on his way to his own methods. His presence sharpens the contrast between inherited nationalist fervor and Gandhi's emerging ethic of self-purification and restraint.

Rajkumar Shukla

supporting

Also known as Rajkumar Shukla, The ubiquitous Rajkumar, Poor Rajkumar, Rajkumar

Rajkumar Shukla is the peasant who attaches himself to Gandhi with a persistence that borders on the comic and the heroic, following him from place to place until his cause is heard. His stubbornness embodies the grievances of indigo cultivators, and his refusal to be dismissed forces Gandhi toward the rural India he had largely avoided. Without this farmer's doggedness, the Champaran chapter, and much of Gandhi's later turn to the peasantry, would not begin.

Kaba Gandhi

supporting

Also known as Kaba Gandhi

Kaba Gandhi served as Prime Minister in Porbandar, Rajkot, and Vankaner, earning a reputation for truthfulness and impartiality while remaining uneducated in anything but practical experience. He married four times, was given to some indulgence, yet stood firm against a British Agent's insult to his chief and accepted detention rather than apologize. His blend of moral spine and human frailty gives the young Gandhi both an ideal and a warning about the cost of principle.

Putlibai Gandhi

supporting

Putlibai, Kaba Gandhi's fourth wife, raised her youngest son in a household saturated with vows, fasts, and visits to temples, her religiosity unshowy but absolute. Her willingness to keep difficult vows, even when it worried her family, modeled a form of discipline Gandhi would later remake as satyagraha. She is the quiet origin of his conviction that truth and self-denial are inseparable, a thread running from Porbandar to the ashrams.

Dada Abdulla

supporting

Also known as Dada Abdulla, Messrs. Dada Abdulla, Dada Abdulla and Co.

Dada Abdulla, head of a prosperous firm in Natal, summons Gandhi to South Africa for a lawsuit, and the assignment, meant to last a year, becomes the hinge of Gandhi's life. The merchant's world of Indian traders abroad exposes Gandhi to racial humiliation and colonial injustice he had never faced in London or Rajkot. What begins as a professional errand for Dada Abdulla turns into the laboratory where Gandhi's political conscience first takes shape.

Abdulla Sheth

supporting

Also known as Abdulla Sheth, Sheth Abdulla, Financially Sheth Abdulla Haji Adam

Abdulla Sheth is the prosperous Gujarati trader whose Pretoria establishment becomes Gandhi's base during his early South African years, a patron who can open doors and close them just as quickly. He is proud of his standing among the local Indian merchants yet bristles at the racial humiliations they all endure, and he tests Gandhi's convictions by expecting deference and communal loyalty in return for his help. Their friction over money, manners, and the meaning of Indian solidarity shapes Gandhi's first experiments in satyagraha and self-scrutiny, making Abdulla the practical counterweight to Gandhi's moral ambitions.

Mr. Coates

minor

Also known as Mr. Coates

A Christian friend who introduced Gandhi to the Bible in Pretoria.

Mr. A. W. Baker

minor

Also known as Mr. A. W. Baker, Mr. Baker

A Christian missionary who befriended Gandhi in Pretoria.

Balasundaram

minor

Also known as Balasundaram

An indentured Tamil clerk who became Gandhi's first client in Natal.

Sorabji Adajania

minor

Also known as Sorabji Adajania, Mr. Sorabji Adajania, Sorabji

A Parsi coworker and manager of the Indian Opinion press.

Mrs. Polak

minor

Also known as Mrs. Polak, Polak

Wife of Henry Polak, who supported the Phoenix community.

Mr. Pestonji Padshah

minor

Also known as Mr. Pestonji Padshah, Pestonji, Pestonji Padshah

A friend and fellow student from Gandhi's London days.

Mr. Chamberlain

minor

Also known as The late Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Chamberlain, Chamberlain

British Colonial Secretary who met with Indian delegations.

Mr. Harry Escombe

minor

Also known as Mr. Escombe, Mr. Harry Escombe, the late Mr. Escombe

A Natal statesman and lawyer involved in Indian rights issues.

Pandit Malaviyaji

minor

Also known as Pandit Malaviyaji, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviyaji, Malaviyaji

A Hindu leader and educator who worked with Gandhi on national issues.

Dr. P. J. Mehta

minor

Also known as Dr. P. J. Mehta, Dr. Mehta

A physician and early associate of Gandhi in South Africa.

Brajkishore Prasad

minor

Also known as Brajkishorebabu, XVII Companions Brajkishorebabu, Brajkishore Babu, Babu Brajkishore Prasad

A Bihari lawyer who assisted Gandhi during the Champaran campaign.

Mavji Dave

minor

Also known as Mavji Dave, Kevalram, old Mavji, Kevalram Mavji Dave, Kevalram Dave

A Brahmin friend who advised Gandhi on religious matters.

Swami Shraddhanandji

minor

Also known as Swami Shraddhanandji, Shraddhanandji, Swami, the Swami, the late Swami Shraddhanandji

A Hindu monk and educationalist who collaborated with Gandhi.

Gangabehn Majmundar

minor

Also known as Gangabehn Majmundar, Gangabehn

A woman who joined Gandhi's ashram and became a devoted follower.

Ramdas Gandhi

minor

Also known as Ramdas

Gandhi's third son, who participated in his father's movements.

Tryambakrai Mazmudar

minor

Also known as Tryambakrai Mazmudar, Mazmudar

A fellow lawyer and friend from Gandhi's early career in India.

Mahadev Desai

minor

Also known as Mahadev, Mahadev Desai

Gandhi's devoted secretary and chronicler for many years.

Vallabhbhai Patel

minor

Also known as Patel, Vallabhbhai Patel, Vallabhbhai

A future Indian leader who worked with Gandhi in the Kheda Satyagraha.

Sjt. Madanjit

minor

Also known as Sjt, Madanjit, Sjt . Madanjit

A coworker who helped run the Indian Opinion press in Durban.

Mrs. Besant

minor

Also known as Mrs. Besant

A prominent theosophist and Indian independence activist.

Dr. Booth

minor

Also known as Dr. Booth, Dr.

A missionary doctor who treated Gandhi during his illness in South Africa.

Mr. D. E. Wacha

minor

Also known as Mr. D. E. Wacha, Mr. Wacha

A Bombay politician and member of the Indian National Congress.

Mahadeo Govind Ranade

minor

Also known as Mahadeo Govind Ranade, Ranade

A judge and social reformer who influenced Gandhi's early political views.

Dr. Jivraj Mehta

minor

Also known as Dr. Jivraj Mehta, Dr. Mehta, Dr. Jivray Mehta

A physician and later a political leader who treated Gandhi.

Mohanlal Pandya

minor

Also known as Mohanlal Pandya, Mohanlal, Pandya

A coworker in the Kheda Satyagraha and ashram member.

Mansukhlal Naazar

minor

Also known as the late Sjt . Mansukhlal Naazar, Mansukhlal Naazar, Sjt . Mansukhlal

A coworker who managed the Indian Opinion in South Africa.

Dr. Dev

minor

Also known as the late Dr. Dev, Dr. Dev

A physician who treated Gandhi during his pleurisy in 1918.

Maulana Hasrat Mohani

minor

Also known as Maulana Hasrat Mohani, Hasrat Mohani, the Maulana

A Muslim poet and political activist in the Congress.

Virchand Gandhi

minor

Also known as Virchand Gandhi, Gandhi

A relative who accompanied Gandhi to London and later fell out.

Adamji Miyakhan

minor

Also known as the late Adamji Miyakhan, the Sheth, Adamji Miyakhan, Miyakhan, Sheth Adamji Miyakhan

A Muslim merchant who supported Gandhi's work in South Africa.

C. F. Andrews

minor

Also known as Mr. Andrews, Andrews, Mr. C. F. Andrews, Dinabandhu Andrews

An Anglican missionary and close friend who supported Indian causes.

Hakim Ajmal Khan

minor

Also known as Hakim Saheb, Hakim Ajmal Khan Saheb, the late Hakim Ajmal Khan Saheb, the late Hakim Saheb

A Muslim physician and political leader in the Khilafat movement.

Umar Sobani

minor

Also known as Umar Sobani, the late Mr. Umar Sobani, Mr. Umar Sobani, The late Umar Sobani, Mr. Sobani, Messrs. Umar Sobani, Messrs. Sobani

A Muslim businessman and supporter of Gandhi's movements.

C. Rajagopalachari

minor

Also known as Rajagopalachari

A future Indian statesman who worked with Gandhi in the Congress.

Sjt. Vijayaraghavachari

minor

Also known as Sjt . Vijayaraghavachari, Vijayaraghavachari

A Congress leader who presided over the Nagpur session.

Chittaranjan Das

minor

Also known as Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, the Deshbandhu, Deshbandhu, The Deshbandhu

A prominent Bengali lawyer and nationalist leader in the Congress.

Shankarlal Banker

minor

Also known as Shankarlal Banker

A coworker in the Ahmedabad textile labour movement.

Surendranath Banerji

minor

Also known as Surendranath Banerji, Surendranath

A veteran Indian nationalist leader and Congress veteran.

Shrimati Sarojini Naidu

minor

Also known as Shrimati Sarojini Naidu

A poet and political leader who worked with Gandhi in the Congress.

Pandit Motilal Nehru

minor

Also known as Pandit Motilalji, Motilalji, Pandit Motilal Nehru

A prominent lawyer and Congress leader from Allahabad.

Mr. Jinnah

minor

Also known as Mr. Jinnah

A rising Muslim political leader who interacted with Gandhi.

Maulana Mazharul Haq

minor

Also known as Maulana Mazharul Haq

A Bihari Muslim leader who supported the Champaran movement.

Anasuyabehn

minor

Also known as Anasuyabehn, Shrimati Anasuyabehn, Shrimati Anasuyabai

A woman who joined Gandhi's ashram and became a follower.

Sheth Ambalal

minor

Also known as the Sheth, Sheth Ambalal

A mill owner in Ahmedabad involved in the labour dispute.

Mr. Laughton

minor

Also known as Mr. Laughton

A lawyer who assisted Gandhi in his early South African cases.

Bhupenbabu

minor

Also known as Bhupenbabu

A friend and fellow student from Gandhi's London days.

Mr. Lely

minor

Also known as Mr. Lely, Lely

A British official in Porbandar who Gandhi encountered as a youth.

Professor Kripalani

minor

Also known as Professor Kripalani, Kripalani, Principal Kripalani

A teacher who later became a follower and ashram member.

Mr. Saunders

minor

Also known as Mr. Saunders

A British official who dealt with Indian grievances in South Africa.

Mr. Ritch

minor

Also known as Mr. Ritch

A lawyer who assisted Gandhi in the Natal Indian Congress.

Tyeb Haji Khan Muhammad

minor

Also known as Tyeb Haji Khan Muhammad, the Sheth, Sheth Tyeb Haji Khan Muhammad, the late Sheth Tyeb Haji Khan Muhammad

A Muslim merchant who supported Gandhi in South Africa.

Babu Motilal Ghose

minor

Also known as the late Babu Motilal Ghose, Motilal

A journalist and editor of the Amrita Bazar Patrika.

Lady Cecilia Roberts

minor

Also known as Lady Cecilia Roberts, Lady Cecilia

A British woman who helped Gandhi during his London visit.

Dr. Allinson

minor

Also known as Dr. Allinson

A dietetic expert whose views influenced Gandhi's experiments.

Mr. Hills

minor

Also known as Mr. Hills

A British vegetarian activist who corresponded with Gandhi.

Shankarlal Parikh

minor

Also known as Shankarlal Parikh, Shankarlal Parikh of Kathlal

A coworker in the Kheda Satyagraha campaign.

Principal Sushil Rudra

minor

Also known as Principal Sushil Rudra, Sushil Rudra, Principal Rudra

A Christian educator who hosted Gandhi at Shantiniketan.

Sjt. Ghosal

minor

Also known as Ghosal, Sjt . Ghosal, Sjt

A fellow lawyer and friend from Gandhi's early legal practice.

Dr. Talvalkar

minor

Also known as Dr. Talvalkar

A friend and fellow experimenter in dietetics in South Africa.

Ladha Maharaj

minor

Also known as Ladha Maharaj, Maharaj, the Maharaj, Rama—Ladha Maharaj of Bileshvar

A religious figure who influenced Gandhi's spiritual thinking.

Shrimati Avantikabai Gokhale

minor

Also known as Shrimati Avantikabai Gokhale, Shrimati Avantikabai, Avantikabai, Gokhale

A woman who joined Gandhi's ashram and became a follower.

Kakasaheb Kalelkar

minor

Also known as Kakasaheb Kalelkar, Kalelkar, Kakasaheb

A teacher and follower who joined Gandhi's ashram.

Jairamdas

minor

Also known as Jairamdas

A Sindhi follower who worked with Gandhi in the Congress.

Kalyandas

minor

Also known as Kalyandas

A follower who joined Gandhi's ashram and worked for khadi.