The NIF-Winning English Translation of Mahatma Gandhi’s Nephew’s Memoir
The Dawn of Life: A Forgotten Gandhian Memoir Finds Its Voice in English
Before he became the Mahatma, Gandhi was simply Bapu — a mentor, guide, and fellow seeker to the small circle of family and companions who lived and learned beside him in South Africa. It was there, amid the ideals of community and self-reliance he nurtured at the Phoenix Settlement and Tolstoy Farm, that the foundations of satyagraha were quietly laid.
Among his closest witnesses were his nephews, Prabhudas and Maganlal Gandhi, who helped shape and observe the early Gandhian experiments that would later define India’s freedom movement.
Now, for the first time, Prabhudas Gandhi’s memoir The Dawn of Life appears in English — translated from the Gujarati original (Jeevan nu Parodh, 1948) by Hemang Ashwinkumar. The translation, recipient of the 2024–25 New India Foundation Translation Fellowship, revives a rare and intimate record of Gandhi’s South African years — a period often overshadowed by his later fame.
The Dawn of Life
By Prabhudas Gandhi
Translated by: Hemang Ashwinkumar
Part family chronicle and part historical testimony, The Dawn of Life offers a deeply personal account of Gandhi’s years in South Africa through the eyes of a young Prabhudas who grew up beside him. Set within the Phoenix Settlement and Tolstoy Farm, Gandhi’s first “laboratories” of truth and discipline, the memoir unfolds through tender, often humorous recollections of daily ashram life: shared chores, debates on diet and celibacy, experiments in simplicity and self-restraint.
Originally serialized in the handwritten ashram journal Madhpudo (The Beehive) and later published in Gujarati as Jeevan nu Parodh in 1948, the memoir won the Narmad Suvarna Chandrak and remains one of the most significant yet overlooked family records in Gandhian literature.
This English edition is more than a translation, it is a work of literary and cultural recovery, restoring to public memory the Gandhi family’s forgotten role in shaping the Mahatma’s worldview. It invites readers to meet Gandhi before the myth, affectionate, exacting, fallible, and endlessly experimenting with truth
The Stories Inside
- First-hand childhood recollections from Phoenix Settlement and Tolstoy Farm.
- A rare portrait of Maganlal Gandhi, the unsung architect of Gandhian discipline.
- Domestic and moral experiments, from diet, gardening, and nature cure to the discipline of brahmacharya.
- Historical glimpses of early satyagraha and the everyday that forged an idea of freedom.
- Written in 1948 amid post-independence turmoil, a plea for humanity against hate, caste, and division.
About the Author
Prabhudas Gandhi (1901–1995) was the grandnephew of Mahatma Gandhi and the son of Chhaganlal Gandhi. He was a Gujarati writer, translator and Gandhian activist who spent his childhood at the Phoenix Settlement in South Africa, absorbing Gandhian ideals of truth and service. Returning to India, he became one of the earliest members of Kochrab Ashram and participated in the Champaran, Bardoli, and Quit India movements. His memoir Jeevan nu Parodh won the Narmad Suvarna Chandrak in 1948.
About the Translator
Hemang Ashwinkumar is a bilingual poet, translator, editor, and critic working in Gujarati and English. His poetry and translations have appeared in World Literature Today, Indian Literature, Marg, The Four Quarters Magazine, Indian Cultural Forum, The Beacon, and more.
He has translated major Gujarati writers including Gulammohammed Sheikh, Himanshi Shelat, Nazir Mansuri, Dalpat Chauhan, and Manisha Joshi, as well as world poets such as Forough Farrokhzad and Mahmoud Darwish into Gujarati. His translation of The Dawn of Life was awarded the 2024–25 New India Foundation Translation Fellowship for its literary and historical significance. He currently teaches at the Central University of Gujarat.
