Manu Gandhi (1927-1969) was Gandhi’s grandniece. She was the youngest of four daughters born to Jaisukhlal Amritlal Gandhi, who was Gandhi’s nephew, and his wife Kasumba. Manu joined Sevagram Ashram, Gandhi’s final intentional community, at the age of fourteen in early 1942, having been brought there by her father (her mother had passed away in 1939). At Sevagram Ashram, Manu began to study at the community school, and was trained in the communal ideology of seva, selfless service. 

Later in 1942 the Quit India anticolonial movement was launched from Sevagram Ashram. Though just a teenager, Manu joined this civil disobedience movement, and was arrested and imprisoned. Initially imprisoned in Nagpur Central Jail, she was transferred after nine months to the Aga Khan Palace prison where Gandhi had been imprisoned along with Kasturba and several other leaders of the movement. Gandhi was then weakened from fasting, and Kasturba was ill, and so Manu was transferred there so that she could serve Gandhi and Kasturba while carrying out her prison sentence. When not nursing Kasturba or Gandhi, she continued her education with Gandhi and the other residents of the Aga Khan Palace prison.

After Manu was released from prison in May 1944, she was at Gandhi’s side for his remaining years until his death in 1948, accompanying him at Sevagram Ashram and also when he traveled. During these years Manu helped to record some of Gandhi’s correspondence and speeches.  She was also one of Gandhi’s partners in his controversial experiments in celibate sexuality. Manu was at Gandhi’s side when he was assassinated in New Delhi on January 30, 1948. After Gandhi’s death, she worked for the Ministry of Education and traveled throughout India visiting schools to teach about Gandhi’s life and message. She died from tuberculosis in 1969.