Mahatma Gandhi is seen as a saintly, almost godlike figure by many Indians. But as a new film and biography reveal, he was far from perfect when it came to parenting

Mahatma Gandhi once confessed that the greatest regret of his life was that there were two people he had not been able to convince. One was Mohammed Ali Jinnah, whose demand for a separate homeland for Muslims led to the partition of India and Pakistan in August 1947 and the end of the dream of a united, independent India. The other person was his own eldest son. Harilal Gandhi's entire life was lived in the shadow of his father and it was spent rebelling against everything his father believed in. Gandhi's stern morality, sexual abstinence and principled stand against Britain were all challenged by his son, who was an alcoholic gambler trading in imported British clothes even as his father was urging a boycott of foreign goods. Harilal even converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdullah before his death in 1948, only months after his father was assassinated by a Hindu extremist. Sixty years on from the Indian independence he was so instrumental in securing, Gandhi is a symbol of innocence and peace; a simple man in peasant clothes whose adherence to nonviolence defeated the British and would later inspire both Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. This was the Gandhi depicted in Richard Attenborough's multi-Oscar-winning film a quarter of a century ago: a dhoti-clad demigod. Attenborough's film told the story of Gandhi as the father of a nation; now a new film, Gandhi, My Father, reveals the extraordinary story of the son and the man he described as "the greatest father you can have but the one father I wish I did not have". The film's release coincides with the publication of a monumental new biography by Rajmohan Gandhi, a historian and grandson of the Mahatma. "I wrote this book because I wanted to make sense of my grandfather," says Rajmohan, 72. "I was 12 years old when my grandfather died and I wanted to be able to tell my children and grandchildren who Gandhi really was. The story of Gandhi is not only the story of India and partition: it is also the story of a father with high expectations and four sons who found it hard to measure up." There are estimated to be 120 living relatives of Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi. They are the descendants of the four sons - Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas and Devdas, Rajmohan's father - that Gandhi had with his wife Kasturba, whom he married when he was 13. Most of the descendants are not in the public eye but, according to great-grandson Tushar Gandhi, they are all aware of the significance of their heritage. "I don't remember a phase in my life when I didn't know who I was," he says, "and while the tragedy of Harilal has had repercussions for my family, it was not until I saw this film that I could see for myself how it must have happened." Of the four sons, it was Harilal who turned most violently against his father. It is a familiar narrative - the son who fails to shine in the face of his father's brilliance - but the particular tensions between Harilal and his father sprang from the inescapable conflict between the demands of being the father of a nation and a father to his children. Mohandas Gandhi was only 18 when his first son was born, and Harilal was six months old when his father left his family in South Africa in September 1888 to train as a barrister in London. Gandhi came to recognise the importance of spending time with his later sons, but he was absent during Harilal's early years. This was not the only way in which the eldest son's experiences differed from his brothers'. "When Gandhi returned to South Africa he became a successful barrister," says Rajmohan, "and his son saw the great financial success of his father. He was aware of his father's comfortable life, both socially and financially. When Gandhi became more involved in the political struggle and took a vow of celibacy and poverty, it was a real jolt to young Harilal in a way that it was not for his younger brothers, who did not recall the earlier good life." Gandhi's political philosophy was based on the belief that there was a larger good for society which demanded that each individual makes sacrifices. The necessity not to appear hypocritical meant that his sons were schooled at home when the family lived in South Africa. He could not have sent the boys to the private European schools without alienating himself from the Indian community, but in remaining true to his principles, he angered his children, who would meet other youngsters demanding to know which school they attended. "The hallmark of any leader," argues Rajmohan, "is that they expand the notion of a family to include the entire nation and so do not do anything special for their children." When an Indian friend offered Gandhi the opportunity to send one of his sons to England on a scholarship, Gandhi inquired whether the scholarship was truly for one of his boys or for the most deserving young person from the Indian community in South Africa. The man reluctantly agreed that the scholarship could go to the most deserving young person. Gandhi promptly suggested two other boys who he believed were more deserving and these were sent to England in the place of his own children. "You want to make saints out of my boys before they are men," complained his wife but, for Gandhi, his sons were to be the ideal symbols of the new India he was trying to create. Embittered, Harilal resolved to carve out his own identity. He began drinking and trading in foreign clothes for profit; Gandhi's relationship with his son was further strained by Harilal's decision to remarry after the death of his first wife. "How can I who has always advocated renunciation of sex encourage you to gratify it?" asked Gandhi. "If Harilal wants to marry against my wish, I will have to stop thinking of him as my son." While Gandhi espoused nonviolence, his son's business at one point depended on the continuation of the second world war, and peace led to financial troubles. "Harilal had the Midas touch in reverse," concludes Feroz Abbas Khan, the director of Gandhi, My Father. "This was a man who was unfortunate in that everything he did just went wrong. He started businesses which all crashed. Time and again he tried and it just didn't work out for him." Gandhi, My Father opens with Harilal's death after he is picked up from the streets in Mumbai and taken to hospital. The doctors imagine him to be an alcoholic vagrant. They ask him his father's name and he replies: "Bapu" - the term of endearment that Indians used to refer to Gandhi. The doctors agree that Bapu is indeed the father of the nation but demand the name of his biological father. It is a poignant scene. "Gandhi is an inconvenient truth," admits Khan, "and his principles were hard to live by." Filmed in English and Hindi and shot in India and South Africa, Gandhi, My Father is not typical Bollywood fare. Rather than the usual Bombay mix of melodrama and music, first-time director Khan's film is understated and humane. Khan based his script on his own play, Mahatma vs Gandhi; he supplemented the work with research visits to South Africa and interviews with Gandhi's relatives, all the while collecting letters, articles and any other scraps of information that would help make his film appear authentic. "I have a responsibility to this subject and the dignity of the subject," he says. "There are no duets sung between Harilal and his father because they didn't have duets - they had arguments." Those arguments stemmed from Gandhi's belief that the needs of the nation were more important than the need of any individual. "One reason that Indians loved him so much," explains Rajmohan, "was that he was not partial to his children - that was his strongest card. He knew that if India wanted to be inspired, they needed the sort of leader who was willing to 'neglect' his children." In fact, he was a fragile, troubled father. "People assume he was a miracle worker from the start," says Rajmohan, "some impossibly wonderful human being always in control of himself. This was not the case at all." Even before the film's release in India there were protests from those uncomfortable with this portrayal and demands that the film be banned. Razi Ahmad, secretary of Gandhi Sangrahalaya, a research centre in Patna, said: "We are of the view that any attempt to tarnish the image of national heroes should not be permitted." In truth, the film reveals Gandhi's humanity and that, says Tushar Gandhi, should have been exposed a long time ago. "Gandhi has become a hostage to his mahatmaship. It is easy to say that we cannot emulate someone like him when we put him on a pedestal. What we should be doing is seeing him as a normal, frail human being who strove to achieve something. We should emulate people like him, but not worship them." · Gandhi, My Father is out now. Gandhi: The Man, His People and the Empire, by Rajmohan Gandhi, is published by Haus Books, price £25.