India
Tushar Gandhi
Founder President, Mahatma Gandhi Foundation · Author & Social Activist
🏛️ Mahatma Gandhi Foundation, Mumbai, India
Quick Overview
"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi on Personal Responsibility & Social Change"Gandhi's Living Legacy: Custodianship, Activism, and the Relevance of Gandhian Values Today"
Presentation Overview & Abstract
As the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi, Tushar Gandhi brings a unique perspective on the lived inheritance of Gandhian philosophy. He explores how truth, nonviolence, and communal harmony remain urgent imperatives in contemporary India, drawing from decades of activism, his landmark Dandi March re-enactment, and his work through the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation.
About Tushar Gandhi
Tushar Gandhi (b. 1960) is a great-grandson of Kastur and Mohandas Gandhi, grandson of their 2nd son Manilal and daughter-in-law Sushila, and son of Sunanda and Arun Gandhi. As the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi, he is a dedicated custodian of Gandhian philosophy, focusing his life's work on promoting peace, communal harmony, and social justice.
In 1996, he discovered an urn containing the ashes from Gandhi's funeral pyre, forgotten in the strong room of the State Bank of India's Cuttack branch. He secured permission from the Supreme Court and immersed them in the Triveni Sangam on 30 January 1997. The same year he founded the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation, of which he is currently the Founder President.
In 2005, he commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Dandi March by organizing a re-enactment of the 241-mile-long walk. He walked the entire stretch and was instrumental in getting the prime minister to declare the route from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi a protected national heritage path.
Tushar is the President of Lok Seva Trust — an NGO established in the mid-1950s dedicated to the welfare of textile-mill workers in Mumbai — and a Director of the Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon. He frequently speaks on civil liberties, constitutional rights, secularism, and nonviolence across international and domestic forums.
He is the author of the bestselling historical non-fiction book Let's Kill Gandhi (2007) and edited and released The Lost Diary of Kastur, My Ba (2022).