ABSTRACT
Mahatma Gandhi had friends cutting across religious, national and social barriers and divisions. Some of his enduring friendships were with men and women whose backgrounds were different from, and even antithetical to, his own. Despite the voluminous works on him, not many have discussed his Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Zoroastrian or even Gujarati friends. In late 1931, Gandhi was in London to attend the Second Round Table Conference as a representative of the Indian nationalist movement. In an interview with The Jewish Chronicle, he recalled that in South Africa he “was surrounded by Jews.” Gandhi’s acquaintance with Jews and Judaism is generally traced to South Africa where he began his legal and, subsequently, political career after his arrival in Durban on 24 May 1893. No information is available about his British days where he studied for the Bar-at-Law in London.
