The 400-page book,  Gandhi's Prisoner? The Life of Gandhi's Son, Manilal, released in Durban last week explores the Gandhi family's early years in South Africa.

"The title comes from discussions with my mother (Manilal's daughter), my uncles and aunts. My mother always said her parents were captive, enslaved. My uncle says his father never had any freedom," said Dhuphelia-Mesthrie, who teaches history at Cape Town's University of the Western Cape.

"Manilal didn't have a choice. He wanted to be a doctor but Gandhi didn't allow him to study at all. He would have liked to marry a particular woman but his father wouldn't allow that," she said. 

Instead, he followed his father's explicit wishes by spending most of his life managing the Phoenix settlement founded by Gandhi in Durban, and editing  Indian Opinion,  the newspaper founded by his father.

"Gandhi believed that he had found the path to correct living and wanted to save his sons from making mistakes," she said.

The book, released in South Africa to coincide with the centenary of Gandhi's Phoenix settlement,  draws extensively on personal letters and family memories.

Gandhi left South Africa for India with his family in 1914.

But Manilal, the second of four sons, was sent back to Durban, where he was jailed several times for opposing apartheid laws.

Dhuphelia-Mesthrie said one of her reasons for writing the book was to recognise Manilal's contribution to the South African liberation struggle.

A special edition of the book is due to be published in India next year, with Dhuphelia-Mesthrie claiming she is "prepared for negative reaction."

Hoping readers would "see that Gandhi was a loving father but left his sons little choice", she said: "It's not like he abandoned them. You'll see (in the book) a compassionate father."