Kanu Ramdas Gandhi, the 87-year-old grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and a former NASA scientist, passed away at a private hospital in Surat on Monday. He is survived by wife Shivalaxmi.
On October 22, Mr. Gandhi suffered a heart attack and brain haemorrhage, which left him paralysed; thereafter he was admitted to the Shiv Jyoti hospital.
The Gandhi couple had returned to India in 2014 after several decades in the U.S. Kanu had studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His education was sponsored by the then U.S. Ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith.
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He later went on to work with NASA and the U.S. Defence Department on wing structures of fighter aircraft, while his wife Shivalaxmi was a professor and researcher at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute.
On their return to India, the couple stayed at various ashrams including the Guru Vishram Vrudhha Ashram in Delhi as they did not have a home of their own place of their own. After his heart attack in the Radhakrishna Ashram in Surat, his friend Dhimant Badhia offered monetary support to bear medical expenses.
Kanu become famous as the boy who walked ahead of Mahatma Gandhi holding one end of his stick on the beaches of Gujarat's Dandi village during the historic Salt Satyagraha of March-April 1930.
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President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and other leaders condoled his death.