Gandhi’s father was a local government official working under the suzerainty of the British Raj, and his mother was a religious devotee who—like the rest of the family—practiced in the Vaishnavist tradition of Hinduism. Gandhi married his wife, Kasturba, when he was 13, and together they had five children. His family stayed in India while Gandhi went to London in 1888 to study law and to South Africa in 1893 to practice it. He brought them to South Africa in 1897, where Kasturba would assist him in his activism, which she continued to do after the family moved back to India in 1915.