Manilal was born in Rajkot, British India. His early years were spent in Rajkot, and in 1897 he traveled to South Africa for the first time. The family lived in Durban and Johannesburg for a time. Between 1906 and 1914 he founded the Phoenix Settlement (in KwaZulu-Natal) and the Tolstoy Farm (in Gauteng), both settlements by his father.

Manilal wrote about a Gujarati-English weekly publication, Phoenix, in 1917 after a brief visit to India. Manilal was working mostly for the press till the year 1918 and took over as editor in 1920. In 1927, Manilal married Sushila Mashruwala and had two daughters, Sita and Ila and a son Arun.

Like his father, Manilal was also jailed several times by the British colonial government after protesting against unjust laws. He was one of the first 79 marchers to accompany Gandhi in the Salt March of 1930, for which he was imprisoned. He was the editor of the Indian Opinion until the year of his death, 1956. Manilal died of cerebral thrombosis after a stroke.

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