Aruna Asaf Ali
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Aruna Asaf Ali
(1909–1996), activist in India's independence movement and the first elected mayor of Delhi. Aruna Asaf Ali's public life spanned nearly seven decades of the twentieth century. Born into a Brahmin family that migrated from East Bengal (Bangladesh) to Calcutta (now Kolkata), Aruna was the eldest of five children. Together with her sister Purnima , she received her early education at the Sacred Heart Convent in Lahore, where her father, Upendranath Ganguly , worked as a journalist. Thwarted in her wish to become a nun, Aruna eventually became a teacher at a girls’ school in Calcutta. While visiting her sister in Allahabad, she met and fell in love with Asaf Ali , a barrister and a leader of the Indian National Congress in Delhi. They wished to marry, but Aruna's parents objected because he was a Muslim and twice her age. After Aruna's father died in 1928, she married Asaf Ali.
After her marriage, Aruna moved to Delhi and was drawn to the Congress Socialist Party. She joined the Salt Satyagraha, a protest march against imperialist laws, and was imprisoned for a year. This was the first of several times Aruna was imprisoned over the next decade, a common pattern for those in anticolonial resistance movements.
The turning point in Aruna's life was her participation in the Quit India movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi in August 1942. Following the arrest of all the leaders of the Indian National Congress, Aruna presided over the historic Congress session in Bombay (Mumbai) and hoisted the national flag. Outraged by the trampling of the flag by a British soldier, she renounced nonviolence and went underground to guide the movement, moving from city to city to escape arrest. Along with Ram Manohar Lohia , she edited Inquilab, a revolutionary monthly. The government announced an award of five thousand rupees for her capture, but she successfully remained underground until 1946, when the warrants against her were canceled.
Her experiences and compassion for the underprivileged led Aruna to regard the 1947 transfer of power from the British to the Congress as a sham. She broke away from the Congress and later joined the Left Socialist Group; she also took an active interest in the trade union movement. This group merged with the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1955, and Aruna became a member of the central committee and vice president of the All India Trade Union Congress. In 1954 she established the National Federation of Indian Women, the women's wing of the CPI. In 1958 she left the CPI and became Delhi's first elected mayor. She was a leading member of the Indo-Soviet Cultural Society and the All India Peace Council. She was associated with two left-wing journals: Link, a weekly started in 1958, and Patriot, a daily founded in 1962.
Aruna was awarded several national and international awards, including the Lenin Peace Prize, the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration, the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding, the Padma Vibhushan, and, posthumously, the Bharat Ratna.
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| Aruna Asaf Ali | |
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 Aruna Asaf Ali. |
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| Born | July 16,1909 Kalka, Punjab, British India (now Haryana) |
| Died | July 29, 1996 |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Alma mater | Sacred Heart Convent |
| Occupation | Indian independence activist, teacher |
Aruna Asaf Ali (Bengali: অরুণা আসফ আলী) (July 16, 1909 – July 29, 1996), born Aruna Ganguli, was an Indian independence activist. She is widely remembered for hoisting the Indian National Congress flag at the Gowalia Tank maidan in Bombay during the Quit India Movement, 1942. She was 87 years old at the time of her death.
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Early life
Aruna Asaf Ali was born as Aruna Ganguly on July 16, 1908 at Kalka, Punjab, British India, but now in the state of Haryana into a Bengali Brahmo family. She was educated at Sacred Heart Convent in Lahore and then in Nainital. She graduated and worked as a teacher. She taught at the Gokhale Memorial School in Calcutta. She met Asaf Ali, a leader in the Congress party at Allahabad and married him in 1928, despite parental opposition on grounds of religion (she was a Brahmo while he was a Muslim) and age (a difference of more than 20 years).
Freedom struggle: early days
She became an active member of Congress Party after marrying asaf ali and participated in public processions during the Salt Satyagraha. She was arrested on the charge that she was a vagrant and hence not released in 1931 under the Gandhi-Irwin Pact which stipulated release of all political prisoners. Other women co-prisoners refused to leave the premises unless she was also released and gave in only after Mohandas K. Gandhi intervened. A public agitation secured her release.
In 1932, she was held prisoner at the Tihar Jail where she protested the indifferent treatment of political prisoners by launching a hunger strike. Her efforts resulted in an improvement of conditions in the Tihar Jail but she was moved to Ambala and was subjected to solitary confinement. She was politically not very active after her release.
Family
Her father Upendranath Ganguly hailed from Barisal district of Eastern Bengal but settled in the United Province. He was a restaurant owner and a very adventurous man. Mother Ambalika Devi was the daughter of Trailokyanath Sanyal, a renowned Brahmo leader who wrote many beautiful Brahmo hymns. Upendranath Ganguly's younger brother Dhirendranath Ganguly (D G) was one of the earliest film directors. Another brother Nagendranath, a soil biologist was married to Rabindranath Tagore's only surviving daughter Mira Devi though they got separated after sometime. Her sister, Purnima Banerjee was a member of the Constituent Assembly of India.
Face of Quit India movement
On August 8, 1942, the All India Congress Committee passed the Quit India resolution at the Bombay session. The government responded by arresting the major leaders and all members of the Congress Working Committee and thus tried to pre-empt the movement from success. A young Aruna Asaf Ali presided over the remainder of the session on 9 August and hoisted the Congress flag at the Gowalia Tank maidan. This marked the commencement of the movement. The police fired upon the assembly at the session. Aruna was dubbed the Heroine of the 1942 movement for her bravery in the face of danger and was called Grand Old Lady of the Independence movement in her later years. Despite absence of direct leadership, spontaneous protests and demonstrations were held all over the country, as an expression of desire of India’s youth to achieve independence.She was very hard working women.
Countdown to Independence
An arrest warrant was issued in her name but she went underground to evade the arrest and started underground movement in year 1942 . Her property was seized and sold. In the meanwhile, she also edited Inquilab, a monthly magazine of the Congress Party, along with Ram Manohar Lohia. In a 1944 issue, she exhorted youth to action by asking them to forget futile discussions about violence and non-violence and join the revolution. Leaders such as Jayaprakash Narayan and Aruna Asaf Ali were described as "the Political children of Gandhi but recent students of Karl Marx." The government announced a reward of Rs. 5,000/- for her capture. She fell ill and was for a period hiding in Dr Joshi's Hospital in Karol Bagh in Delhi. Mahatma Gandhi sent her a hand-written note to her to come out of hiding and surrender herself – as her mission was accomplished and as she could utilize the reward amount for the Harijan cause. However, she came out of hiding only after the warrant against her was withdrawn in 1946. She treasured the note from the Mahatma and it adorned her drawing room. However, she also faced criticism from Gandhi for her support of the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny, a movement she saw as the single greatest unifying factor of Hindus and Muslims at a time that was the peak of the movement for Pakistan.
Post-Independence
She was a member of the Congress Socialist Party, a caucus within the Congress Party for activists with socialist leanings. Disillusioned with the progress of the Congress Party on socialism she joined a new party, Socialist Party in 1948. She however left that party along with Edatata Narayanan and they visited Moscow along with Rajani Palme Dutt. Both of them joined the Communist Party of India in the early 1950s. On domestic front, she was bereaved when Asaf Ali died in 1953.
In 1954, she helped form the National Federation of Indian Women, the women's wing of CPI but left the party in 1956 following Nikita Khrushchev's disowning of Stalin. In 1958, she was elected the first Mayor of Delhi. She was closely associated with social activists and secularists of her era like Krishna Menon, Vimla Kapoor, Guru Radha Kishan, Premsagar Gupta, Rajani Palme Dutt, Sarla Sharma and Subhadra Joshi for social welfare and development in Delhi. She was the first elected Mayor of Delhi.
She and Narayanan started Link publishing house and published a daily newspaper, Patriot and a weekly, Link the same year. The publications became prestigious due to patronage of leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon and Biju Patnaik. Later she moved out of the publishing house due to internal politics, stunned by greed taking over the creed of her comrades. In 1964, she rejoined the Congress Party but stopped taking part in active politics. Despite reservations about the emergency, she remained close to Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
Legacy
Aruna Asaf Ali was awarded International Lenin Peace Prize for the year 1964 and the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1991.[1] She was awarded India’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan in her lifetime in 1992, and finally the highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, posthumously in 1997.[2] In 1998, a stamp commemorating her was issued. Aruna Asaf Ali marg in New Delhi was named in her honour. All India Minorities Front distributes the Dr Aruna Asaf Ali Sadbhawana Award annually.
Anecdote
Aruna Asaf Ali was well known for her Spartan lifestyle – she used public transport. In her eighties, once she was travelling in a crowded bus in Delhi and no seat was vacant. A fashionable young lady also boarded the bus and a gentleman trying to impress her, vacated his seat. This lady, in turn, offered the seat to Aruna Asaf Ali who accepted it. At this, that man protested, saying to the lady, "I vacated that seat for your sake, sister." Aruna Asaf Ali retorted with her quick wit, "Never mind, mother always comes before sister."
References
- ^ "List of the recipients of the Jawaharlal Nehru Award". ICCR website. http://www.iccrindia.net/jnawardlist.html.
- ^ "Padma Awards Directory (1954-2007)". Ministry of Home Affairs. http://www.mha.nic.in/pdfs/PadmaAwards1954-2007.pdf. Retrieved 7 December 2010.
External links
- An Obituary of Mrs. Aruna Asaf Ali by Inder Malhotra in The Guardian
- A write-up on Aruna Asaf Ali
- Another write-up on Aruna Asaf Ali
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