Later she moved out of the publishing house due to internal politics. The publications became prestigious due to the patronage of leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon, and Biju Patnaik. She was also against unnecessary industrialisation. Through her newspapers, she worked to mobilise support for reforms for the depressed classes. She launched Link magazine (weekly) and Patriot newspaper in New Delhi in the sixties. But again due to petty politicking, she resigned, never to take up any government job or contest elections. During her stint, she introduced major civic reforms.

Reserve the prize money for the Harijan cause.” She came out of the hiding only in 1946 after the warrant against her was withdrawn.Īfter Independence, Ali was also persuaded to become Delhi’s first mayor in 1958 – the only female mayor the city has ever had. Do come out and surrender yourself and win the prize offered for your arrest. Gandhi wrote: “I have been filled with admiration for your courage and heroism. She remained free, disobeying even the Mahatma’s request to surrender on account of her frailty. While being underground, she edited the Congress party’s monthly magazine Inquilab.Īlso Read: Why Annie Besant thought Mahatma Gandhi was a ‘saint’ and not a ‘politician’ She went underground, with a motley crew of Marxists and Congress workers. The government announced a reward of Rs 5,000 for her capture. Due to her bravery in face of danger, Aruna was hailed as the Heroine of the 1942 movement for her bravery in the face of danger. She presided over the AICC session on 9 August and fearlessly hoisted the flag at the Gowalia Tank maidan in Bombay. With top leaders gone, a young Aruna took the mantle of leadership in her hand. In 1942, when Gandhiji launched Quit India movement and made a call to ‘Do or Die’, Britishers were already alarmed, they put Gandhi, Nehru and most of the prominent leaders in Jail. Unlike other prisoners who were released on an account of the Gandhi Irwin Pact in 1931, she was released after the public protested against her arrest.

Her efforts resulted in an improvement of conditions but she was moved to Ambala where she was put in solitary confinement. It was then that she was arrested for the first time In 1932, she launched a hunger strike protesting the indifferent treatment of political prisoners in Tihar jail. Her first tryst with politics started with an active participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930. My paternal uncle Nagendranath Gangulee, a university professor who regarded himself as my guardian, said to relatives and friends that as far as he was concerned I was dead and he had performed my shraddh,” Gandhian alternative, a book by Suresh Mishra quotes Aruna as saying. “My father was no more when Asaf and I married in September 1928. Moreover, Asaf was also 21 years senior to her.

Inter-religious marriage was a big taboo in those days and his father disapproved of the marriage. In their first meeting itself, Aruna and Asaf felt attracted to each other. Aruna met Asaf Ali, a leader in Congress party and one of the country’s most prominent lawyers, in Allahabad in January 1928 during a vacation.

Aruna asaf ali