Aruna Asaf Ali, a nationalist in her early youth and later a socialist, was born in 1909 in a Bengali Brahmin family that came from East Bengal and settled in Calcutta. Aruna Ganguli lived with her father (who ran a hotel in Nainital in modern Utter Pradesh), went to school attended social functions, and showed little interest in politics.

At the age of 19 she, became engaged to Asaf Ali, a prominent lower and Congress leader of Delhi, twenty years older than herself and married him in 1928 despite her father’s vehement opposition. They lived happily, and the furore that followed their marriage died down. They have no children. She accompanied her husband to the United States, went to Mexico as a member of the Indian delegation to UNESCO, and also traveled in the Soviet Union and East European countries.

The marriage with Asaf Ali proved to be a turning-point in her life. Since her husband was active in politics she became drawn into the national movement, met Congress leaders like Gandhi and Azad, and attended political meetings. In her political life she came under the influence of Jayaprakash Narayan, Achyut Patwardhan and Rammanohar Lohia, leaders of the Congress Socialist Party, who helped to remould her outlook.

Although she did not hold any university degree she was a voracious reader and studied politics, economics, and Marxist literature. She became a radical nationalist and an advocate of uncompromising struggle against British rule. She participated in the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930’s and went to jail; she courted arrest in 1941 when Gandhi started individual satyagraha against British war effort.

A second turning-point in her life came during the August Movement 1942. Following the arrest of Congress leaders there was an upheaval in the country. Deeply moved by the anti-British feelings of the people, Aruna went under-ground along with her socialist friends, sought to build up an underground center to guide the movement, toured Calcutta, Bombay and Delhi evading police hunt, and made heroic efforts to regroup the forces after the collapse of the movement in 1943. She remained underground till 1946 when the warrant of arrest against her was withdrawn.

Meanwhile her revolutionary activities came in for criticism; Gandhi said, “Aruna would rather unite Hindus and Muslim at the barricades than on the constitutional front”. In a letter to Abul Kalam Azad, Aruna and Patwardhan defended their activities during the August movement: “We were responsible along with those other colleagues (Congressmen? Not attested yet) for setting up an organization to convey what we believed to be necessary directions to thousands of Congress workers and other who were still out of jail and who were anxious to implement the resolution of 8th August 1942.”

Emerging from underground in 1946, Aruna with the halo of a national leader, was elected President of Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee in 1947. But her radical views came into conflict with Congress politics in the post-independence period; in fact she could not accept her husband’s political views. In 1948 she joined the Socialist Party. Two years later she broke with it and formed the Left Socialist Group, and took an active interest in the trade union movement.

In 1955 this group merged with the Communist Party of India, and she became a member of its central committee, and a vice-president of the All-India Trade Union Congress. In 1958 she left the CPI and remained unattached to any political party. On the movement of Nehru’s death in 1964 she came back to the Congress but ceased to play any active part in politics.

Aruna Asaf Ali has been active in public life for many years. In 1958 she defeated the Jana Sangh candidate and was elected Delhi’s first Mayor, and held the office for a second term until April 1959 when she resigned. She has been a leading member of the Indo-Soviet Cultural Society, All-India Peace Council and National Federation of Indian Woman. She is associated with the Link and The Patriot, two left newspapers published from New Delhi. With her friend Krishna Menon she continuous to take interest in India’s socialist movement, although she is no longer active in public life.

Aruna Asaf Ali, selfless, sensitive and emotional, charming in her manners, radical in her views, belong to the heroic age of India’s freedom movement. She could not adjust herself with political realities when the heroic age was over, and finally chose to live in retirement in New Delhi, still a devoted socialist.