Since Ali was a prominent member of the INC, she also joined the party, the couple ‘witnessed’ the bomb thrown into the Central Legisaltive Assembly in Delhi in April 1929 by Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt which injured many Britishers, and then they (Aruna-Ali) participated in the Salt Satyagraha of 1930 after which she was arrested. Their marriage in 1928 raised many eyebrows, not only because of the religious differences, but also the fact that Aruna was just 19 and Ali was 40, so her family quickly disowned her as ‘dead’. Nagendranath Ganguly was married to Mira Devi – the daughter of India’s first Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore – but their relations were largely strained.Īfter graduation, Aruna worked as a teacher with Gokhale Memorial School in Calcutta and also met a prominent INC leader, Barrister Asaf Ali – Independent India’s first Ambassador to the US, later Switzerland and also served as Odisha Governor twice, and jailed several times, including in August 1942 in Mumbai. Her father, Upendranath Ganguly was a prominent restaurateur and her mom was Ambalikadevi Sanyal, hailing from a reputed Brahmo family, while her younger sister Purnima Banerjee was later a member of the Constituent Assembly of India – which adopted the Constitution of India – and also served as Uttar Pradesh MLA.Īruna’s uncle Dhirendranath Ganguly was a renowned photographer, later one of the earlier Bengali film actors, producer-director-writer and was conferred the Dadasaheb Phalke Award (1975), while her second uncle was Prof. This was at a time when most crestfallen Indians felt that all was lost, and with the top INC leadership behind bars, the ‘Quit India’ movement would be stillborn.īut, it was largely credited to Aruna’s dare-devilry – under the noses of the Britishers – that sparked a new life into the crusade which ultimately saw the collapse of the foreign rule in just five years – Aug– and a grateful nation later decorated her with a Bharat Ratna (1997) posthumously.īorn with a silver spoon into an elite Bengali Brahmin family in Kalka (Punjab) on July 16, 1909, little Aruna Ganguly was educated in the prestigious Sacred Heart Convent School for girls in Lahore (now, Pakistan), and then graduated from the All Saints College, Nainital (now, Uttarakhand). The following day (August 9, 1942), a plucky 33-year-old woman Aruna Asaf Ali – who later defied even Gandhiji – managed to sneak in there and hoisted the Indian Tricolour, raising slogans of Vande Mataram, shaking the Britishers. On August 8, 1942, after Gandhiji’s historic ‘Quit India’ call to the British Raj at Mumbai’s Gowalia Tank maidan, the police immediately swooped in to arrest all the top leaders of the Indian National Congress (INC) present there in an attempt to crush the movement.

Aruna asaf ali