![aruna asaf ali aruna asaf ali](https://gkskill.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/20210706_103537.jpg)
![aruna asaf ali aruna asaf ali](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AHLdF_GMSls/maxresdefault.jpg)
“I have been filled with admiration for your courage and heroism. While in hiding, Aruna ran a small band of revolutionaries fighting the Britishers who announced a whopping Rs 5,000 award for information, and Gandhiji penned a personal letter to her. However, it was her famed streak with the Tricolour on Augthat shot her into history books, presiding over the remaining AICC Session, dodging police bullets and then vanishing underground. Post-jail terms, though of an indomitable spirit, she remained physically weak and was largely inactive for almost 8-10 years.
![aruna asaf ali aruna asaf ali](http://womenpla.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Aruna-Asaf-Ali.jpg)
In another stint in Tihar Jail and later in solitary confinement at the Ambala Jail, she fought for better amenities to the prisoners which led to several reforms subsequently. The next year, the famed Gandhi-Irwin Pact, which among other things called for scrapping the tax on salt, lifting the ban on INC, and release of all political prisoners, was signed.īut, Aruna – charged with being a vagrant – remained in jail, only to be released after an agitation by women co-prisoners, the general public and Gandhi’s direct intervention. 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. Born 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).