Aruna Asaf Ali was born into an orthodox Hindu Bengali family and was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in Lahore and then sent to a Protestant school in Nainital. After graduating she got a job in the Gokhale Memorial School in Calcutta.
In Allahabad she met her husband, M. Asaf Ali, a prominent Congressman, and they were married amidst parental opposition, both on the grounds of religion and age (she was only 19 years and he was 42 years old).
Aruna Asaf Ali’s first major political involvement was during the salt satyagraha, when she addressed public meetings and led processions. She was prosecuted in Delhi ‘for being a vagrant having no ostensible means of livelihood’, rather than for sedition, and on her refusing to furnish security for good behaviour was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment. A few months later, most political prisoners were released on the signing of the Gandhi-Irwin pact, but since she was not a political prisoner, she was not released. Her women co-prisoners in Lahore jail refused to leave jail without her.
Meanwhile, a public agitation for her release was launched and after some days she was released. In 1932 she was arrested again, and put in the Delhi jail, where she went on a hunger strike in protest against the callous treatment of political prisoners. The prisoners’ demands were conceded, but Aruna was transferred to Ambala jail, where she was kept in solitary confinement.
After her release she dropped out of the national movement for ten years. In 1942 she went to the Bombay Congress Session with her husband, and was present at the passing of the Quit India resolution on 8th August. When the Congress leaders were arrested on the day after this resolution was passed, Aruna presided over the flag-hoisting ceremony in Bombay, where the enormous assembly was tear gased, lathi-charged and fired upon. She became a full-time activist in the Quit India movement, eventually going underground to evade arrest. Her property was seized by the Government and sold.
She became editor of ‘Inquilab’, the monthly magazine of the Congress, along with Ram Manohar Lohia.
The Government meanwhile announced a Rs. 5000 reward for her capture. She fell ill and hearing of this Gandhiji advised her to surrender: “I have sent you a message that you must not die underground. You are reduced to a skeleton. Do come out and surrender yourself and win the prize offered for your arrest. Reserve the prize money for the Harijan cause.”
However, Aruna surrendered herself only when the warrants against her were cancelled on 26th January 1946.
She founded Lady Irwin College, a prestigious women education institue in Delhi besides the Saraswati Bhawan. She was also decorated the post of Mayor of NDMC. In 1992 she was awarded the Nehru Award for International under-standing. She breathed her last in the year 1996 and Indian Government conferred her Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1997.