She acted as Poornima Bhagyaraj's friend in Darling, Darling, Darling and as Sudhakar's sister in Pennin Vazhkai. In some of the Tamil movies, she appeared as the second lead and supporting roles. She has been frequently paired with actor Vijayakanth in Sivappu Malli, Needhi Pizhaithathu, Sattam Sirikkiradhu, and Kanalukku Karaiyethu. Īruna made her debut in the Tamil fim titled Kallukkul Eeram by Bharathiraja which was released in 1980. She was brought up in Chennai and Hyderabad. She was also the recipient of the Nehru Award for International Understanding.Mucherla Aruna was born in Kothagudem of Telangana into a family that belongs to Palakollu, West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. She was also awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1992 and the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1997. Though she steered clear of accepting awards publicly, she was given the Order of Lenin and the Lenin Peace Prize in 1965. She remained close to Indira Gandhi despite being a critic of the Emergency.Īruna was honoured both by the nationalists and the Left. She rejoined the Congress in 1964, though she stepped back from active politics. She believed that education and better healthcare would do more for women than reservation. While she worked towards the upliftment of women, she faced criticism from feminist groups for her resisting affirmative action for women. She remained a Leftist throughout her life, and was instrumental in developing the National Federation of Indian Women, the women’s wing of the CPI.Īruna was dedicated to mobilising support for Dalits, and opposed “needless industrialisation” as she believed it would lead to environmental degradation and social alienation. In the early 1950s, she became a member of the Communist Party of India, though she quit the party in 1956 following Krushchev’s denouncement of Stalin in the USSR. In 1948, Aruna quit the Congress and joined the Socialist Party. She stuck to her ideals, and faced censure from Gandhi for her support of the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny. The note reportedly remained with her all her life, but she resurfaced only when the reward on her head was withdrawn. Reserve the prize money for the Harijan (untouchables’) cause,” he had written. Do come out and surrender yourself and win the prize offered for your arrest. “I have been filled with admiration for your courage and heroism. Known for her independent streak, she even disobeyed Gandhi’s request to surrender herself in 1946. She went underground, and edited the Congress’s monthly magazine Inquilab with Ram Manohar Lohia. She was moved to solitary confinement in Ambala, and was politically inactive after her release for 10 years until the Quit India Movement.Īfter 1942, her property was seized and sold. In 1932, she was arrested again and held in Tihar Jail, where she launched a hunger strike to protest the treatment of other political prisoners. Other women prisoners refused to leave the premises until she was also released. She was arrested in 1931, and her release was secured only when Mahatma Gandhi intervened after public protests. Through Asaf Ali, Aruna associated with the leaders of the Indian freedom struggle and became an active member of the Congress. He was 23 years her senior, and died in 1953. She married Asaf Ali, a member of the Congress best known for defending Bhagat Singh, and later becoming the Indian ambassador to the United States of America, despite severe opposition. Raised in a liberal, upper caste Bengali family that was part of the Brahmo Samaj and related to Rabindranath Tagore, Aruna Ganguly was extremely well educated. She ran the Left-leaning Patriot newspaper and the weekly magazine Link in New Delhi. Post-independence, she remained active in public work, and was elected Delhi’s first woman mayor in 1958. She successfully escaped arrest and went underground for years. Responding to Gandhi’s call to “do or die”, she defied the British by hoisting the Tricolour on 9 August 1942 at the Gowalia Tank Maidan (now Azad Maidan) in Bombay, giving the movement one of the Quit India Movement’s most enduring images. On 8 August 1942, the Congress passed the Quit India resolution - and all its prominent leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, were arrested by the British government. New Delhi: Aruna Asaf Ali, one of the leading female figures of India’s freedom movement, was a revolutionary Leftist who picked up the mantle of leadership during the Quit India Movement in 1942.
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