 It's a great pleasure welcoming you to the third lecture and the Pehga Me Azadi series organized by the School for Democracy, a news click on the 73rd anniversary of India's independence. Today's talk will be on the legendary freedom fighter Aruna Asafali Peshri Anil Nauria. This is a very significant series of lectures that is being presented and recorded in these times of misinformation and deliberate alteration of historical facts and in the sage of maligning falsely those who fought for our freedom and for a future in consonance with our constitutional values. It becomes imperative for us to ensure they are remembered and they continue to guide and inspire us and future generations and to ensure that they are not obliterated from our history books. We have already seen how Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Javaharlal Nehru have been removed from textbooks and we have also seen the pioneers of modern India, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar being portrayed as cronies of the British Raj and active against the people of India. It is these forces of which we need to be vigilant and that we need to fight if we are to keep the dreams of those visionaries who dedicated their lives for the future of India alive. There is much that we have achieved since independence. However, there is still much that needs to be realized particularly with respect to inequality and all its dehumanizing aspects. Through these talks, we hope to learn from the lives and works of such personalities so that we continue to be inspired and can strengthen our resolve to stay on course, whatever be the obstructions in our path towards a just and free India. I'm also very grateful for this opportunity to introduce this talk on Aruna Vasapalli who I greatly admired and had the good fortune of seeing at close quarters. Apart from being the firebrand who became famous for hoisting the national flag at Gwalior tank on 9th August, 1942 and continuing to be active underground being a youth icon, radion and activist, politician, writer and much more that Anil will talk about. I wanted to flag two other organizations that she helped set up that reflected her vision and sense of empathy with the people of the country. She was one of the founding members of the National Federation of Indian Women which came into being in 1954 with stalwarts such as Renu Chakravarty, Annie Mascarene, Ajra Begum, Anusya Gyanchan, Pushman Bhai Bose and others and was president of the NFIW for 19 years. She was also the founder of Dr. A.B. Baliga Memorial Trust in 1968 that she and Ranjana Raid built up to address the pressing needs of the marginalized in Delhi. This was set up by Patriot and Link Magazine which also she was involved in founding with Edithata Narayanan. It now gives me great pleasure to introduce our special speaker for today, Sri Anil Noria. Sri Noria is council at the Supreme Court of India and the High Court of Delhi for the last 36 years and has dealt among other matters with preventive detention laws, criminal law appeals, public employment, labor laws, constitutional issues concerning powers of state governance, the sixth schedule of the constitution of India, election laws, land acquisition, land reform and taxation. He was senior fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi. He has been writing since the 1970s and much of his focus has been on secularism and the state. And on contemporary history including aspects of the freedom movement in India and Africa. He has contributed to various books and journals, the latter including Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai, Mainstream New Delhi, Monthly Review in New York. And I'm sorry I'm going to say this in English, Identity, Culture and Politics, Dakar and Natalia Piatta-Marisbar. He has been a guest lecturer at several universities both in India and abroad. One very significant movement that must be mentioned and that Anil had a role in initiating in 1993 along with people like Nirmal Mukherjee and Ajay Mukherjee, Abdul Satar Saab and Saeeda Hamid among others, was after the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the communal violence that it unleashed. This was to bring together the residents of Oakland, the surrounding areas in Jamiya Nagar, the government in Zakir Nagar, New France colony, France colony and others. Together as one collective voice against the spread of hatred and communism. The work they did was based on the principles of Insanya. They belonged to diverse walks of life, faced and dealt with several communal crisis over the years and demonstrated the unity and harmony of all religions. So I now welcome Sri Anil Noria and it's over to you Anil. Let me say that Amina Asafalli is one of the most fascinating figures of the freedom struggle in the 20th, first half, the 20th century in India. And the reason why she stands out is because she was a rebel from the beginning. She was rebelling against the, she had been born in a Brahmo family, Bengali Brahmo family, and which in any case has a tradition of not accepting the usual Hindu restraints. And she then defied her family to as a young girl of 18 or 19 to marry Barista Asafalli who was already well known. And that story is worth tracing in detail, but that again introduced her to the political life of Delhi. And two influences in Delhi, particularly I will mention that it's Rameshwari Nehru and Satyavati, the socialist leader. And then she went beyond those, that politicization to such an extent that she then could not even stay within the confines of the political activity of Asafalli. So she therefore could not really accompany Asafalli on his various assignments both in India and outside. As independence dawned, Asafalli had been chosen as the Indian ambassador to the United States, the first Indian ambassador to the United States in 1947. And this was at a time when India was still undivided. So Asafalli represented undivided India in the United States and Aruna declined to accompany him until India itself, she said, becomes fully independent. She went later to the United States, but she was not comfortable there and returned and in fact the day when she was returning and Asafalli had gone along with her to the New York airport, Sierra Rock. That is the day when both of them got the news of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination when they were at New York airport. And it affected them deeply and Asafalli Aruna writes burst into tears. On Asafalli's own return from the United States, he became governor of Odisha and there also Aruna because of her own political commitments could not stay with him very long in Odisha. And finally when Asafalli was appointed India's ambassador minister to Switzerland and was posted in Bern, there again, it was only later that Aruna could join him and when she did join him in Bern, Asafalli passed away on the following day. So that is April 1953. So the reason I gave this broad overview was that it was in fact the marriage with Asafalli that politicized Aruna and it was Aruna herself who so radicalized her position that she could not then remain within the confines of the political process which was developing in India. So that is, you know, there is a work by Lenin called state and revolution and Aruna used to say that to Asafalli that you are the state and I am the revolution. So, you know, the reason why I have mentioned all this right at the outset is to make the point that Aruna's is a very extraordinary life from any point of view and that is the reason why she stands out as a figure worthy of attention in the 20th century freedom movement of India. So this was just by way of introduction. Now I want to go into some aspects of her life in more detail. And you know, I've already mentioned that she was born in the East Bengali family. She was born in Kalka which was then in Punjab and now is in Haryana. She went to school in Lahore where her father was initially working as a journalist and later in Nenital where her father had set up a restaurant or a trade business. That is where she grew up. And then after her studies, she went and became a teacher in Calcutta at the Gokle Girls Memorial School and it was while she was on a vacation in Allahabad that she met Asafalli. Now when they married soon after and it was a marriage that created quite a stern because it was Hindu and Muslim marriages were not common and a number of people reacted negatively to the idea of this marriage. Aruna's own father passed away a few months before the marriage took place and Aruna has written about this whole episode in an article in Patriot published on October 3rd, 1991. I have this article with me. I wonder if it comes out, it doesn't come out directly on the screen. I'll try and scan it and have it sent to you. Now this is what she says. She names a number of people who, how they reacted to the marriage and she names her paternal uncle who said that I was dead so far as he was concerned she mentioned some famous politicians and then finally she says that when I began to meet Gandhi after my marriage I remember that he spoke of it as a symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity. So Gandhi stressed the symbolic significance of this marriage. Now when she married Aruna and Asapalli they moved to Delhi which was Asapalli's home Ucha Chalaam Darya Ganj and it was the ancestral home and naturally there were restraints within the home to which Aruna was not used. Asapalli offered that we could let us rent another place if you wish if you wish to move out but seeing the fact that Asapalli was the only son of his mother and the fact that he was so deeply attached to her Aruna did not insist on moving out and stayed in the family home but she found she went to her energies in work avenues which came to her through her acquaintance with initially through her acquaintance with Rameshwari Nairu and Satyavati both Rameshwari Nairu and Satyavati were important figures on the Delhi scene Rameshwari was married to Vijlal Nairu who was a nephew of Motilal and a friend of Asapalli So it was a dinner it was at an evening where they were invited for dinner that she first met Jaharlal Nairu and she has given us a very remarkable description of that meeting which I just like to refer to May I just read out a part of what Aruna Asapalli says here This was the background to Vijlal and Rameshwari Nairu inviting my husband and me to dinner at their Delhi home at a time when Motilal and his son that is Jaharlal were staying with them As we waited for Jaharlal's return from a speaking tour of some Punjab towns Motilal instructed the domestics I am skipping a few lines to summarize it instructed a few domestics to keep hot water ready for Jaharlal's arrival At last Jaharlal burst in all covered with dust come after a big tour of Punjab He barely glanced in our direction as he went in quickly for a wash and change He must have thought it was the usual evening gathering of some of the capital's anglicized elite at his cousin's place I was introduced to Jaharlal on his joining the company for dinner and was dazzled by the first close view of him I was wearing a silk sari and some jewelry and might well have struck him as he looked me up and down with amused curiosity as a dolled up slip of a girl destined to decorate drawing Rameshwari Nairu must have sensed with womanly intuition how uncomfortable I felt among persons much senior to me in age who were engaged in conversation on matters of state and policy She came over to me leaving the circle surrounding Mothila Nairu and asked me about my family and my interests and expressed motherly concern about things that are important to a young woman at the threshold of family life When she does showed affectionate interest in me I rushed as it were into her embracing arms and this is how she is introduced to the Delhi women's So this is how she gets introduced to social activities in Delhi and which then becomes an opening into wider and wider activity and on the political side what influenced her was Satyavati Satyavati was a socialist minded congresswoman active in Delhi in those days and Aruna writes Had it not been for Satyavati I wonder if I would have ventured out of my shattered domestic life notwithstanding that my husband was a prominent congressman who had already gone through the baptism of imprisonment in the non-cooperation movement of the 1920s Now this year it is 100 years of the non-cooperation movement which brought about such a major renaissance in India in all fields Aruna Asapalli's husband Asapalli had been imprisoned in that movement So she reversed that This was now again thick in this civil disobedience movement I had just come out of a college run by foreign missionaries with my westernised habits I doubted whether I could adjust my way of life and my values to those expected of her Satyavati But Satyavati's burning zeal was infectious I was drawn to her and could not stay away from the great fight And then she mentions how they broke the salt laws and they found a marshy land in the Shadra area where there was high salt content and they would make salt wrap salt and then optionate and that was Aruna's baptism she was imprisoned in this movement There were three jails at least three jails where she was kept including Delhi and Ambala So this is the story of how Aruna's political life begins And then it continues But I want to mention one very interesting episode which is very little known but which Aruna wrote about in this article which I mentioned which is what we found even in the I don't see it in the compilations of her other writings It seems that the day in April of 1929 when Bhagat Singh and another revolutionary B.K. Dutt through the bomb in the central legislative assembly Aruna was present in the visitors gallery So this is what she writes She says, I happen to be present in the visitors gallery of the central legislative assembly of which my husband was a member on the day in April 1929 when Bhagat Singh and a colleague had two bombs along with pamphlets with patriotic messages onto the hall of the central legislative assembly So this is the story of this is how she was a witness to this historic event and her husband of course was involved in Bhagat Singh's defense and later on we have in the same writing some very important information about how contrary to the impressions spread by some films which were produced a few years ago how Gandhi didn't intercede with the vice-royal for Bhagat Singh So what Aruna writes is Bhagat Singh was arrested and tried not only for this action that is the bombs thrown on that day but the earlier killing of a British police official in Saunders at Lahore in December 1928 when he and his colleagues were sentenced to death Gandhi ji interceded with the vice-royal through letters and in person for securing commutation of the death sentence that was passed on Bhagat Singh and his comrades Gandhi ji was unstinting in his place of the heroes but also uncompromising in reaffirming his disapproval of the path of violence So this is a very historic piece of evidence which came my way when I started looking for material on the subject and unfortunately it's not very widely known then let me come to another thing the connection with Satyavati was expressed further Satyavati was active in the Congress Socialist Party which was set up within the Congress in 1934 and in 1936 the health care session was made So there is a description in Aruna Ahsadevi's writings of that session and how Kanda Devi Chattopadha presides that session and the fact that Satyavati was chairman of the reception committee you know Meret was considered part of the that is the Padish Pandey's committee included Meret the Padish Pandey's committee really included Meret So really politicians used to have a great interaction with Meret and that is how the session was also held there I should mention that then again in 1940s we know that she courted arrest in the individual Satyagraha in 1941 and of course it was 1942 where she became a national heroine with the tag hoisting which she did after the national agency had been arrested and she quit in their resolution was passed on 8th August 1942 and on 9th August the remaining session was to be held where the police came with an intentional breaking down the flagpole and so on that is when Aruna Ahsadevi and also Usha Mehta who should not be forgotten became really well known figures across the country after the flag hoisting at Goa Lea Mehta in Bombay the socialist leadership largely went underground so there is this included Dr. Lohia Achit Patwardhan, S.M. Joshi Madhulma and of course Aruna remained underground until her arrest warrant was withdrawn in 1946 while remaining underground there were some very interesting episodes and stories there are we know that one of the places she remained underground was in Delhi Dr. N.C. Joshi's hospital in Karolba but I know that another associate of Asafaris, the husband Indra Vidya Vachaspati who used to edit a paper in Delhi I know that she also hid in his house for a while in Delhi and in Bombay she was taken to see Gandhi Ji at Juhu when Gandhi was there in 1944 and she was driven secretly by Shri Mati Parthima Ismail who was the sister of a very famous film fighter called Omar Sukhwan so three people we know who were underground in Bombay Aruna, Achit Patwardhan and Arar Devakar they went to see Gandhi Ji at Juhu because Gandhi Ji was trying to persuade them to come out to the open because he didn't like their activities and there is a very interesting correspondence very friendly and affectionate correspondence between them on the subject if I go into that correspondence it will take a long time but I want to mention something another very interesting fact when Aruna married Asafari the marriage took place in Delhi according to Muslim so among the letters that Asafari records in his prison diary is one from is more than one from Kulsoom Zamani now very few would have known among those who had been responsible for imprisoning Asafari and others that Kulsoom Zamani was actually Aruna so Asafari records in his prison diary yesterday I received an old letter from Kulsoom Zamani written on the 8th of last month this is recorded on the 8th January 9th of last month so this letter took about a month to reach Asafari and then there is a further comment which Asafari makes she has either bobbed or eaten cropped her hair so she says through an artful complaint skillfully put into a friend's mouth so she had in this letter conveyed to Asafari a hint of what she had done also with her hair Asafari makes some very interesting remarks about Aruna's nature in this prison diary and it is born out also by Aruna's subsequent career this is what Asafari records once an idea has caught her imagination she writes it to Gyala until the tired steed has to be discarded or put to rest first the social pony of Saraswati Bhavan Saraswati Bhavan was the headquarters of the Delhi women's league so this is first the social pony of Saraswati Bhavan trained to perfection fell from favor and Irwin College took its place then Irwin College faded out and the women's conference succeeded one day the women's conference was abandoned and journalism followed as the next corner you know Aruna had started writing regularly for various journals including Janata which was at that time in Delhi and later in Bombay and serious study killed her eyes but the political bias swelled all the time to the point of flood and now I find that Gandhian politics has invaded and conquered her imagination the governing passion of the time claims all her energy and time she is noble to the roots of her soul and whatever she touches becomes the dedicated devotees of the sacred tabernacle so he was after all her husband and he understood her very well so the later career of Aruna is also born out by this that she would move in support of her the causes that she wanted to reach and fulfill she would choose varying vehicles and discard them when they cease to in her opinion to have a faith so there is a booklet that she wrote at this time you know she was a socialist she was a member of the congress socialist community within the congress but when the congress socialist party we do from you know they renamed themselves socialist party and then a year later they resigned after the congress assassination within a month so they quit the congress and Aruna left with them then she wrote booklet on the socialist and this is referred to by Acharya Narendra the Marxist socialist who is the doer of the Indian socialist movement he refers to in an article which he wrote in 1951 he refers to this book published by Aruna Asapari and here he sums up what Aruna Asapari's aims were and it leads to a very interesting dialogue but I'll read only the portion where Acharya Narendra tries to sum up Aruna's position he says Mrs Aruna Asapari has recently published a book she is trying to prove that the socialist party of India has given up Marxism you know when the congress socialist party was formed Marxist group gradually, particularly a year after this two years after this article it withdrew from Marxism but at this time it had not and Acharya Narendra is trying to refute what Aruna has written but before he comes to the refutation he sums up what Aruna is saying so I'm reading that portion Mrs Aruna Asapari has recently published a book she is trying to prove that the socialist party of India has given up Marxism her main attack is on democratic socialism she has also condemned the foreign policy of the party she is against the party's participation in the election you know in 1951 the general elections in India were about to be held in a few months and Aruna says that Acharya Narendra says that Aruna is against the party's participation in the election she also thinks the organization of the party is against the principles of Marxism in her opinion the party has ceased to be a revolutionary organization she considers this party as reformist she has therefore advised that the party should merge in the context she is also not satisfied with the party she regards as Marxist for she thinks that the lower middle class in place of the working class has its influence over these parties so she is critical also of the Marxist parties the Communist Party they are therefore disintegrated they have failed to enlist the support of the working class and this according to her is their serious weakness Aruna Asapati has therefore advised these parties to overcome such weakness and re-examine their objectives she however hopes that the Communist Party will ultimately be an instrument of political expression of the conscious working class but the majority of the working class sees the Communist Party and other leftist parties with suspicion and mistrust such a state of affairs is bound to continue as long as they do not amend their policies and rectify their earlier mistakes which is summarizing Aruna perhaps this is the reason that Aruna Asapati does not like to join any Marxist party at present her group she had set up a group called the Left Socialist Group a short-lived group which didn't last very long and later on it merged with the Communist Party Left Socialist Group so Acharya Narendra is saying this is the reason that Aruna Asapati does not like to join any Marxist party at present her group will strive to build about unity among Marxist parties and will make the working class revolutionary and militant if this does not happen how can the working class establish its dominance in a socialist party with this limited purpose in view she has decided to set up study groups and joint action committees of trade unions in every fact in this endeavour this is the cooperation of all Marxist parties so this is how Acharya Ji Samaras is what Aruna is trying to do and then moves on to explain that actually no Communist movement in the world can actually be led just by workers you will always need intellectuals from the working class to him and that's a long debate but I wanted to refer just to what Aruna was trying to do she wanted joint action committees to be set up in workers committees to be set up in every factory and she wanted that all parties should cooperate in this so that workers consciousness increases ultimately this left socialist group which she had formed merged with the Communist Party in 1955 and she was a member of the Central Committee in the Sipya after that and was also Vice President of the AI team C but little after the revelations of Pushtia regarding Stalinist base in the Soviet Union so she continued with her association with a number of organizations women's organizations and also media organizations which she had been associated with so now of course I should mention that she was also a elected Mayor of Delhi in 1980 she was Delhi's first mayor so all these are very remarkable features about her she returns to the Congress after Jawaharlal Nehru's death around the time of Jawaharlal Nehru's death now this then starts a phase she doesn't have so much clout but she is widely respected across the political spectrum and when the 1975 emergency you know the events leading to the emergency are taking place in the Jai Prakash Narayana she is one of the few who actually sees the dangers of that movement and she writes about that this movement could lead to a kind of anarchy and actually we know now hindsight that the movement was very heavily impregnated with Uttaras's influence so then I come to the story of her concluding years and you know former Foreign Minister Natvarsing has a very interesting account of the time after Rajiv's assassination Rajiv Gandhi's assassination when the general elections had been held this is 1991, the summer of 1991 and there is a real possibility that the Congress even if it doesn't secure an absolute majority would be the dominant party and would form the government so the question was who should be the leader of the Congress in Parliament and because he would then become Prime Minister and Natvarsing former Foreign Minister he has written in his memoirs that he and Arula were sent to meet the vice president Shankar Dayal Shankar and prevail upon him to accept the leadership of the Congress Party in Balak that is to give the vice presidency and to take up Prime Minister of the country and the reason I am mentioning this is that she Arula's when the Congress wanted to convey something to a man like Shankar Dayal Shankar they sought the help of Arula as the Prime Minister and when they went and conveyed this offer to the Suggestion to Shankar Dayal Shankar Shankar Dayal Shankar didn't waste moment to reject it because he said that I don't have the energy to take up such a heavy responsibility as that of Prime Minister and so Natvar writes that Arula and Natvar go back in total silence so stunned they were by the fact that this man had just come down to the Prime Minister and then it was after that that Naseema Rao was born but history would have been so different with the Suggestion which Arula had put to Shankar Dayal Shankar from a secular one he had accepted so and then within a two years of that of course Arula had passed away on 29 July 1996 in 1987 one thing in conclusion I want to read out to you one thing with Jaharlal Nehru wrote on Arula not quite on Arula but Arula in 1947 had been writing, she had been writing for this socialist journal called Jalata and some of those articles were put together at that time in a little booklet called Travel Talk and Jaharlal Nehru was requested to write a little foreword to it that foreword was written in 1947 but it it reads like you might treat it as a sort of summary of anyone writing about Arula in Retrospect today so this read out some extracts if I may I find it a little difficult to write a foreword to this little book the difficulty is not the book but the author of the book how am I to deal with her in her writings they do not require any commendation from me it is easy to criticize any set of views in this complicated world that we live in and Arula also often says and writes something that is liable to criticism there are a number of things I may be able to criticize but that criticism however justified would be poor stuff for it would deal with some superficial aspects of a living, vibrant and challenging personality who has shaken up many a sleeping person and become in many ways a symbol of these changing times and goes on every bit of this foreword is worth reading Thank you very much Anilji for giving us such a comprehensive overview of a very full life in such a short span of time I am sure I speak for everyone and particularly the youth who have been listening when I say that it was both fascinating and inspiring to hear of the directions Arunaji's political life took based on the people she met during her formative years and her own courage extreme courage I would say, convictions and commitment to the freedom struggle and to the idea of independent India Thank you very much once again