Aruna Asaf Ali obituary

Heroine of India’s freedom struggle

Aruna Asaf Ali, who has died aged 86, was a legendary heroine of India's freedom struggle. She was first a member of the Socialist Party and then of the Communist Party of India, with a seat on its central committee. Although she drifted apart from the Communists, she remained a committed leftist. Even in later years of declining health, she remained a respected figure on the Indian political firmament, which explains the outpouring of grief over her death.

Remarkably, until the 1942 Quit India Movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Indian nation, Aruna Asaf Ali was entirely apolitical, though she was married to a prominent Congress leader of undivided India, who subsequently served as Nehru's ambassador to the United States and as governor of Orissa state. The summer of 1942 changed all that.

Britain was then fighting the second world war with its back to the wall and needed India's willing support. Stafford Cripps was sent to Delhi to parley with the India National Congress. He tried to persuade Gandhi, Nehru and other nationalist leaders to agree to join an interim government to conduct the war against Germany and Japan in return for a promise of self-rule after victory.

Nehru was responsive to the British offer because of his burning opposition to fascism, but Gandhi, disillusioned with the British failure to live up to an identical promise during the first world war, called it a 'post-dated cheque on a crashing bank', and declared that while independent India would fight Japan, dependent India would fight 'both Britain and Japan'. He then launched the famous Quit India Movement and told his countrymen to 'Do or Die'.

Aruna Asaf Ali was among the tens of thousands of young Indians who immediately responded to the Mahatma's call. She was, in fact, given the honour of hoisting the Congress tricolour in Bombay at the meeting in August 1942 where Gandhi asked the British to pack up and go.

A documentary film made at that time shows Aruna to be a woman of striking beauty and energy. While 100,000 Indians, including such prominent Congress socialists as Jaya Prakash Narayan, were arrested and imprisoned, Aruna successfully went underground and escaped arrest, despite the best efforts of the police.

In 1946, when the endgame of the British Raj had already begun, Gandhi personally asked her to come out into the open because 'your mission has been fulfilled'. The Mahatma's rather affectionate, hand-written note, duly framed, was always displayed in Aruna's living room.

At the time of independence Aruna was a member of the Congress Socialist Party, which until then had been part of the Congress framework. In 1948, however, the socialists, including Aruna, formed a socialist party of their own. It went through various vicissitudes, the first of which was the exit from it of Aruna and her associates, of whom the closest was a remarkable and able journalist, Edatata Narayanan.

In search of what to do next, Aruna travelled to London where she met R Palme Dutt. She and Narayanan went with Dutt to Moscow and, after some soul searching, both joined the Communist Party of India (CPI) just before Stalin's death. In 1956, however, shortly after Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, Aruna and Narayanan left the CPI.

However, their power and influence grew because, by 1958, they had started a daily newspaper, Patriot, and a weekly, Link. Nehru blessed the venture. Krishna Menon, then still defence minister, supported it financially. Money also came from a leftist doctor, A V Baliga, and a Congress stalwart, Biju Patnaik. Even before her husband's death in the mid-fifties, Aruna had been drawn to Narayanan personally as well politically. Thereafter, they practically lived together, though there was no formal marriage.

Thanks to the massive generosity of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, the Link publishing house flourished. After Narayanan's sudden death, however, others in the organisation eased Aruna out. As she used to say ruefully, their greed got the better of their creed.

Her loss of clout made no difference to her esteem. Despite some disillusionment with Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, Aruna remained close to the prime minister and subsequently to Rajiv Gandhi . She was awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest Indian honour, and the Nehru Award for International Understanding.

· Aruna Asaf Ali, politician, born July 16 1908, died July 29 1996

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