In this extract from an interview with Kavita Puri, Raj Daswani remembers supporting the Quit India movement as a child and speaks about activist Aruna Asaf Ali. He recalls the events of 9 August 1942, when he saw her symbolically raise the tricolour nationalist flag at a Congress session at the Gowalia Tank Maidan. This was the day after the Indian National Congress had passed the Quit India Resolution and all of its leaders, including Gandhi and Nehru, were promptly arrested. Daswani recalls that after this Ali went underground to avoid the authorities, and whilst in hiding the 12-year-old Daswani would secretly bring her food that he had obtained from other Congress organisers.

Who was Aruna Asaf Ali?

Aruna Asaf Ali was a prominent member of the Indian independence movement. She was a member of the Indian National Congress and participated in the Satyagraha movement. After presiding over that fateful Congress session on 9 August 1942, she went into hiding until 1946, during which time she started an underground movement and edited the Congress magazine Inquilab. In the 1950s she helped form the National Federation of Indian Women, established a publishing house and in 1958 was elected the first mayor of New Delhi.

About Kavita Puri’s Partition Voices

This audio clip is an extract from a longer interview from the Partition Voices collection. In 2017 BBC journalist Kavita Puri led a project to mark the 70th anniversary of the Partition of India. Through interviews, the Partition Voices team directly documented the experiences of those who lived through this traumatic time and subsequently moved to Britain, as well as stories from their children and grandchildren. The testimonies recall epic journeys and forced migration, violence, partings with friends and family, and the end of Empire, with some speaking about these events for the very first time. The outcome of this project was an award-winning three-part series for BBC Radio 4 titled Partition Voices, and later an acclaimed book of the same name. The full recordings and transcripts from Partition Voices are archived at the British Library Sound Archive, with collection reference C1790.

RAJ DASWANI:

I remember 9th of August there was to be held this big conference of Congressee where Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders were to come to raise the tri-colour flag. But they were arrested before they arrived over there. One lady in a blue border sari she came on the stage, she raised the flag and gone away. She was underground at that time. After that underground she went and served in Police Commissioner’s house as a maid. I used to reach tiffin food every day to her. That tiffin used to come from Swaraj Bhavan. They didn’t know, nobody knew that where she is but some leaders like Jairam Daulatram, Dr. Jyothiram Gidwani. There Jairam Daulatram was a Food Minister in the first ministry for your information after independence. They used to give me tiffin, I used to reach and Aruna Asaf Ali was her name. If you’ve heard Aruna Asaf Ali at that time there were five leaders. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Jaiprakash Narayan, Aruna Asaf Ali, Ajot Patwardan, Raman Oloya. She was one of those five leaders.