Almost 30 years ago, when heritage walks were still a novel idea in the capital, a walk focussed on the demarcating line between Old and New Delhi: Asaf Ali Road. The walk leader mentioned how Asaf Ali and his wife Aruna, both eminent freedom fighters, had met. It was quite a tale: Aruna was wearing the INA’s uniform, her hair tucked under her cap, looking like a man—and when Asaf Ali congratulated her on her bravery, she whipped off that cap; her long hair tumbled down and Asaf Ali fell in love with her.
So very romantic, and so very inaccurate. Aruna was never in the INA, and they got married (to great controversy, because of their different religions and a 20-year gap in their ages) well before she became a revolutionary. But thus do legends arise, surrounding heroes, contorting the truth: unless unearthed by someone with a desire to discover what might actually have happened.
This is what TCA Raghavan sets out to do in Circles of Freedom: Friendship, Love and Loyalty in the Indian National Struggle: to explain the dynamics—personal and political—between Asaf Ali and a small group of those closest to him, including, of course, his wife Aruna. These people are Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949), Syud Hossain (1888-1949), Syed Mahmud (1889-1971) and Aruna (1909-1996), four people whose interconnections Raghavan describes thus in the introduction to the book: “Living at a time when life was more than a search for personal happiness, fulfilment and stability, for them politi.
