Bharat Ratna for Nanda and late Aruna Asaf Ali

Friday, July 25 1997

Bharat Ratna for Nanda and late Aruna Asaf Ali

PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

NEW DELHI, July 24: Former Prime Minister Gulzari Lal Nanda, the country's oldest living public figure, and late Aruna Asaf Ali of the Quit India fame were today chosen for the nation's highest civilian honour -- the Bharat Ratna.

While the award is being conferred on Nanda in the 100th year of his life, the honour has come posthumously for Aruna Asaf Ali, who as a young freedom fighter hoisted the tricolour on the historic Quit India day of August 9, 1942, in Mumbai defying the mighty British empire. She died in July last year at the age of 88 after an eventful innings in public life spanning over six decades.

Nanda and Aruna Asaf Ali thus join a select band of distinguished personalities who were awarded the Bharat Ratna, including India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Charkravarthi Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

The awards were announced in a Rashtrapati Bhavan communique, in a last such decision by outgoing president Shanker Dayal Sharma, who demits office tomorrow. The award will be given at a function at the Rashtrapati Bhavan later.

Nanda, who lives an austere, Gandhian life in Ahmedabad, was twice acting Prime Minister in the mid-1960's. These were following the death of Nehru in May, 1964 and then Lal Bahadur Shastri in January, 1966.

He was elected to the first four Lok Sabhas from 1952 to 1967. From being minister of labour, employment and planning during 1952-1963, Nanda graduated to take the key portfolio of home affairs in September, 1963.Born to a Bengali family of the Brahmo lineage, Aruna Asaf Ali, at the age of 19 married Congressman and a Delhi lawyer Asaf Ali, 20 years her senior, in the face of stiff opposition from her family. She then plunged herself into the freedom movement. Her greatest moment came when she was chosen to hoist the national flag in Bombay at the start of the Quit India movement on August 9, 1942. Aruna then went underground till 1946 despite Gandhi's advice to surrender because of her poor health.