Asaf Ali

Who was Asaf Ali?

Asaf Ali was an Indian independence fighter and noted Indian lawyer. He was the first ambassador from India to the United States. He also worked as the governor of Odisha.

Educated in the St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and called to bar from Lincoln's Inn in England, he entered the Indian independence movement and was imprisoned many times. In 1928, he married Aruna Ganguli, a marriage that raised eyebrows on the grounds of religion and age difference. He defended Shaheed Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt as a lawyer, after they threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly on April 8, 1929, during the passage of a controversial ordinance. He was elected in 1935 as a member of the Central Legislative Assembly from Delhi representing the Muslim Nationalist Party. He was re-elected as a Congress candidate against a Muslim League candidate. He worked as Deputy Leader of the Congress Party in the Assembly. In 1945, Ali came to be the convenor of the INA defence team established by the Congress for the defence of the officers of the INA charged with treason later in November 1945.