Aruna Roy is an Indian RTI and social activist, and the founder of the Indian political organization “Workers and Peasants Power Alliance”. In 2000, she was awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership. In 2008, she became president of the National Federation of Indian Women, the women’s wing of the Communist Party of India.
Wiki/Biography
Aruna Roy was born on Sunday, 26 May 1946, in Madras Presidency, British India (now Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India) (age 77; as of 2023). She attended various schools including a conservative Convent School of Jesus and Mary in Madras, Aurobindo Convent in Pondicherry, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in New Delhi and the prestigious Art School in Adhayal, Madras Kalakshetra. While she was a student at Kalakshetra, she studied Art, Bharata Natyam and Indian Carnatic Classical Music. In 1962, she studied for a BA in English Literature at Indraprastha Women’s College, New Delhi. In 1965, Aruna graduated with a postgraduate degree from Delhi University.
Aruna Roy’s old photo from 1974
appearance
Hair color: gray
Eye color: black
family
She belongs to a Tamil Brahmin family.
Parents and siblings
Aruna’s father Elupai Doraiswami Jayaram is a lawyer. He comes from a family of social and political activists. ED Jayaram studied at Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan Ashram in Bengal. He also participated in the Indian independence movement. He became a civil servant and began his career as a librarian in the legal department of the Government of India, eventually retiring as a legal advisor to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Later, Jayaram worked as a film and music critic, publishing reviews in several newspapers. When Aruna’s mother Hema was in school, she was an outstanding student. She plays the veena and performs for many musical events. On the other hand, she also excelled academically. Aruna Roy is the eldest son of two sisters and a brother. Her sisters’ names are Nayanika Krishna and Manya Jayaram Lindsay. Her sister Manya moved to England in 1977, where she studied indigenous peoples in the United States and Australia. She also researched the transgender community in India. She died in Hitchin, England, in January 2020 after a long battle with cancer.
Aruna Roy (left) and her late sister Manya Jayaram Lindsay (right)
husband and children
In 1970, she married Sanjit Bunker Roy, an Indian social activist and founder of the Barefoot Academy of Rajasthan (established in 1972). Bunker Roy was born on June 30, 1945. He is a national squash champion. In 1986, then President Jani Zair Singh awarded him the Padma Shri.
Photos of Aruna Roy and Bunker Roy
After their marriage, the couple decided not to have any more children so they could pursue their passions.
Religion/Religious Views
Aruna’s parents have different religious beliefs. Her father is an atheist and her mother Hema is a theist. However, Aruna and her siblings were raised to think and believe differently. The socio-political activist grew up celebrating all festivals with his family. An admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, Aruna often quoted him:
God has no religion. “
Profession
In 1968, at the age of 21, she became an Indian Administrative Service officer; however, in 1974, she resigned and joined the Center for Social Work and Research, a rural development organization in Tilonia, Rajasthan. In an interview, Aruna spoke about her experience as an IAS officer for seven years and said:
There is no such thing as a failure to learn, but my years in IAS taught me things I didn’t want to do. I also learned about the concepts of power and arrogance that come with working in government. “
Later, she taught nineteenth-century literature for a year at the University of Delhi. In 1990, she moved to Devdungri in Rajasthan and co-founded the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan), an organization dedicated to empowering workers and farmers, along with other social activists such as Nikhil Dey and Shankar Singh. . Over the years, the MKSS became one of India’s most important civil rights movements and led to the enactment of the Right to Information Act, 2005.
Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan poster with MKSS logo; red and black badge, a man and a woman with their fists raised simultaneously
Aruna Roy with Shankar Singh (left) and Nikhil Dey (right)
literary works
academic books
In 1974, Aruna wrote her first academic book titled Realist Motifs in Rabindranath Tagore’s Ideology, which, as the title suggests, was based on Rabindranath Tagore. She has published several scholarly books, including Rabindranath Tagore’s Concept of Love (1976), School and Community: The Experience of Rural India (1980), and Determining Destiny: Building Transparency and Accountability through Citizen Participation (2015).
non-fiction books
In 2018, Aruna wrote a book called RTI Stories: Power to the People, which tells the story of how ordinary people came together to overcome the odds and make democracy more noteworthy.
“RTI Story – Power to the People”, a book written by Aruna Roy in 2018
Aruna is the co-author of We the People: Building Rights and Deepening Democracy, published in 2020. Other co-authors of the book are Nikhil Dey and Rakshita Swamy (public policy practitioners).
Awards and Achievements
- 1991: Received the Times Scholarship Award for his work for rural workers’ rights
- 2000: Ramon Magsaysay Community Leadership Award
- 2010: Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Outstanding Achievements in Public Administration, Academia and Management
Aruna Roy took over as the 11th Lal Bahadur Shastri from then President Pratibha Devisingh Patil Lal Bahadur Shastri) National Award
- 2011: Listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine
- 2017: Listed by The Times of India as one of 11 human rights activists whose life mission is to provide others with a dignified life.
- 2019: Dr. Paulos Mar Gregorios Award
Aruna Roy received the Dr. Paul Mar Gregorio Award in 2019 from former President Pranab Mukherjee
Facts/Trivia
- Aruna has been an insatiable reader since childhood, preferring reading books to playing with her friends.
- When Aruna appeared at Indraprastha College for an interview, the 16-year-old told the jury about the books she had read and the panel struggled to understand a person How to read a book written by the greatest author. At such a young age.
- Aruna and her family are bilingual and speak different languages including Tamil, English, French and Hindi.
- Aruna said in her book about the influence of Mahatma Gandhi:
I have lived with Gandhi all my life. When I was born, he was my living memory. Gandhi was everywhere when I was young and, in a sense, is still true today. “
- As a young man, Aruna read Renaissance, Aesop’s Fables, the Russian Witch Baba Yaga and five volumes of folk tales.
- Aruna counts two of her teachers, Sheila Uttamsingh and Rathi Bartholomew, as two of her role models, who introduced her to literature and Shakespeare.
Aruna Roy with Sheila Uttamsingh (third from left) and Rati Bartholomew (fourth from left) at Indraprastha College in 2004
- In 1968, when Aruna became an Indian Audit Service officer, she was one of ten Indian women to qualify for the Civil Service Examination.
- When she moved to Tilonia in Rajasthan in 1990, she faced many difficulties in adapting to the women of the village due to their conservative attitude. Aruna grew up with a big heart and women ignored ideas that she considered “taboo”. Later, she met an old woman named Dhani Bhua, who helped her adapt to and become familiar with village life. Later, she began interacting with women, advising them on important issues such as birth control.
- Aruna Roy was a member of the National Advisory Council (NAC) led by Sonia Gandhi until her resignation in 2013. In 2022, she marched with Rahul Gandhi and hundreds of others in support of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, a mass movement by Indians. National Congress.
Aruna Roy and Rahul Gandhi during the 2022 Bharat Jodo Yatra led by the Indian National Congress
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education