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The Wire
12-06-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
Joachim and Violet Alva: A Parliamentarian Couple Who Made History
This article is part of a series by The Wire titled 'The Early Parliamentarians', exploring the lives and work of post-independence MPs who have largely been forgotten. The series looks at the institutions they helped create, the enduring ideas they left behind and the contributions they made to nation building. Joachim Ignatius Sebastian Alva and Violet Hari Alva were the first Parliamentarian couple in history. Violet and Joachim were elected to the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha respectively in 1952. Together, the Alvas fought for independence, played a key role as lawyers, edited journals and proved themselves to be great parliamentarians. Joachim, born in Udupi in the then South Canara district of the erstwhile Madras Presidency on January 21, 1907, was a lawyer, journalist and politician from Mangalore. He was a prominent Mangalorean Catholic figure involved in the Indian independence movement. Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty. Violet was born in Ahmedabad on April 24, 1908. The two met at Bombay's Government Law College and married on November 20, 1932. Their partnership ended only in 1969, when Violet passed away. After independence, Joachim was appointed the sheriff of Bombay in 1949. In 1950, he entered the Provisional Parliament of India. He was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1952, 1957 and 1962 from North Canara. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1968 and retired in 1974. Joachim belonged to the Alva-Bhat, a Mangalorean Catholic clan from Belle in Udupi district. He was educated at the Jesuit St. Aloysius College, Mangalore, Elphinstone College, Government Law College, Mumbai and the Jesuit St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. In 1928, Joachim became the first Christian to be elected as secretary of the fifty-year-old Bombay Students' Brotherhood. Along with Khurshed Nariman, H.D. Raja, Yusuf Meherally and Soli Batliwala, he was a pioneer of the Bombay Youth League. In 1930, Joachim founded the Nationalist Christian Party with the goal of drawing the Christian community into the freedom struggle. He borrowed and earned money to pay his way through college, but was later expelled for moving a resolution at the Catholic Students Union, urging it to throw open its doors to non-Catholic students. In 1937, Joachim presided over a large meeting of Christians in Bombay addressed by Jawaharlal Nehru. As a young intellectual, he was the other brilliant orator in that meeting. Joachim after all was the best speaker in St Xavier's College in the year year 1927. He also won the gold medal at All-India Inter-Collegiate Oratorical Competitions, Banaras University, 1934. Joachim was actively involved in organising the 'No-Tax' campaign at the Bardoli Satyagraha, the boycotting of the Simon Commission and appointed President of the Bombay Congress 'War Council'. Imprisoned twice by British Indian authorities on charges of sedition for a total of three years, Joachim Alva was jail companion to Vallabhbhai Patel, Jayaprakash Narayan, Morarji Desai and J. C. Kumarappa. In 1934, Mahatma Gandhi wrote a letter to Joachim to inform him that he had missed him at Yerwada Jail because of his early release. He played an important role in the freedom struggle In 1941, in Nasik prison, Joachim wrote two books: Men and Supermen of Hindustan and Indian Christians and Nationalism. Although the manuscripts of both were confiscated by prison authorities, Men and Supermen of Hindustan was subsequently re-drafted and published in 1943. An early advocate of planning, the public sector, nationalised banking and state control over major industries, he condemned France's napalm bombing of Indo-China and staunchly supported the Vietnamese cause. In 1962, Joachim led India's attempts for closer ties with China, meeting Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai in passed away on June 28, 1979 at the age of 72. In 1937, Joachim Alva married Violet, a Gujarati Protestant from Ahmedabad and professor of English at St. Xavier's Indian Women's University College. Violet would also go on to become active in national politics. In 1943, she was arrested by British Indian authorities. She carried her five-month-old baby son, Chittaranjan, into Arthur Road Jail where she was imprisoned. Violet was born Violet Hari on April 24, 1908 in Ahmedabad. She was the eighth of nine children. Violet's father, Reverend Laxman Hari, was an Indian pastor of the Church of England. She graduated from St. Xavier's College, Bombay and Government Law College. For a while thereafter, she was a professor of English at the Indian Women's University, Bombay. Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty On August 9, 1943, the first anniversary of Quit India Day, Joachim and Violet founded and debuted Forum , a weekly news magazine which became known for championing the cause of independence. The magazine became a platform for patriotic Indians to write without fear and put across the Indian point of view in times of British rule. Forum blazed a trail in Indian journalism, marking the beginning of a trend of political weekly news magazines. Joachim's office was often raided for seditious material. In spite of the sweeping powers of the British Raj, he penned a historic editorial, 'Halt This March To the Gallows'. In 1944, Violet also started a women's magazine, The Begum , later renamed Indian Women . From 1945 to 1953 she was the secretary of the Agripara Rehawasi Sevamandal in Mumbai. In 1946–47 she was the deputy chairperson of the Bombay Municipal Corporation. In 1944, she was the first woman advocate in India to argue a case before a full high court. In 1947, Alva served as an honorary magistrate in Mumbai; and from 1948 to 1954, she served as the president of the juvenile court. She was actively involved with numerous social organisations such as the Young Women's Christian Association, the Business and Professional Women's Association and the International Federation of Women Lawyers. She was also the first woman to be elected to the Standing Committee of the All India Newspaper Editors Conference in 1952. In 1952, Violet was elected to the Rajya Sabha, where she made significant contributions to family planning, rights of animals subjected to research and defence strategy, especially the naval sector. She cautioned the government to be careful when dealing with foreign capital and supported linguistic states. She was Union deputy minister for home affairs from 1957 to 1962 when Jawaharlal Nehru was prime minister. In 1962, Violet became the deputy chairperson of the Rajya Sabha, thereby becoming the first female to preside over the Rajya Sabha in its history. She served two consecutive terms in Rajya Sabha as deputy chairperson. Her first term commenced on April 19, 1962 and continued until April 2, 1966. Her second term began with her election to the office of deputy chairperson on April 7, 1966 and she held the position until November 16, 1969. In 1969, Violet resigned after Indira Gandhi declined to back her as vice-president of India. Five days after she resigned as the deputy chairperson of the Rajya Sabha, on November 20, 1969, she died from cerebral haemorrhage at her residence in New Delhi. Following Violet's death, both Houses of the Parliament were adjourned for a short interval that day as a mark of respect to her. The couple were close associates of Khin Kyi, Burma's ambassador to India from 1960, widow of Burmese nationalist General Aung San. A portrait of Joachim and Violet Alva the first parliamentarian couple was unveiled in Parliament in 2007. A commemorative stamp of late Joachim and Violet Alva was released by President Pratibha Patil in New Delhi in November 2008, coinciding with the birth centenary year of Violet Alva. Joachim and Violet Alva had two sons, Niranjan and Chittaranjan, and a daughter, Maya. Niranjan is married to Margaret Alva, née Margaret Nazareth, former general secretary of the All India Congress Committee, former Union minister and governor of Uttarakhand and Rajasthan. Qurban Ali is a trilingual journalist who has covered some of modern India's major political, social and economic developments. He has a keen interest in India's freedom struggle and is now documenting the history of the socialist movement in the country. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
The Wire
03-06-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
George Fernandes: A Man of Many Contradictions
This article is part of a series by The Wire titled 'The Early Parliamentarians', exploring the lives and work of post-independence MPs who have largely been forgotten. The series looks at the institutions they helped create, the enduring ideas they left behind and the contributions they made to nation building. George Mathew Fernandes is known as a firebrand socialist leader of his time. He was a priest for a short period, a trade unionist, agriculturist, political activist, human rights activist, parliamentarian and journalist, all rolled into one. He led the famous railway strike involving 1.5 million rail workers in 1974, when the entire nation was brought to a halt. As the chairman of the Socialist Party of India, minister of communications, minister of industry, minister of railways and minister of defence, Fernandes was full of surprises and contradictions. When he was a Union minister in the Morarji Desai government, he defended the no-confidence motion against his government in July 1979 for two and a half hours, and then resigned the same day. In 1979, an India Today article described Fernandes as 'novice priest to socialist firebrand, trade union leader to the most wanted man on the run(during emergency), and now, a reluctant senior cabinet minister'. Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty. Fernandes was born on June 3, 1930 in Mangalore to a Mangalorean Catholic family. He did his early schooling at a government school called 'Board school', a municipal and a church school. He studied from fifth grade at the school attached to St. Aloysius College, Mangalore, where he completed his Secondary School Leaving Certificate. He went to St Peter's Seminary in Bangalore at the age of 16, to be trained as a Roman Catholic priest, studying philosophy for two and a half years from 1946 to 1948. Fernandes began work at the age of 19, organising exploited workers in the road transport industry and in the hotels and restaurants in Mangalore. He gathered hotel workers and other menial labourers in the city. Fernandes and a few other union workers led Mangalore's earliest labour strikes on behalf of the workers of Canara Public Conveyance in 1949. The police cracked down on the strike, even resorting to a lathi charge. After the strike, Fernandes came in contact with renowned Bombay-based Trade Union leader Placid D'Mello (1919-1958). Fernandes later left for Bombay in 1950 and faced tremendous hardships. His life was tough in the metropolis and he had to sleep on the streets until he got a job as a proofreader for a newspaper. In his own words, 'When I came to Bombay, I used to sleep on the benches of the Chowpatty Sands. In the middle of the night, policemen would come and wake me up and ask me to move.' Here he came in contact with socialist leader Rammanohar Lohia, who was also one of the greatest influences on his life. Later, he joined the party and its trade union movement under the veteran trade union leader Placid D' Mello and became his disciple. After D'Mello's death in 1958, Fernandes succeeded him in managing the dock workers' unions and other major labour force unions in the city that included the taximen unions, textile mills and mazdoor unions. He rose to prominence as a trade unionist and fought for the rights of labourers in small-scale industries such as hotels and restaurants. Emerging as a key figure in the Bombay labour movement in the early 1950s, Fernandes was pivotal in the unionisation of sections of Bombay labour. As a fiery trade union leader, Fernandes organised many strikes and bandhs in Bombay in the 50s and 60s and soon came to be known as 'Bumbai Bandh Ka Hero'. He served as a member of the Bombay Municipal Corporation from 1961 to 1967 and continuously raised the problems of the exploited workers in the representative body of the city. As a parliamentarian Fernandes was a member of the Lok Sabha for over 30 years, starting from Bombay (present-day Mumbai) in 1967 till 2009, mostly representing constituencies from Bihar. He lost the 1971 elections but contested from Muzaffarpur, Bihar in 1977 while still in jail as a Janata Party candidate, and won. He was made minister in the first non-Congress government in India. In 1979, he resigned from Janata Party, joined Charan Singh's breakaway Janata Party (S), and won again from Muzaffarpur in 1980. In 1984 he fought from Bangalore on Janata Party's ticket but lost to Jaffar Sharif of Congress. He lost a bye-poll from Banka in 1985 and again in 1986. In 1989 and 1991, he shifted back to Bihar and won both times from Muzaffarpur as Janata Dal candidate. In 1994, he left Janata Dal after differences with Lalu Prasad Yadav and formed Samata Party which allied with the BJP. In the 1996 and 1998 elections, he won from Nalanda as a Samata Party candidate. Samata Party merged with Janata Dal (United) and he won again from Nalanda in 1999. In 2004 he won from Muzaffarpur. In 2009 he was denied a ticket by his party, but contested from Muzaffarpur as an independent and lost. Later he was elected to Rajya Sabha in 2009 as a JD(U) candidate. The pivotal moment that thrust Fernandes into the limelight was his decision to contest the 1967 general elections. He was offered a party ticket for the Bombay South constituency by the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) against the politically more popular S.K. Patil of the Indian National Congress. S.K. Patil was a seasoned politician, with many decades of experience behind him. He was also a powerful minister in the Indira Gandhi cabinet and an unrivalled fundraiser for the undivided Congress party. Nevertheless, Fernandes won against Patil by garnering 48.5% of the votes, thus earning his nickname, 'George, the Giant Killer'. In the early 1970s, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was riding the crest of unprecedented popularity after the liberation of Bangladesh. But soon after, with notorious corruption cases against her, primarily because of the public awareness created by movements like Navnirman agitation in Gujarat and Bihar, her popularity started waning. Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty George, as president of the All India Railwaymen's Federation, organised one of the most notable agitations the country has seen, the railway strike of 1974. This was also the time when Indira Gandhi ordered the well-known Pokhran nuclear explosion in the deserts of Rajasthan. There are political analysts who believe till today that the controversial step was taken by her out of sheer despair, and with the sole intention of breaking the railway strike. The idea was to divert the nation's attention and drum up support for herself. (It is a historical irony that while Pokhran I was prompted by Fernandes's strike, Pokharan II was executed with him as the defence minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government). A politician who long campaigned against the atom bomb was also one of the champions of India's nuclear power. But Fernandes also has a stained and murky past. He will be remembered as the one who justified the Gujarat riots in 2002 and the murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his sons in Odisha in 1999. Once upon a time, he was a proponent of Mahatma Gandhi's politics of non-violence, but later turned to believe in politics of violence and organised the 'Baroda Dynamite conspiracy' – a plan to blow up government establishments to protest against the Emergency. When the Emergency was lifted in 1977, Madhu Limaye was offered ministership in Morarji Desai's cabinet but he insisted on making Fernandese a minister to end his trial in the 'Baroda Dynamite Case' so that Fernandes could come out of jail. Fernandes will also be remembered for establishing the organisation 'Friend of Israel' to support Israel against the Palestine movement. His was a life riddled with controversies and accomplishments alike. A towering figure in modern Indian politics, Fernandes was compelled to leave the public eye at the fag end of his political career when his name figured prominently in a corruption case. The scandal caused an uproar and Fernandes had to resign from his post as defence minister in the Vajpayee government. Any chances of returning to political life were quashed with the onset of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. In his last days, Fernandes was living with her once-estranged wife Leila Kabir. He passed away on January 29, 2019, at 88. Qurban Ali is a trilingual journalist who has covered some of modern India's major political, social and economic developments. He has a keen interest in India's freedom struggle and is now documenting the history of the socialist movement in the country. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
