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 Beijing.He 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.

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