Cachalia was born Amina Asvat, the ninth of eleven children[1] in Vereeniging, Transvaal, South Africa, on 28 June 1930.
[6] Her first political involvement started when she wanted to take part in women's passive resistance campaign, but was rejected because she was too young and frail to go to prison.
TIYC was actively doing tasks such as distributing leaflets, putting up posters, selling TIC's newspaper, and mobilising Indian community to support the movement.
[8] Cachalia was a volunteer for the Peace Council and a founding member of Women's Progressive Union which was affiliated to the Institute of Race Relations in 1948.
[12] FEDSAW decided to organise a women's march to Pretoria on the Union Building on 9 August 1955 to protest against the passed law.
[9] During the 1956 Treason Trial in Johannesburg, she helped her sister Zainab Asvat to support the accused and their families, who had been left impoverished by the loss of their main wage earner by collecting food and money for them.
Though the majority of Indians boycotted the election, the government still kept on to their plan by proposing a Tricameral Parliament system.
The controversy resulted in the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and she became one of the active members of this organisation.
In the 1990s, Cachalia served on the committee of PWV (Union of Pretoria, Greater Johannesburg (Witwatersrand) and Vaal Triangle (Vereeniging)] region on African National Congress Women's League (ANCWL) after the organisation was resuscitated.
Cachalia turned down Mandela's proposal because she said, "I'm my own person and that I had just recently lost my husband whom I had enormous regard for".