Alfred Webb was an Irish nationalist. He was elected MP for West Waterford in 1890 for the Irish Parliamentary Party. Waterford West was a UK parliamentary constituency for Ireland from 1885 to 1918. Webb was elected again in 1892 on an anti-Parnell ticket. He became a member of the Indian parliamentary party set up by William Wedderburn following the election of Dadabhai Naoroji.

Webb resigned from Parliament in 1895 but remained involved in Irish and Indian nationalist politics. During a visit to India in 1898 he was elected President of the Indian National Congress.

H. M. Hyndman was a prominent English Socialist. He began his career working as a journalist, including on the Pall Mall Gazette. In 1881, using the London radical clubs as a model, Hyndman established the Democratic Federation, which was renamed the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in 1884. Hyndman was also the editor of Justice. He was a vocal supporter of Indian nationalism and independence from the British.

Hyndman became friends with Dadabhai Naoroji in the 1870s, after reading Naoroji’s Poverty of India. They collaborated in Anti-Famine agitation during Queen Victoria’s Jubilee year. Naoroji helped Hyndman in his own work on Indian Famine. Despite their friendship, Naoroji often found Hyndman’s politics too radical and extreme, preferring a more moderate nationalist path.

Shyamaji Krishnavarma, a nationalist in favour of more radical methods, was acquainted with Hyndman. He invited Hyndman to open India House in Highgate in July 1905. Through the India House organization, Hyndman met individuals such as Madame Cama and B. G. Tilak. After the murder of Sir Curzon-Wyllie by Madan Lal Dhingra, Hyndman wrote in Justice that he had long warned that terrorism would result from the British policy of ‘despotism’ in India.

Annie Besant was a leading member of the Theosophical Society, a feminist and political activist, and a politician in India. She had a close relationship with Charles Bradlaugh, MP, a free-thinker who was often known as the 'Member for India'. Having declared herself an atheist, Annie Besant was drawn to other ideas of spiritualism and joined the Theosophical Society in 1889. She was very close to the co-founder, Madame Blavatsky, and allowed Blavatksy to live in her house in St John's Wood from 1889. In 1907, after the death of Colonel Olcott, Besant was made President of the Theosophical Society.

In 1911, Besant brought Jiddu Krishnamurti and his brother to England and acted as their guardian. She proclaimed in 1927 that Krishnamurti was the 'coming', i.e., messiah, and was devastated when he left the Theosophical Society in 1929.  

Besant also campaigned for the rights of Indians and for Indian 'home rule'. She launched the Home Rule League in 1916, modelling the Indian plight on that of Ireland. She was a member of the Fabian Society, owing to her close relationship with George Bernard Shaw. In 1917 she became the first woman president of the Indian National Congress at a session in Calcutta.

K. M. Panikkar was a Dixon Scholar at Christ Church College, Oxford. He went to England in 1914 with the help of his elder brother who was studying medicine in Edinburgh at the time. He became a member of the Oxford Majlis and friends with the Suhrawardy brothers. Panikkar began to write articles whilst at Oxford which he sent to periodicals in India. He also read a paper on 'The Problems of Greater India' to the East India Association.

Panikkar returned to India in 1918. His ship was hit by a German torpedo but the passengers escaped and were taken by another ship. He joined Aligarh Muslim University in 1919 to teach history and political science. He became the first editor of the Hindustan Times from 1924. Panikkar then decided to read for the Bar and returned to England in 1925 for a year. He enrolled in Middle Temple.

Panikkar then entered the Princely Service and served as Foreign Minister of Patiala and Bikaner. He participated in the Round Table Conferences as a representative of the Princes of India. He held various diplomatic posts for India after 1947.

Bepin Chandra Pal was an Indian nationalist, the 'Pal' in the Lal-Bal-Pal of the Swadeshi triumvirate. A member of the Brahmo Samaj, Pal went to England in 1899 to study comparative theology. This was a two year course he took up at New Manchester College, Oxford, but he only stayed for one academic year. During his time at Oxford, he travelled the British Isles preaching from Unitarian pulpits.

Back in India, Pal became involved with nationalist politics. He became a member of the Indian National Congress, and opposed the partition of Bengal in 1905. He launched the journal Bande Mataram, which Aurobindo Ghose soon joined as editor. In 1907 he returned to England with his son, Niranjan Pal, and become associated with Shyamaji Krishnavarma's India House organization. However, following the assassination of Curzon-Wyllie (which he condemned), he returned to India. This was because he had to close the journal he had launched in England, Swaraj.

Upon this return to India, Pal was regarded as a more moderate nationalist although he was often critical of M. K. Gandhi. He died in poverty in 1932.

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya was born in Mangalore in 1903. Her father was a senior civil servant and her mother was a supporter of both Pandita Ramabai and Sri Aurobindo. At the age of 11 she was married to Krishna Rao, but he unfortunately died just over a year later. As a child widow and with her father also dead, Kamaladevi moved with her mother to Madras in 1917. She met the Chattopadhyaya family from Hyderabad and married Harindranath in 1919 in a civil registry ceremony. A few months after their marriage, Harindranath travelled to Cambridge to study for a PhD at the university. Kamaladevi was left behind in India.

It was up to Kamaladevi’s family to finance her to travel to Britain to join her husband in 1921. Kamaladevi too wished to study in the UK. Her interest in social work led her to enrol in a Social Work Diploma Course at Bedford College, London. The course in sociology combined with practical training which allowed Kamaladevi to visit slums in London. Before she left for England, Kamaladevi had been inspired by her mother’s contacts and the political climate in India to pledge herself to Gandhi’s work. Husband and wife returned to India in 1922 via Europe and a visit with Harindranath’s brother, the exiled revolutionary, Virendranath.

After her return to India, Kamaladevi became actively involved with the All-India Women’s Conference (AIWC) and became friends with Margaret Cousins. She became involved in Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha in 1930 and was arrested for entering the Bombay Stock Exchange to sell packets of salt. In the meantime she had divorced Harindranath. Kamaladevi continued to be engaged in politics and social work, particularly in promoting handicrafts, until her death in 1988. 

Having been schooled in Cuttack, Orissa, where his father worked as a lawyer, Subhas Chandra Bose went to Calcutta in 1913 and joined Presidency College. In 1916, Bose was expelled for his complicity in beating a college tutor, Professor Oaten, whom he had heard had manhandled some Indian students. Bose had been involved in student political groups in Calcutta and received much sympathy for his expulsion. He joined Scottish Church College and graduated in 1919 with a degree in philosophy.

Bose's father proposed to send him to England to study for the Indian Civil Service (ICS). Despite Bose's misgivings about accepting a job under the British Government, he set sail for England in September 1919. Upon arriving in Britain, Bose went up to Cambridge to gain admission. He managed to gain entry to Fitzwilliam Hall, a body for non-collegiate members of the University. Bose took the Mental and Moral Sciences Tripos and studied for the Civil Service exams. He attended the Cambridge Union Society debates and was a member of the Cambridge Majlis. He gave evidence to the Lytton Committee investigating Indian students in the UK, and appealed to the India Office to allow Indians to join the University Officers' Training Corps (without success).

In July 1920, Bose took the ICS exams in London and came fourth. Bose then faced a dilemma as to whether to take up this opportunity and sought advice from his family through correspondence to India. Finally in April 1921, Bose withdrew from taking up this post with the ICS and returned to India in the summer of 1921.

In Calcutta, Bose joined the Indian National Congress and worked with the Bengali leader C. R. Das. Bose was in and out of jail in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s for his political action (often violent) against the British. In the meantime, he rose through the Congress ranks, working with Nehru, and became president of Congress in 1938. Successful again in 1939 against Gandhi's candidate, Bose then resigned over the selection of the working committee.

In 1941, Bose managed to leave India through Afghanistan. In 1943, Bose was in Japan and supported the Prime Minister's efforts to reconstitute the Indian National Army (INA) and set up the 'Azad Hind' or Free India provisional government. In 1944, the INA and Japanese invaded India but suffered a heavy defeat. Bose fled and was killed in a plane crash over Taiwan in August 1945 - although many of his followers remain(ed) doubtful as to the cause of his death, wondering if he had managed to escape the crash.