Lala Har Dayal was the son of M. Gaure Dayal, Reader in Government Service.

After a MA in English and History at Punjab University, Har Dayal earned a state scholarship to study in Britain. He joined St John's College, Oxford, in October 1905 to study Sanskrit. He was the Boden Sanskrit Scholar in 1907 and the Casberd Exhibitioner (awarded £30 by the trustees at St John's College). He was a member of the St John's College debating society as well. During his Oxford student days, Har Dayal would visit India House in Highgate. He began corresponding with Shyamaji Krishnavarma and in 1907 resigned from his state scholarship on ideological grounds. His wife was also studying at Oxford with Krishnavarma's financial assistance.

He returned to India in 1908 then left again in 1909 for Paris. He travelled and lived in various countries and eventually moved to the USA in 1910 to take up a job as lecturer in Indian Philosophy and Sanskrit. In 1913 he set up the weekly paper, Ghadr, in California and was one of the founding members of the Hindustan Ghadr Party.

In 1927, Har Dayal returned to London to prepare for a doctorate in Sanskrit at the University of London. He lived in Edgware. He received his PhD in 1930 and returned to the USA. He died in Philadelphia in 1938.

Born in 1888, Asaf Ali was educated at St Stephen's College, Delhi, and then went to London to study law in 1909. Asaf Ali was a frequent visitor to India House in Highgate, having been met by a resident at Charing Cross. He became close friends with Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (Chatto) and met Madame Cama in Paris. After a couple of weeks of lodging in India House, he then moved to lodgings in Finsbury Park and studied for the Bar at Lincoln's Inn. Just as Jawaharlal Nehru remembers that he did not visit India House during his time as a student, Asaf Ali recalls that he did not meet Nehru when he was studying for the Bar although they were in London at the same time. Asaf Ali was in London when Syed Ameer Ali founded the London Muslim League and attended the Universal Races Congress in London in 1911. He was called to the Bar in January 1912 and returned to India to practice.

In 1914, Asaf Ali returned to England on a Privy Council Brief. Upon his return he met up with old friends and began to frequent the National Liberal Club. He planned a publication of an Urdu literary magazine called Taj from London but the costs were beyond his means. He translated some of Rabindranath Tagore's poems into Urdu and was then introduced to Tagore at a reception at the Criterion organized by Indian residents in London. Having been friends with Chatto, he was introduced to Sarojini Naidu, his sister, and decided to organize a literary dinner for Naidu. He invited a whole host of famous British literary figures and invited W. B. Yeats to chair and propose the toasts. Ali and Naidu would often visit the Poetry Bookshop where Harold Monro organized readings.

In 1914, the British attack on the Ottoman Empire had a large effect on the Indian Muslim community. Asaf Ali supported the Turkey side and resigned from the Privy Council. He saw this as an act of non-cooperation and returned to India in December 1914. Upon his return to India, Asaf Ali became heavily involved in the nationalist movement. He was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly in 1935 as a member of the Muslim Nationalist Party, but then became a prominent member of Congress and was chosen as deputy leader. He was imprisoned in Ahmadnagar in 1944. His wife, Aruna, whom he married in 1928 and was of Hindu background, was a prominent Congress nationalist and socialist.

In 1947, Asaf Ali was appointed Ambassador to the United States, was Governor of Orissa from 1948 to 1952 and was then India's Minister to Switzerland, Austria and the Vatican. He died in 1953 in Switzerland.

Manmath Mallik trained as a barrister at Middle Temple in 1875. He had travelled to England in 1873 to study at Christ's College, Cambridge. He wrote a number of books about India and was Fellow of the Zoological Society.

In the 1906 General Election, Manmath Mallik stood as Liberal candidate for St George's, Hanover Square. He lost to the Unionist candidate by 2,073 votes. He stood again in 1910 at Uxbridge but was again defeated by the Unionist candidate by 4,719 votes.

Manmath Mallik was the grandfather of Baron Chitnis, the son of his daughter Lucia.

M. R. Jayakar was a barrister, Federal Court Judge (1937-9) and member of the Bombay Legislative Assembly. He had been called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in London in 1905. In the 1930s he sent his son, Jayapal, to study in Oxford, having failed to gain admission to Oxford in the early twentieth century himself.

Jayakar became heavily involved in nationalist politics in India. He was known for his sympathies with the Hindu Mahasabha, clashing with Mohammed Ali Jinnah. He was a member of the Hindu Missionary Society in Bombay and leader of the Swaraj Party for a short time, resigning in 1925. In 1930, Jayakar and Tej Bahadur Sapru were involved in negotiations between Congress and the Government when Motilal Nehru and other Congress members were imprisoned. These negotiations are said to have led to the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of March 1931 whereby Congress members were released from prison in return for the discontinuation of non-cooperation; the salt tax was removed and Congress members would be represented at the next Round Table Conference. Jayakar was a member of the Judicial Privy Council in London and attended the Round Table Conference in London in 1931.

Jayakar was known for his educationist and philanthropist work. He received an honorary DCL from Oxford University in 1938, upon the recommendation of E. J. Thompson. He was Vice-Chancellor of Poona University from 1948 upon its foundation, until his retirement in 1955.

Madame Cama is known as the 'Mother of Indian Revolution'. She was married to Rustom Cama, a wealthy lawyer based in Bombay. Having worked as a social worker during the Bombay Plague epidemic in 1897, she became ill herself and was sent to Britain in 1901/2 for treatment.

Cama met Shyamaji Krishnavarma and became involved in European revolutionary circles. She met Dadabhai Naoroji, a moderate nationalist, and worked for him in his unsuccessful campaign to contest Lambeth North in the 1906 General Election. However, Cama identified with more radical politics than Naoroji's, in particular the Indian Home Rule Society and Krishnavarma's India House. In 1907, she attended the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart. Cama addressed the delegates at Stuttgart and unfolded the Indian Tricolour Flag (green, yellow and red) with Bande Mataram written on the middle. This was the first time an Indian flag was displayed in a foreign country and was part of the template for the tricolour adopted by the Indian nation.

In 1909, Cama settled in Paris and began publishing a monthly journal called Bande Mataram after the assassination of Sir Curzon-Wyllie. Her house became a meeting point for various revolutionaries and exiles (Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, V. D. Savarkar, members of the Ghadr Party) and she met many Indians when they came through Europe (Jawaharlal Nehru, Herabai Tata, Mithan Lam). Cama herself was an exile from India until she renounced seditionist activities. The portrayal of the revolutionary Indian wife Kamala in Alice Sorabji Pennell’s Doorways of the East appears to be based on the life and character of Madame Cama. In November 1935, she returned to Bombay and died nine months later.

Woomes Chunder Bonnerjee was the son of Girish Chunder Bonnerjee, an attorney, and his wife, Saraswati Devi. He was educated at the Oriental Seminary and the Hindu School, Calcutta. Concerned at his negligence, his father removed him from school and in 1861 articled him to a local British solicitor. Bonnerjee won a government scholarship to study Law in England in 1864 and lodged at 108 Denbigh Street, St George's Road, London. He was admitted a student of  Middle Temple on 19 November 1864 and was called to the Bar on 11 June 1867. He was a founder and Secretary of the London Indian Society, and advocated representative and responsible government in India. He then became a member of the East India Association, which superseded the London Indian Society.

Bonnerjee left England in 1868, and on 12 November was enrolled as an advocate at the Calcutta High Court. He became involved with Calcutta University; he was a member of its syndicate, President of its Faculty of Law (1884), and its first representative on the Legislative Council (1894–5). Bonnerjee was one of the founder-members of the Indian National Congress in December 1885. Proposed by Allan Octavian Hume, he was unanimously elected the first President. In the meantime, Bonnerjee travelled between India and Britain: he sent his four-year old son Shelley, and young Nolini and Susie to be educated in Britain in 1874. He and his wife, Hemangini, travelled to and fro, bringing their children to be educated in Britain. In 1888 Hemangini settled permanently in London.

Wealthy from the Bar, Bonnerjee, in about 1890, bought a large house, 8 Bedford Park, Croydon, Surrey, which he named Kidderpore. Bonnerjee lived partly in England and partly in India until 1902, thereafter living mostly at Croydon and practising before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He died at his home, Kidderpore, on 21 July 1906. Although Hemangini had converted to Christianity, W. C. Bonnerjee had remained a Hindu, but was given a non-religious burial in England, as according to his wishes. Hemangini returned to India after his death and died in 1910. Their descendents live in India and Britain.

Romesh Chunder Dutt was the son of Ishanchandra and Thakamani Dutt. They were part of one of the Calcutta families who had prospered through their commercial associations with the British East India Company. In 1868, he left for Britain in secret in the company of two friends, Bihari Lal Gupta and Surendranath Banerjea. In London, Dutt secured admission to University College and sat for the Indian Civil Service examination in 1871. Dutt was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in the same year. He joined the Indian Civil Service as assistant magistrate and collector. In 1883 he was the first Indian to be appointed district magistrate and, after serving in many districts of Bengal, was appointed divisional commissioner, first in Burdwan and later in Orissa (1894–5).

When the premier literary association of Bengal, Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, was set up in 1894, Dutt was elected its first President. In 1899 Dutt was invited to preside over the fifteenth session of the Indian National Congress held at Lucknow, and in 1905 he presided over the industrial exhibition held in Benares in connection with the twenty-first session of the Congress. Dutt shared his time between London and India. In 1897, he was appointed Professor of Indian History at University College, London. From 1898, Dutt regularly wrote letters to the Editor of The Manchester Guardian on Indian matters, particularly famine and tariffs. A collection of these letters was published in 1900. Dutt also wrote a number of works on history, economics and translations of Indian Classics for the 'Temple Classics' series.

With Major B. D. Basu and Dadabhai Naoroji, Dutt formulated what is now recognized as the classic diagnosis of the Indian economic problem under colonial rule. It emphasized the ‘drainage of wealth’ from India through home charges payable to Britain and unrequited exports, the absence of protection for India's infant industries, and the negative implications of even constructive efforts like the railways, which deprived many providers of traditional transport services and facilitated the import of British manufactured goods.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar, Kanthiawar, India, to father Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi and his fourth wife Putlibai. In 1882 he married Kasturbai Makanji, with whom he had five children. Gandhi enrolled at Samaldas College, Bhaunagar, in 1887 but left after one term. However, he was encouraged to go to London to study law and he left for London on 4 September 1888.

Arriving on 29 September 1888, Gandhi immediately went to the Victoria Hotel before relocating briefly to the suburb of Richmond and eventually settling in a room in West Kensington for a year. At first, he tried to become an 'English gentleman' but after a few months realized that he had to cut his expenditures and gave up most of his new habits. Besides his law studies he passed the University of London matriculation examination in June 1890. Gandhi did not participate in the newly established British Committee of the Indian National Congress but did attend meetings of the London Indian Society. He also attended meetings of the Anjuman-e-Islam (after 1903 called the Pan-Islamic Society), the National Indian Association, and the Northbrook Indian Society. He passed his Roman law examination in March 1890 and passed the Bar finals in January 1891. Before leaving for London, Gandhi had promised his mother not to eat meat. He found it difficult at first but soon discovered vegetarian restaurants and joined the London Vegetarian Society. He often wrote for their journal the Vegetarian and became a member of the Executive Committee on 19 September 1890. Gandhi had also come into contact with the Theosophical Society in 1889, and was introduced to Annie Besant before he left London on 12 June 1891.

He lived in India until 1893 when he left for South Africa to practice law. It was here he raised his family, established himself as a lawyer and then a political activist fighting the discrimination of Asians in Africa. By 1906, he had emerged as the spokesman of Indians in Natal and Transvaal and in October that year he was once again in London to speak on behalf of the Indian community. In London he met with Lord Elgin to discuss the rights of Indians in South Africa, but upon his return in December 1906, Gandhi was disappointed. Imperial politics brought Gandhi to London again in July 1909. However, what concerned Gandhi the most this time was the status of highly educated Indians. In August, he visited Louth with his friend Pranjivan Mehta; later in August he visited George Allen in the Cotswolds, and on 7 November he spoke to the Indian students at Cambridge.  On his voyage back to South Africa, he wrote his powerful book Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule, in which he wrote about his increasing discontent with the West, the power of non-violence and the vision of self-rule.

Between 1909 and 1914, Gandhi received several invitations to return to India, but before doing so he visited London again in August 1914, two days after the outbreak of the First World War. The purpose of his trip was to visit his friend and mentor G. K. Gokhale but he had already left for Paris. With Gokhale gone, Gandhi met the poetess Sarojini Naidu instead. On 8 August, a reception was held for him at the Hotel Cecil. In attendance were, among others, Charlotte Despard, Albert Cartwright, Bhupendranath Basu, Sacchidanand Sinha, Lala Lajpat Rai, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Amir Ali and J. M. Parikh. While in London he established the Indian Volunteer Corps before he left on 19 December 1914.

From 1919 Gandhi became highly politically active in India. It was his belief in satyagraha that made him the leader of the nationalist movement against the Raj. By 1931 he had become integral to Indian national life and the sole representative of the Indian National Congress at the second Round Table Conference (Gandhi was in prison during the first Conference in 1930). He arrived in September 1931 and gave his first speech at the Conference on 15 September. The Second Round Table Conference failed to yield independence for India, and Gandhi left London on 5 December 1931. Back in India Gandhi continued to promote satyagraha and led the Quit India Movement in 1942. On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was walking through the grounds of Birla House, New Delhi, when he was shot at point blank range by Nathuram Godse.