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.

Niranjan Pal was the son of the moderate Indian nationalist Bepin Chandra Pal. He came to Britain in the early twentieth century to study in London, and lived in a boarding house with Sukhsagar Datta, Ashutosh Mitter and his father. It was to this boarding house at 140 Sinclair Road in London that David Garnett was invited to by Datta and where he was introduced to Pal, who was also known as Nanu. In The Golden Echo, Garnett described Pal's politics as not clearly defined, but more sympathetic to Indian revolutionaries in contrast to his father's moderate views.

Niranjan Pal later rose to fame as a playwright and then film director and producer. His play, The Goddess, was performed in London in 1922. This play had a successful run, starting at the Duke of York's Theatre on 6 and 7 June 1922, it was then shown at the Ambassador's Theatre and finally moved to the Aldwych Theatre in July 1922. The play was performed 66 times in total and there were plans after the success to form an Indian Repertory Theatre Movement in London.

Niranjan Pal was married to an English woman, Lily, and they had a son called Colin in 1923. Pal then began a collaboration with the lead actor in The Goddess, Himansu Rai, and went to Bombay to produce films. He collaborated with the German silent film director, Franz Osten to film The Light of Asia in 1925 in Bombay, and then became a successful screen-writer for Bombay Talkies film studio in Bombay.

Sukhsagar Datta was born in Bengal to father Dwijadas Datta and mother Muktakeshi. He was the youngest of five children. His early life and decision to move to England was very much influenced by the actions of his brother Ullaskar. In 1908, Ullaskar was arrested for making a bomb which was used in the attempted assassination of a local magistrate in Alipore; the magistrate survived but two British women died in the attack. His following death sentence was reduced to life imprisonment and he was released twelve years later. The arrest affected the careers of his father and other brother, Mohini Mohan, and as a consequence Sukhsagar was sent to England in 1908.

In London, Datta enrolled at the London Tutorial College, where he met the writer David Garnett. In The Golden Echo (1953), Garnett describes several meetings and walks with Datta and his two other Indian friends, Niranjan Pal and Ashutosh Mitter. He also describes how Datta introduced him to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar at India House, Highgate (at this time, Krishnavarma was living in Paris). After the assassination of Curzon Wyllie and once India House was closed down, Datta and Savarkar shared a flat 'over a small and extremely dirty restaurant in Red Lion Passage' (Garnett, 148). After Savarkar left for Paris, Datta stayed on a bit longer. The two must have remained in touch, though, because Savarkar persuaded Datta to join Abdul Karim’s resistance against the Spanish in Morocco. However, Datta never made it there and returned to London from Algiers. He then ended all contact with Savarkar.

Datta married Ruby Young on 25 September 1911 and the two of them moved to Milan where Datta wanted to pursue a singing career. However, they soon returned to Bristol where Datta enrolled at the Merchant Venturers' Technical College in 1913 or 1914. He graduated in 1914 and joined the University of Bristol Medical School, where he qualified as a doctor in 1920. He first worked at the Bristol General Hospital in 1920, then the Southmead Infirmary in 1921 and finally the Stapleton Institution (now called Manor Park Hospital) where he stayed until his retirement in 1956.

Datta joined the Labour Party in 1926. He was vocal during the Labour Party Conference in 1944, and passionately spoke in favour of Indian Independence. He became chair of Bristol North Labour Party in 1946. After Indian independence in August 1947, Datta founded the Bristol Indian Association. He died at Southmead Hospital, Bristol, on 3 November 1967. 

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.

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.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was born in 1883 in Bhagur village to father Damodarpant and mother Radhabai; he had two brothers, Ganesh and Narayan, and a sister, Mainabai. He was educated at the local Shivaji High School before he enrolled in the Ferguson College, Poona, in 1902. Here he involved himself in Indian nationalist politics before being expelled from college for his activities. He was permitted to take his BA degree and with the help of Shyamaji Krishnavarma attained a scholarship to study law at Gray's Inn in London.

He embarked for London on 9 June 1906 and arrived in London on 3 July where he immediately found lodging at India House in Highgate. He became a protege of the founder of India House, Shyamaji Krishnavarma. Savarkar soon founded the Free India Society, based on the thoughts of the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini (Savarkar had written a biography of Mazzini). The Society held regular meetings every Sunday where they celebrated Indian festivals and patriots, discussed Indian political problems, and how to overthrow the yoke of the British in India. Savarkar also sent bomb manuals off to India. Savarkar advocated a war for independence and in 1909 his work The Indian War of Independence was published, but it was immediately banned by the British government. The militancy of Savarkar left him and Gandhi at odds when Gandhi visited the House in October 1906.

In early May 1907, Savarkar organized the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 at Tilak House, 78 Goldsmith Avenue, Acton, London. Students wore badges with the legend 'Honour to the Martyrs of 1857'. Skirmishes broke out and the press blamed Krishnavarma who subsequently left London for Paris and left management of the House to Savarkar. Savarkar aligned the cause of Indian independence with the Irish and other overseas freedom movements andnotably met V. I. Lenin.

On 1 July 1909, on the steps of the Imperial Institute in London, Sir William Curzon Wyllie was shot by Madan Lal Dhingra; Captain Cawas Lalkaka tried to defend Curzon-Wyllie and was also shot. Savarkar was not present but had according to some sources provided Dhingra with the revolver (Srivastava, p. 151). While most of the Indian community condemned Dhingra's action, Savarkar applauded it. Dhingra was sentenced to death. After the assassination, life became more difficult for Savarkar in London and he finally left London for Paris in early January 1910. Meanwhile, a warrant was issued for Savarkar's arrest in England. He returned to London on 13 March 1910 and was immediately sent to Brixton Jail. It was decided that he should stand trial in India, and on 1 July he embarked on the S.S. Morea. As the ship lay outside Marseilles, Savarkar escaped to French territory. The British tried to recapture him on French soil and the incident became a celebrated case in international law. He eventually arrived in Bombay on 22 July and was immediately taken to jail. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

He arrived in the Andaman Islands in July 1911 where he stayed until 1921, when he was moved to Ratnagiri, Bombay Presidency, where he was imprisoned until 1924 and interned until 1937. During his imprisonment, he wrote Hindutva: What is a Hindu?.  After 1937, Savarkar continued his anti-Muslim, anti-British politics and became the ideological alternative to Gandhi's non-violence politics, as President of the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha. He remained a huge political influence until his death in Bombay in 1966.

Madan Lal Dhingra was the sixth of seven children of a civil surgeon. All six sons studied abroad. In June 1906, Dhingra left Amritsar for Britain. He enrolled in University College, London, to study engineering.

Dhingra arrived in London a year after the foundation of Shyamaji Krishnavarma's India House. This organization in Highgate was a meeting place for Indian radicals. They had weekly meetings, which Dhingra would often attend. V. D. Savarkar became manager of India House and inspired Dhingra's admiration in the cult of assassination. However, Dhingra became aloof from India House and was known to undertake shooting practice at a range on Tottenham Court Road. On 1 July 1909, he attended an 'At Home' hosted by the National Indian Association at the Imperial Institute. At the end of the event, as the guests were leaving, Dhingra shot Sir Curzon-Wyllie, an India Office official, at close range. His bullets also hit Dr Lalcaca, a Parsee doctor, who was killed.

Dhingra was immediately arrested. At his trial, Dhingra represented himself, although he did not recognize the legitimacy of the court. He claimed that he had murdered Curzon-Wyllie as a patriotic act and in revenge for the inhumane killings of Indians by the British Government in India. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was executed at Pentonville Prison on 17 August 1909.

Shyamaji Krishnavarma first came to Britain in 1879 as a Sanskrit scholar and assistant to Professor Monier Williams at Oxford. He graduated from Balliol College in 1883 and was called to the Bar in 1884. In 1881, he attended the Berlin Congress of Orientalists.

Krishnavarma returned to India to work in service to the Indian Princely States and then returned to England in 1897, settling with his wife at Highgate. They first lived at a house he bought at 9 Queenswood Avenue. He endowed an annual lecture in honour of Herbert Spencer in 1904, after attending the funeral service of Herbert Spencer in Golders Green in December 1903. He also created scholarships for Indian students to study in Britain from 1905, on the condition that they would not work for the British Government.

In February 1905, Krishnavarma founded the Indian Home Rule Society. He then established India House in Highgate (at 65 Cromwell Avenue) in the same year (July 1905), as a hostel for Indian students, which became a meeting-place for Indian revolutionaries in London. Krishnavarma fled to Paris in 1907 to avoid arrest and censure by the British Government in relation to his published inflammatory material, such as the journal The Indian Sociologist, and the political activities of India House. He was also disbarred from Inner Temple. After a lapse between 1914 and 1920, Krishnavarma began to publish The Indian Sociologist again from Geneva until 1922. He died in Geneva in 1930.

David Garnett, the son of Edward Garnett and Constance Black, was well-connected in literary circles and with Socialist and revolutionary European exiles in his youth. Garnett was a writer and publisher, and involved with the Bloomsbury Group. He was editor of the New Statesman from 1932 to 1934.

Garnett met his first Indian while preparing for the London Matriculation at the London Tutorial College in Red Lion Square. He met a young Bengali, Dutt (Sukhsagar Datta), who introduced him to his friends, Ashutosh Mitter and Niranjan Pal (playwright and son of Bepin Chandra Pal). Garnett became close friends with these young Indians, meeting them at various times in London and taking them down to his family's home in Caerne. At some point after 1907, Dutt took Garnett to India House in Highgate, where he was introduced to V. D. Savarkar and spoke to Madan Lal Dhingra briefly.

After the murder of Curzon Wyllie in July 1909, Savarkar asked Garnett to publish Dhingra's statement, which Garnett passed on to Robert Lloyd at the Daily News where it appeared the next morning. Attracted by Savarkar's 'extraordinary personal magnetism', Garnett would meet him regularly, and when Savarkar was arrested and put into Brixton Gaol, Garnett visited him there. Garnett takes credit for hatching a plan to help Savarkar escape from prison, enlisting the help of Indian exiles in Paris. The plan was foiled when his family found out about it, despite Maud Gonne's attempts to warn Garnett. When Savarkar returned to India, Garnett severed all ties with him.