Political activist Amiya Nath Bose was from a family of radicals. He was the son of Sarat Chandra Bose who was interned in India in 1941 for Forward Bloc activities, and the nephew of the better known Subhas Chandra Bose, founder and leader of the Forward Bloc movement and notorious for his allegiance to the Axis powers during the Second World War. It is perhaps no surprise then that Amiya Nath Bose was already involved in student politics in India, before his departure for Britain.

Bose went to England to attend university in 1937. He studied economics at the University of Cambridge, gaining a Second Class, and was called to the Bar in 1941, living between London and Oxford. According to Indian Political Intelligence documentation, he was strongly influenced by his uncle who recommended reading for him, attempted to secure for him correspondentships on Indian newspapers, and put him in touch with Pulin Behari Seal with whom he began a close working relationship. Soon after his arrival in Britain, he made trips to Germany and Austria, which the government considered to be suspicious behaviour. Further, rumours circulated about his dislike of the English, and fellow students of the Oxford Majlis claimed he was opposed to the politics of both Nehru and Gandhi, perhaps considering them to be insufficiently radical in their approach to British imperialism. On the arrest of his father in India for associating with the Japanese, Bose became increasingly embittered and his views increasingly in line with those of his uncle. In the early 1940s, surveillance reports claim that Amiya Nath Bose was circulating his uncle’s ‘Manifesto’ and listening to his speeches on a radio purchased specifically for this purpose, and that he had a large photo of him in his room.

Amiya Nath Bose, with his close associate Seal, was key to the formation of the Committee of Indian Congressmen in 1942, assuming the position of General Secretary. Also closely involved with the organization were the Birmingham-based doctor Diwan Singh and Said Amir Shah. Bose's and Seal's alleged pro-Axis leanings, however, caused tensions within this organization, eventually causing the departure from it of numerous Indians, as well as strong opposition from without. In 1944 Bose moved to Birmingham, with Seal and his family, to escape the bombings. As a consequence the CIC became active in the Midlands and the north, recruiting from among the Indian workers based there. In August 1944, Bose, together with Drs Dutt and Vakil, organized the Indian Political Conference in Birmingham. Bose also established the Council for the International Recognition of Indian Independence in the USA as a sub-group of the CIC in order to spread his political message internationally.

Bose left for India on 2 November 1944, citing family reasons and the desire to obtain recognition for the CIC from the Indian National Congress, and delegating his responsibilities in Britain to Pulin Behari Seal and Said Amir Shah. Once in India, he was appointed special correspondent for Cavalcade.

Dilip Kumar Roy was a prominent Indian musician. He was the son of playwright and musician, Dwijendra Lal Roy. He is known for synthesizing western and Indian classical music.

Roy studied at Fitzwilliam Hall, Cambridge, at the same time as his friend Subhas Chandra Bose. He took the mathematics tripos but also took music options. He then studied German and Italian music on the continent. He met Romain Rolland in Switzerland who was a great admirer of him. He was also admired by many Indians including M. K. Gandhi.

In 1928, Roy joined Sri Aurobindo's ashram in Pondicherry and stayed there until 1950. In 1959, he founded the Hari Krishna mandir in Pune where he died in 1980.

Jaipal Singh was the son of a Bihari adivasi (tribal) farmer. He studied at St Paul's School in Ranchi (Bihar) and was taken under the wing of the Principal, Canon Cosgrave. He was baptized and in November 1918 accompanied Canon Cosgrave back to England - the Canon having retired from the Ranchi school to take up the parish of Darlington. Jaipal Singh arrived in England in the aftermaths of the First World War and initially stayed in Darlington with the Canon. Three wealthy unmarried women, the Forsters, helped to take care of Jaipal Singh financially. He was sent to St Augustine's College in Canterbury to train for the priesthood, but after two terms, Bishop Arthur Mesacknight, the warden, sent him to Oxford - using his connections with Dr James, the president of St John's College.

Jaipal Singh matriculated at St John's College, Oxford, in Michaelmas 1922. He was awarded the Hertfordshire Scholarship of forty pounds by Bishop Knight and the Forsters bore most of the rest of his Oxford bills. Jaipal Singh studied PPE and was awarded a 4th in 1926. He was elected Secretary in 1924 and then President in 1925 of the St John's College Debating Society. He was a member of the Essay Society, a member of the college football XI in 1925-6, and the college hockey XI throughout his time at the college. Jaipal Singh also represented the University Hockey XI in Varsity matches from 1924 to 1926 and hence was awarded a hockey Blue. Jaipal Singh started the Oxford Hermits - a sports society for 'Asiatics' in Oxford - they mainly played hockey. Jaipal Singh then took the Indian Civil Service (ICS) exams, and was a probationary student at St John's.

In the meantime, Singh was involved in Indian students' hockey tours of Europe and the formation of the India Hockey Federation. In 1928, he captained the India Hockey Team at the Amsterdam Olympics. They won all their games without conceding a goal, and were awarded the gold medal. He often frequented Veeraswamy's restaurant in Regent Street and the victorious team were also feted at the restaurant and at 21 Cromwell Road.

Having taken part in the Olympics, Singh's ICS training was delayed and he then decided to quit the ICS. Through the Darlington MP, Lord Pake Pense, Singh was introduced to Viscount Bearstead, Chairman of Shell Transport and Trading Company who arranged for a job for Singh with the Burnham-Shell Oil Storage and Distributing Company of India. He was the first Indian to be appointed to a covenanted mercantile assistant in Royal Dutch Shell group, and after a probationary period in London was sent to Calcutta. In Calcutta, Singh met many British officials, clergymen and Indians through his contacts from his time in Britain. He met and married Tara Majumdar, the daughter of P. K. and Agnes Majumdar and grand-daughter of W. C. Bonnerjee. Singh took up a number of educational posts, including a position teaching commerce at Achimota College, Gold Coast, and then soon got involved in politics back in India. Singh presided over the All-India Adibasi Mahasabha, an organization that campaigned for tribal rights. After Indian independence the party became the Jharkand Party and saw their aims realized in 2000 when Jharkand was designated a separate state from Bihar.  

Solomon Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, the fourth prime minister of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), spent six years in England. He studied between 1919 and 1925 at Christ Church College, Oxford. During his time there, he lived with a working class family as a shortage of rooms in the College had forced Christ Church to find lodgings elsewhere. Bandaranaike was struck by the hierarchical structure and social conventions that excluded him from the student fraternity.

During his first year at Oxford, his father moved to London for a year together with his sister who was presented as a debutante at Buckingham Palace in 1920. Bandaranaike tried hard to fit in and found it difficult to deal with his fellow students’ rejection, especially considering his own family’s preoccupation with status and power. In 1920 he was allotted a room in Christ Church College, sharing a corridor with Anthony Eden. After passing his classics exams with a second class degree, he switched to law.

In his third year at Oxford he became actively involved in the Oxford Union, delivering speeches on democracy, policies on India, and the British government’s policies in Egypt. He established himself as a regular speaker at the Union and his performance was praised in the Oxford Magazine for its ‘vigorous thinking and his animated, insistent delivery’ (4 May 1922) . In June 1923, he became Secretary of the Oxford Union and in March 1924 was elected Junior Treasurer. His exposure to Indian Nationalism at Oxford had a profound impact on his world view. It led him to conclude that his father’s political support for the British and the feudal system in Ceylon were anachronistic.

Bandaranaike returned to Ceylon in 1925 and became actively involved in the island’s politics and independence movement. He was elected to the Colombo Municipal Council in 1926 and joined the United National Party. He was a member of the State Legislature from 1931 onwards. He became Ceylon’s fourth prime minister in 1956 and was assassinated in 1959.

Rakhal Das Haldar was a member of the Brahmo Samaj who studied at University College London 1861-2. His father had worked for the East India Company. He joined the Bengal Civil Service upon his return to India and was manager of the Chota Nagpore Estate upon his death in 1887.

Das Haldar wrote a diary about his time in Britain that was published in 1903. He recounts the people he met and the sites he visited. The people he met included Ganendra Mohun Tagore who was teaching at UCL, Max Müller in Oxford, and Mary Carpenter in Bristol when he visited Ram Mohun Roy's tomb. He addressed the Social Science Association in August 1861 at Dublin on 'Education in Bengal'. At the UCL prize day on 1 July 1862, Das Haldar received a certificate in Jurisprudence. He returned to India two days later.

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.

Firoz Khan Noon arrived in England in July 1912 to study. He initially lived at the student hostel on 21 Cromwell Road, London. Because of colour prejudice, it was difficult for Indian students to find accommodation. The students’ department of the India Office made arrangements for him to stay with the family of the Reverend Lloyd who was a vicar at Ticknall, 10 miles from Derby. Lloyd helped Noon to be admitted to Wadham College, Oxford University. Initially Noon had applied to Balliol College, but he did not gain admission. Firoz Khan Noon built up a close relationship with the family and lived with them until October 1913. 

While at Oxford, on his father's advice, Noon mixed with very few Indian students. In his autobiography, Noon explained that ‘his idea was that I could see a lot of Indians in my own country but when I was abroad I must learn something about foreign people’ (From Memory, p. 70). At Oxford, Noon was a keen football player. He also played hockey for the Isis Club. Noon travelled regularly to London where he attended dinners at the Inner Temple, under the tutelage of Dr Hubbard. He also studied Persian with Professor Browne at the University of Cambridge. He graduated from Oxford with a BA in History in 1916. In later years, Noon was made an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College. During his time at Oxford he did not attend the meetings of the Majlis, preferring to devote most of his time to his studies.

After he finished his degree, Noon moved to London to sit his law examinations. He became a Barrister-at-Law of the Inner Temple within nine months and returned to India in September 1917. He set up a practice as a lawyer in the District Courts of Sargodha. He stood for the 1920 Lahore Legislative Council elections and won with a majority of nearly 10,000. He subsequently moved to Lahore, where he practised at the High Court. He was a member of the Provincial Legislative Council of the Punjab from 1920 to 1936 and a Minister for ten years. He was appointed High Commissioner for India in London in July 1936, a position he held for five and a half years.

Noon led the Indian delegation at the International Labour Organization meetings in Geneva in 1938-9. In 1938, Firoz Khan Noon, received a delegation from the Jamiat-ul-Muslimin who presented a petition to him in protest against H. G. Wells’ A Short History of the World. While in London he met Ernest Bevin, with whom he became good friends. Noon liked him for his outspokenness and his support for Indian independence. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he moved into the bomb shelter at India House. He fulfilled night-watch duties on the roof of India House. Furthermore, Noon was instrumental in helping to set up the Indian Comforts Fund, offering it space at India House. In 1939, he assumed the role of mediator to broker a deal to end the strike of Indian seamen that commenced with the outbreak of the Second World War in relation to pay and conditions. Noon was approached by the Board of Trade with a brief to minimize concessions to the sailors. However, Noon’s negotiating tactics with the lascars were unsuccessful, with shipping lines going back on terms agreed in the High Commissioner’s office. When a deal was brokered in December 1939, the India Office wanted to make sure that credit was accorded not to Surat Alley, London representative of the All India Seamen’s Federation, but rather to Noon and the Shipping Companies.

Firoz Khan Noon was present at the Caxton Hall meeting when Udham Singh shot Michael O’Dwyer in 1940. Noon returned to India having been appointed a Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council in 1941 where he became responsible for the defence portfolio. After independence, Firoz Khan Noon became Foreign and Prime Minister of Pakistan. He published Wisdom for Fools (1940), a book of stories for children, and the novel Scented Dust (1941). He died in 1970.

Prakash Tandon was the son of a civil engineer and born in a canal colony in the Punjab. His autobiographical writings, published in the second half of the twentieth century, give vivid accounts of life in Punjab from the late nineteenth century. Following schooling in Gujarat and Lahore Government College, Tandon sailed for Britain in 1929, aged eighteen years old. His elder brother, Manohar, was already in London. Tandon enrolled at Manchester University with the view to become a Chartered Accountant, of which there were very few qualified Indians at the time.

Tandon spent eight years in Britain. He got involved in the University debating team, and following his degree at Manchester stayed in London to pursue some economics research and his accountancy qualifications. At a students' congress in Oxford, he met his future wife, a Swedish woman, Gärd.

In 1937, Tandon returned to India. He settled in Bombay and he eventually got a job at Unilever. Despite his accountancy qualification, Tandon was employed in the advertising department and earnt less than his British colleagues. He eventually became director of Unilever in 1951. He was a member of the first board of Hindustan Lever in 1956 and then the first Indian Chairman in 1961. Tandon was an extremely influential business leader in independent India, and one of the pioneers of professional management in India.

P. C. Ray was a chemist, a historian and sociologist of science and an industrial entrepreneur. Following education in Calcutta, he won a Gilchrist Scholarship to study in Britain in the 1880s. He was met in London by Jagadish Chandra Bose and Satyaranjan Das. A week later he went up to Edinburgh University, with letters of introduction to Edinburgh families provided by Elizabeth Manning.

Ray studied chemistry, physics and zoology for a BSc and was then awarded a DSc in inorganic chemistry in 1887. He was elected Vice-President of the University Chemical Society in 1887. Ray wished to apply for a position within the Indian Educational Service although the higher posts in education were all but closed off to Indians. He returned to India in 1888, and armed with various letters of recommendation tried to enter the service. He was unemployed for a year until he got a temporary teaching post in Calcutta.

P. C. Ray eventually set up the Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works in Calcutta, India's first pharmaceutical company. In 1904 he toured Europe and was given a warm reception by Indian students at Edinburgh. In 1912, the University of Durham conferred unto him an honorary DSc degree. Ray was awarded with the Companionship of the Indian Empire (CIE) in 1912 and a knighthood in 1919. In 1916 he took up a position at the University College of Science in Calcutta, where he remained until retirement.

N. G. Ranga came from an agricultural background in Tamilnad, South India. His mother died when he was eight and although his family were not well off, his father sent him to study in England in 1920. Ranga travelled on the S. S. Loyalty with more than 300 other Indian students and the chemist, P. C. Ray. Ranga arrived in England without a place at university and went to live in Botley, an Oxford village, as he studied for the Responsions (entrance exams).

Ranga gained a place at Oxford University and soon became involved in the Lotus and Majlis societies. Ranga was influenced by the growth of socialism and was a member of the Oxford Labour Club. Although Ranga had considered joining the ICS, he decided against this as Indian politics were at the forefront of his mind. He embarked on a research degree in Economics. His wife later joined him and studied at the Ruskin School of Art.

Ranga was heavily influenced by M. K. Gandhi and village politics. Upon his return to India he became involved in the kisan movement. In 1957, Ranga became a Congress MP, but then founded the Swatantra Party in 1959. The Party was designed as a free-market liberal party that broke away from Nehru's socialist vision. Ranga retired from parliament in 1991.