Mary Hobhouse was married to Lord Arthur Hobhouse, who served on the Viceroy's Legal Council in India. Upon their return to England in 1877, they became members of the National Indian Association. Mary Hobhouse often chaired the committee meetings of the Association, particularly from 1886 until 1901. She and her husband were leading figures of the Association until they died within months of each other in 1904 and 1905. The couple had no children.

After Cornelia Sorabji wrote to the National Indian Association in 1888, Lady Hobhouse was instrumental in raising funds for Cornelia Sorabji to study in Britain. Hobhouse wrote a letter to The Times and established a fund that was also advertised in the Queen. Contributors included E. A. Manning, Florence Nightingale, Madeleine Shaw Lefevre, Sir William Wedderburn and many other British figures. When Sorabji came to England in 1889, the Hobhouses saw Sorabji regularly and encouraged her to take up the teaching and then the legal line rather than medicine as Sorabji had originally envisaged.

Mary Hobhouse often contributed to the Journal of the National Indian Association (Indian Magazine at this time). Contributions included a review of Manmohan Ghose and Laurence Binyon's Primavera in 1890 and an edited selection of extracts from the diary of Mehdi Hasan Khan's visit to London in the same year.

E. J. Beck was Honorary Secretary of the National Indian Association from 1905. She was the younger sister of Theodore Beck, Principal of the Mahomedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh, and lived in India with him when he was Principal. After his death, she returned to London and became involved in the National Indian Association. On the death of E. A. Manning in 1905, Miss Beck became Honorary Secretary. She did not however edit its organ, The Indian Magazine and Review, for long, and employed Miss A. A. Smith to take on editorial duties. Beck was present at the NIA event at the Imperial Institute at which Madan Lal Dhingra assassinated Sir Curzon-Wyllie and was called as a witness to Dhingra's trial. She retired in 1932 and The Indian Magazine and Review stopped printing.

She died in Allahabad on 1 January 1936 while on a tour of India to visit friends. Cornelia Sorabji was in Allahabad at the time and recounted the last days of Miss Beck for the NIA.

Born in 1828, Elizabeth Adelaide Manning was involved in the formation of the London branch of the National Indian Association in February 1871 with her step-mother, Charlotte Manning, at their home at 107 Victoria Street, London. Charlotte Manning died soon after in April 1871 and her step-daughter later moved to Maida Vale. After the death of the founder, Mary Carpenter, in Bristol in 1877, Manning became Honorary Secretary of the NIA and the headquarters were shifted to London. With the role of Honorary Secretary, Manning also became editor of The Journal of the National Indian Association. Manning was involved in the renaming of the journal to The Indian Magazine in 1886 and then to The Indian Magazine and Review in 1891. She remained Honorary Secretary until July 1905, when she had to resign owing to ill-health.

Through a twenty-eight year stewardship of the National Indian Association, Manning's name became synonomous with the Association. Cornelia Sorabji stayed with Miss Manning when she first arrived in England in 1889 and maintained links with the Association throughout her life. Sukumar Ray visited the Association in 1911 and described the organization as 'Miss Manning's Association' in letters to his parents.

On her death in 1905, the Indian Magazine and Review produced a special memorial issue in October on that year. The issue included personal recollections from M. M. Bhownaggree, Syed Ameer Ali and Dadabhai Naoroji. In the November 1905 issue, the journal printed an obituary poem by N. B. Gazder, entitled 'In Memory of Elizabeth Adelaide Manning'. The NIA was one of the institutions to which Miss Manning bequeathed money in her will.

Mary Carpenter was the daughter of a Unitarian Minister, Lant Carpenter, whose family moved to Bristol in 1817. In 1833 the Brahmo Samaj Reformer, Raja Rammohun Ray, visited Bristol and was an important influence upon Mary Carpenter, encouraging an interest in India. Carpenter moved into Red House Lodge in Bristol in 1858 and entertained a number of Indian visitors to Britain, including Satyendranath Tagore, the elder brother of Rabindranath, who arrived in Britain in 1863 and was the first Indian to join the ICS through the competitive ranks, his companion Manomohun Ghose, Joguth Chunder Gangooly, an ordained minister from Boston, and Rakhal Das Haldar who visited Britain for education in the 1860s.

Mary Carpenter visited India four times, the first was in 1866 where she was accompanied by Manomohun Ghose, returning to India after having been called to the Bar, and the daughter of Dr Goodeve Chuckerbutty from Calcutta who had been sent to England for education. Her first port-of-call was to Satyendranath Tagore in Bombay, and on this trip she met Sasipada Banerji who was to return the visit in 1871.

During her third visit to India in 1870, Keshub Chunder Sen discussed with Carpenter the idea of forming an association in Britain. Sen visited her in Bristol in June 1870 and in September 1870, Mary Carpenter inaugurated the Bristol Indian Association. This Association was subsequently renamed the National Indian Association and was designed to promote social reform (particulary female education) in India and provide a meeting place for Indian visitors to Britain. In January 1871, Carpenter began producing the Journal of the National Indian Association. After her death in 1877, the headquarters of the Association were transferred to London.

Mehdi Hasan Khan was a Hyderabadi Civil Servant of Lucknow Origin. Born in around 1852, he met and married Ellen Gertrude Donnelly, the daughter of the Irish Resident of Lucknow. In 1883, he got a job in Hyderabad and became Chief Justice in 1886. In 1887 he was given the title Fath Nawaz Jung by the Nizam.

In 1888 he was deputed by the Nizam to travel to London regarding a case involving the Hyderabad (Deccan) Mining Company. During his time in Britain, Khan wrote a diary of observations. This was first partly published in a few edited extracts by Mary Hobhouse in the Indian Magazine in 1890. It was then also published for private circulation in 1890.

Associated with Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Aligarh College, Khan arrived in England with introductions to relatives and colleagues of English officials. He was received in London by Theodore Beck's sister and invited to a 'drawing room' held by Queen Victoria in Buckingham Palace on 9 May 1888. The diaries deal with his visits to various landmarks and towns in England, the people he met and also provide some social commentary on British life.

Born in 1840 in Barnagar, five miles north of Kolkata, Sasipada Banerji was a reformist Hindu who married a thirteen-year-old girl, Rajkumari Devi, in 1860. However, he refused any dowry and began to teach her to read and write a year after their marriage. Banerji joined the Brahmo Samaj in 1861 and was involved in the social reform movement in West Bengal.

Sasipada Banerji met Mary Carpenter on her visit to India in 1866 and she subsequently invited him and his wife to visit her in England to educate British people on the cause of female education in India. Despite some hesitations about crossing the kalapani (black waters) with his wife, Banerji took up the offer and left India on 19 April 1871. He believed that his wife was the first Brahmin lady to cross the seas to visit Britain.

In Britain, Banerji was welcomed by the Secretary of State. He joined the Good Templars Body and became a member of the Order of the Day Star Lodge. He lectured on temperance, female education and working men's movements. He attended National Indian Association meetings and established branches of the NIA in other cities in Britain. His son was born at Mary Carpenter's house, Red Lodge, in Bristol on 10 October 1871, and was named Albion; Mary Carpenter wrote to Colonel Posonby, the Queen's Private Secretary, to inform her of the birth of what they believed to be the first British born Indian. Banerji returned with his family to India in 1872, his wife Rajkumari died in 1876 and he re-married in 1877.

Keshub Chunder Sen was a Brahmo Samaj reformer. He visited Britain for six months in 1870. During this trip, Sen toured Britain to deliver sermons and met with a variety of political leaders, including W. E. Gladstone. Sen met Queen Victoria, who later presented him with two books.

On a visit to Bristol. Sen stayed at the house of Mary Carpenter. It was during this meeting that they decided to form the National Indian Association in aid of Social Progress, which was run by Carpenter in Britain.

Upon his return to India, Sen was involved in controversy when he arranged the marriage of his daughter (Sunity Devee) to the son of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar, despite the fact that she was only thirteen years old and violated the reforms that he and the Brahmo Samaj had been campaigning for.