Like the Hindustan Community House, the main purpose of the Hindustani Social Club was to do social and educational work among seamen and pedlars in the East End. A key figure in the HSC was Surat Alley, a political activist whose main concern and area of activism was the working conditions of Indian seamen. The Club also served as a social centre for Indians in the East End. In 1939, Alley organized a charity performance by the Indian dancer Ram Gopal and his troupe for the entertainment of the Club’s members (L/PJ/12/630, p. 60).

The Club also functioned as a political meeting place and as a forum where Indian activists could educate and mobilize working-class Indians against British colonial rule. Alley issued to its members news bulletins in Urdu and Bengali on the British Government’s oppression of Indian workers and peasants, and in 1942 the Club hosted an ‘Indian Independence Day’ meeting, attended by Mulk Raj Anand as well as numerous well-known activists (L/PJ/12/454, pp. 13-16). Further, with Surat Alley as its Honorary Secretary, it inevitably had links with the Colonial Seamen’s Association as well as with other organizations for lascars, and, according to a government surveillance report, in 1939 it served as a meeting place for striking lascars (L/PJ/12/630, p. 25). In the eyes of the Government, Surat Alley’s association with the Club made it particularly suspect; in 1940, its premises (also Alley’s home at the time) were searched because of Alley’s links with Udham Singh (ibid., p. 81). 

The Indian Workers’ Association had a dual aim: to raise consciousness of the struggle for Indian independence among working-class Indians in Britain, and to protect and enhance their welfare. While there was some overlap between the IWA and the India League, the former was a working-class organization whose membership was composed almost uniquely of Indians. The founders and protagonists of the organization were mainly Sikh and Muslim Punjabis who had turned to peddling on their arrival in Britain, later finding factory work or construction work at the aerodromes and militia camps that had sprung up in the Midlands during the Second World War. Meetings were conducted predominantly in Hindustani, which often excluded Bengali seamen and ex-seamen from participation, although there were also bi-monthly ‘open meetings’ conducted in English and with invited British speakers.

In the Indian Political Intelligence files, many of the Sikh pioneers of the IWA are described as having ‘Ghadr sympathies’, their main concern being to raise money for Ghadr Party initiatives such as the Desh Bhagat Parwar Sahaik Committee, which helped the dependents in India of ‘Sikh martyrs’, or the Udham Singh Defence Fund. Generally, the political activity and mobilization of working-class Indians was a source of grave concern to the India Office. IPI records reveal discussion of ways in which the organization’s leaders could be dispersed to different parts of the country where there were few Indians and less opportunity to stir up anti-British feeling among their fellow countrymen. Indeed, the IPI kept lists of IWA men who they considered particularly seditious and who should be interned in the event of an invasion during the war.

In terms of welfare work, the IWA leadership helped working-class Indians to avoid army conscription if they wished. It also provided a forum for discussion of employment grievances. Records of speeches at IWA meetings reveal the link between the oppression of Indians in Britain and their subjugation to the British in India; for example, Indian machinists in British factories are described as being reallocated to unskilled labouring jobs because of the fear that if they acquire the same skills as Englishmen they will return to India and teach their fellow countrymen the trade, thereby undermining the rationale for British rule.

Although it began as early as 1937, the IWA gained real momentum when Vellala Srikantaya Sastrya, an educated Madrassi, became secretary of the Birmingham branch in 1942. He gave the organization leadership and coherence. By 1944, however, signs of discord among the main players were evident, with Akbar Ali Khan relocating from Coventry to East London to open a rival IWA in the capital.