Independence Movement

India Bulletin

About: 

India Bulletin was the published organ of the Friends of India Society. It was initially published monthly. Its objective was to publish a detailed account of events in India to inform the British public and foster a better understanding of the Indian question. It sought to persuade the British that Indian self-governance could be the only resolution for India. It covered in great detail the Civil Disobedience Movement, and paid particular attention to Gandhi. Its February 1936 edition was devoted to Nehru’s visit to London and gave a detailed account of the speeches he made and meetings he attended among the Indian community. The journal also paid particular attention to the national press coverage of Indian events and attempted to redress the balance by informing its subscribers of the repressive measures of the Government in India.

It often reprinted articles, many in abridged form, that were previously published in Indian newspapers including The Hindu, The Indian Social Reformer, The Servant of India, The Maharatta, Harijan and Young India. It also featured articles on the women’s movement in India, the fight for national freedom in Spain, and the question of resistance through non-violent non-cooperation. The publication informed its audience of Gandhian philosophy, in line with the objectives of the Friends of India Society. The publication’s output became ever more sporadic as the Friends of India encountered financial difficulties in the late 1930s. India Bulletin was last published in August 1939 and ceased with the outbreak of the Second World War.

Date began: 
01 Feb 1932
Key Individuals' Details: 

Editors: Horace Alexander, Will Hayes, Atma S. Kamlani, Reginald Reynolds.

Connections: 

Contributors: Horace Alexander, Mulk Raj Anand, C. F. Andrews, Haidri Bhuttacharji, Reginald Bridgeman, Moti Chandra, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, John L. Clemence, Mahadev Desai, M. K. Gandhi, Agatha Harrison, Laurence Housman, Edith Hunter, Muriel Lester, Leonard W. Matters, Jawaharlal Nehru, V. J. Patel, S. L. Polak, Rajendra Prasad, T. A. Raman, Reginald Reynolds, Romain Rolland, J. T. Sunderland, Rabindranath Tagore, D. V. Tahmankar, Krishna Vir, Monica Whately (member of the India League delegation).

Date ended: 
01 Aug 1939
Archive source: 

British Library Newspapers, Colindale, London

Precise date ended unknown: 
Y
Books Reviewed Include: 

Nehru, Jawaharlal, An Autobiography

Rolland, Romain, Mahatma Gandhi: A Study in Indian Nationalism
 

Locations

30 Fleet Street
London, EC4Y 1 AA
United Kingdom
210 Herne Hill Road
London, SE24 0AN
United Kingdom
46 Lancaster Gate
London, W2 3LX
United Kingdom

Spanish Civil War

Date: 
17 Jul 1936
End date: 
01 Apr 1939
Event location: 

Spain

About: 

The Spanish Civil War was an armed conflict that erupted after a conservative-backed military coup to depose Spain’s republican government failed to gain control over the whole country. A bloody three-year war ensued with the Nationalists supported by fascist states like Italy and Germany, and Republicans supported by the Soviet Union and the Left across Europe and the US. Around 40,000 volunteers fought in Spain as part of the International Brigades, which were largely controlled by the Comintern, among them George Orwell and Mulk Raj Anand. The Spanish Civil War ended with the disbanding and surrender of Republican armies at the end of March 1939. The conflict cost an estimated 500,000 - 1,000,000 lives. For Britain it marked a threat to the post-World War I international consensus which would lead to the outbreak of the Second World War.

The conflict’s political impact reverberated far beyond Spain. It was seen as an international conflict and part of a wider struggle between freedom and democracy versus tyranny, dictatorship and fascism. It became a conflict of different conceptualizations of civil society and a struggle for people’s rights to self-determination, democracy and world peace. In the context of India’s struggle for independence it became evident that its own fight for self-determination was linked to other international conflicts like the Spanish Civil War. Nehru and Krishna Menon in particular realized this.

The conflict mobilized many Indian citizens living in Britain. For example Indira Nehru spoke in support of Republican Spain at a gathering organized by Krishna Menon. The January 1938 India League independence day demonstration also highlighted the conflicts in China, Abyssinia and Spain. Along with banners of Nehru and Gandhi, flags of Republican Spain were visible. The India League in collaboration with the Communist Party of Great Britain and other organizations on the Left held meeting and protest marches in support of Republican Spain. Menon and Nehru visited Spain in summer 1938 and Nehru addressed a crowd of 5,000 in Trafalgar Square as part of a demonstration in Aid of Republican Spain on 17 July 1938, which marked the second anniversary of the start of hostilities. The India League also founded the Indian Committee for Food For Spain, with Feroze Gandhi as organizing secretary. Menon and Clemens Palme Dutt combined forces and engaged in fund-raising activities for an ambulance.

People involved: 

Mulk Raj Anand, Protool Chandra Bhandari, Reginald Bridgeman, Clemens Palme Dutt, Avigodr Michael Epstein, Feroze Gandhi, C. L. Katial, Harold Laski, Krishna Menon, Indira Nehru (Gandhi), Jawaharlal Nehru, George Orwell, Reginald Sorensen, Monica Whately, S. A. Wickremasinghe, Ellen Wilkinson.

Published works: 

Nehru, Jawaharlal, Spain! Why? (London: Indian Committee for Food For Spain, 1938)

Orwell, George, Homage to Catalonia (London: Secker & Waburg, 1938)

Orwell, George, Orwell in Spain (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001)
 

Secondary works: 

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/451, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/PJ/12/293, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Julius Silverman

About: 

Julius Silverman was a Labour politician and MP. He had a long-standing association with Indian organizations in Britain. He was chairman for the Birmingham branch of Krishna Menon's India League and also attended meetings of the Committee of Indian Congressmen. As a Birmingham councillor, Silverman took up the causes of the South Asian community in his ward and lobbied on their behalf. He was good friends with Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Nehru. Julius Silverman became President of the India League in 1947 and its Chairman in 1974.

Date of birth: 
08 Dec 1905
Secondary works: 

Dalyell, Tam, 'Obituary: Julius Silverman', The Independent (24 September 1996)

Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/448-456, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

City of birth: 
Leeds
Country of birth: 
England
Date of death: 
21 Sep 1996
Location of death: 
Birmingham, England

Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike

About: 

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.

Published works: 

Towards a New Era. Selected speeches of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike made in the Legislature of Ceylon, 1931 to 1959, ed.  by G. E. P. de S. Wickramaratne (Colombo: 1961)

The thoughts of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike. A selection of significant quotations from his writings and speeches, ed. by M. A. de Silva (Nugegoda: Lotus Press, 1969)

Speeches on Labour (Sri Lanka : 1978)

Devolution in Sri Lanka : S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and the debate on power sharing, ed. by K. M. De Silva (International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 1996)

Example: 

S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, ‘Memories of Oxford’ in Speeches and Writings (Colombo, 1963), pp. 43-44

Date of birth: 
08 Jan 1899
Connections: 

Anthony Eden, M. K. Gandhi, Gerlad Gardiner, Edward Majoribanks, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Extract: 

My first task, therefore, was to kindle a real interest in the subject. I started by cracking a few jokes, making a few biting remarks at the expense of the opposition. Members began to sit up in their seats and take notice. Now that I held their attention, it was time to give them some more solid food. I proceeded to develop my argument. Soon the House hung breathless on my words; there was dead silence among the audience, which was too absorbed even to applaud. I was conscious of such power over my fellow-men as I had never known before. For a few moments I was master of the bodies and souls of the majority of my listeners. I unrolled the scroll of British history, tracing the trend of British political ideals, as they appeared to me, mounting steadily to the crest of my peroration, in which, with a lingering memory of Walter Pater, I compared the British love of freedom to the pictures of the Italian Renaissance ‘where you find a thread of golden light pervading the whole work; it is in the air, it dances in the eyes of men and women, it flickers in their hair, and is woven in the very texture of their flesh. And the thread of golden light which illumines for ever the life of this people is their love of freedom and free institutions…’. Not a sound was heard in that vast hall as I ceased, picked up my notes, and walked back to my seat. Then a storm of applause broke out, which refused to be quelled for many minutes.

Secondary works: 

Alles, A. C., The Assassination of a Prime Minister (New York : Vantage Press, 1986)

Manor, James, The Expedient Utopian: Bandaranaike and Ceylon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)

Oberst, R.C., ‘Bandaranaike, Solomon West Ridgeway Dias (1899–1959)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2009) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30571]

Symonds, Richard, Oxford and Empire: The Last Lost Cause? (New York: St Martin's Press, 1986)

Weeramantry, Lucian G., Assassination of a Prime Minister: the Bandaranaike Murder Case (Geneva: Studer S. A., 1969)

Relevance: 

The above extract is Bandaranaike’s assessment of his rhetorical skills in a debate on the proposition ‘The indefinite continuance of British sovereignty in India is a violation of British political ideals’. It shows Bandaranaike’s awareness of his skills to manipulate an audience and to communicate effectively.  The connection between Walter Pater, Italian renaissance painting and the notion of freedom in the context of India’s right of self-determination seems particularly striking in this instance.

Archive source: 

S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike Papers, National Archives Sri Lanka, Colombo, Sri Lanka

City of birth: 
Horagolla, Veyangoda
Country of birth: 
Ceylon
Current name country of birth: 
Sri Lanka

Location

Christ Church College
Saint Aldate's
Oxford, OX1 1DP
United Kingdom
51° 44' 56.4252" N, 1° 15' 23.958" W
Date of death: 
25 Sep 1959
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Oct 1919
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

October 1919 - February 1925

Location: 

Oxford, London.

Friends of India Society

About: 

The Friends of India Association was founded by Reginald Reynolds in 1930, shortly after his return from India. It adhered to Gandhian principles and attempted to make known to the wider British public Gandhi’s work in the Indian independence struggle. The object of the association was ‘to create and organize public opinion in Britain in favour of India’s right to self-determination, and to promote the significance of Mahatma Gandhi’s non violent movement as a moral equivalent of war’. The Friends of India Society was a pacifist, Quaker-associated organization. Like many Indian organizations in Britain at the time, it sought the Indian National Congress’s endorsement to become its spokesperson in London, and as such entered into direct rivalry with other organizations. Through its publication India Bulletin it sought to enlighten the British public about atrocities committed in India by the British. Furthermore, it tried to raise public awareness by holding regular rallies in Trafalgar Square. The Society was particularly active during the Second Round Table Conference, and Gandhi spoke to the Society on 6 October 1931.

The Society had its offices at 46 Lancaster Gate, next to the Fellowship Club, with which Atma S. Kamlani, its Secretary, was associated, and the Theosophical Society offices. It consisted of an information bureau, which collected information on India and distributed it among the British public to generate publicity through pamphlets, leaflets and a lending library. Furthermore, it organized platforms at which speakers addressed the public and held smaller group meetings not only in London but across the UK. The organization was reliant on donations from the public, subscriptions to Indian Bulletin and membership fees, and suffered serious financial difficulties from 1933 onwards. In 1931, the Society organized a tour titled ‘The Indian Caravan’, where Indian and British speakers would address meetings across the UK, speaking on Indian topics. The tour held thirty-one meetings in eighteen towns, travelling as far north as Carlisle and York.

From 1932 to 1939, the organization published India Bulletin which the India Office saw as containing ‘a mass of unscrupulous propaganda against methods employed by Government to quell the Civil Disobedience Movement’. It gave detailed accounts of atrocities committed in India which were later found in reports in the mainstream press in Britain. In 1933, it formed a Women’s Council. Because of the organization’s financial difficulties and some overlap with the India League in relation to its objectives, talk about potential cooperation between the two organizations started as early as 1933; however these never came off the ground. Atma S. Kamlani suffered a nervous breakdown in 1934 and left Britain. Gladys V. Coughin replaced him as Secretary.

The Society’s financial difficulties continued and it had to move in 1937 to 47 Victoria Street, London, SW1. According to the India Office, the organization ceased to function with the outbreak of the Second World War; however there is the suggestion that D. Tahmankar was still dealing with Friends of India Society correspondence in 1942. 

Published works: 

India Bulletin (1932-9 )

Other names: 

Friends of India Association

Secondary works: 

Owen, Nicholas, The British Left and India: Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism, 1885-1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002)

Date began: 
01 Oct 1930
Key Individuals' Details: 

Presidents: Laurence Housman, Reginald Reynolds.

Executive Committee: Miss Bertha Bracey, Atma S. Kamlani, J. D. Moos, Miss Frances E. Morgan, Bisheshwar Prasad Sinha, Miss Richienda C. Payne.

 

Connections: 

Horace Alexander, Shivabjai Gordhanbhai Amin, Mrs Bhattacharji, W. J. Borwon, Fenner Brockway, Miss Chesley, Gladys V. Coughin, Madam Faruki, Laurence Houseman, Atma S. Kamlani, Netta Koutane, Krishna Datta Kumria, Niarendu Datta Mazumdar, J. D. Moos, Miss Frances E. Morgan, Sylvia Pankhurst, Hormasji Rustomji Pardiwalla, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Miss Richienda C. Payne, H. S. N. Polak, Professor G. S. Ranga, Reginald Reynolds, Adrian Kolu Rienzi, Bertrand Russell, R. Rutnam, Shapurji Saklatvala, B. P.Sinha, Tarini Prasad Sinha, Reginald Stamp, Shridhar Nadharai Telkar, Wilfred Wellock, Miss Dorothy Woodman.

Date ended: 
01 Jan 1939
Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/428, L/PJ/12/411, L/I/1/50, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Location

46 Lancaster Gate
London, W2 3NA
United Kingdom

Asha Bhattacharya

About: 

Asha Bhattacharya ran education classes with Mrs J. Handoo and Indian students for the India League's East End Branch. These took place at Ayub Ali's cafe, the Shah Jolal Restaurant.

Secondary works: 

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of Hisotry (London: Pluto, 2002)

Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/455-6, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Location: 

London

J. Handoo

About: 

Mrs J. Handoo, wife of Dr H. K. Handoo, was an active member of the India League. Together with Asha Bhattacharya she ran education classes under the auspices of the India League's East End branch at the Shah Jolal Restaurant. She was a member of the India League's Central Committee and its women's committee. She was instrumental in fundraising for the India League, and organized a scheme of annual subscription from affluent Indians living in Britain.

Connections: 

Mulk Raj Anand, Asha Bhattacharya, Mrs M. F. Boomla, H. K. Handoo, C. L. Katial, Krishna Menon, Syed Mohamedi, Rewal Singh.

Secondary works: 

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Other names: 

Mrs J. Handoo, Jai Kishore Handoo

Location: 

London

Choudhary Rahmat Ali

About: 

Choudhary Rahmat Ali was born in  Balachaur, Punjab, India. After taking his anglo-vernacular middle school certificate from the Municipal Board Middle School of Rahon in 1910, he moved to the Saindas Anglo-Sanskrit High School, Jullundher, where he passed his finals in 1912. In 1918, he received his BA degree from Islamia College, Lahore. He moved to England in November 1930.

On 18 November he joined one of the Inns of Court, Middle Temple, but due to complications he was not called to the Bar until 26 January 1943. On 26 January 1931, he was admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he passed the Law Tripos examination in June 1932, received his BB degree on 29 April 1933 and his MA degree on 18 October 1940.

Although Rahmat Ali had already voiced his idea for an independent Muslim state on the subcontinent before he moved to Britain, it was here that he would publish his pamphlet Now or Never: Are We to Live or Perish for Ever? (1933). In this pamphlet, issued on 28 January 1933, he made an appeal 'on behalf of the thirty million Muslims of PAKSTAN, who live in the five Northern Units of India - Punjab, N. W. F. P. (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan, embodying their inexorable demand for the recognition of their separate national status, as distinct from the rest of India, by the grant of a separate Federal Constitution on social, religious, political and historical grounds'. According to one source, Rahmat Ali had already coined the word in late 1932, while travelling on top of a bus (route 11) in London (see Aziz, Rahmat Ali, p. 89).

Rahmat Ali was dissatisfied with the outcome of the Round Table Conferences (1930-32) and felt that the nation was being sacrificed. His declaration was co-signed by Khan Muhammad Aslam Khan Khattak, Sahibzada Sheikh Muhammad Sadiq and Khan Inayat Ullah Khan in order to make it more representative. Given that he was just a student, his declaration was dismissed by politicians on all sides, Muslim, Hindu and British. In order to gain more political weight, he founded the Pakistan National Movement in 1933. The Movement fought against 'Indianism', and from his Cambridge address Rahmat Ali published a series of pamphlets over the next years.

In 1942, he published the pamphlet 'The Millat and the Mission: Seve Commandments of Destiny for the "Seventh" Continent of Dinia', in which he called for two further independent Muslim states, Bangistan (an abbreviation of Bang-i-Islamistan) and Osmanistan. This grandiose scheme represented Rahmat Ali's utmost dedication to the creation of a new Muslim Asia with seven Muslim strongholds surrounded by Hindu regions.

Rahmat Ali's declaration was too radical for the Jinnah-led All-India Muslim League, which had seized upon the possibility of an independent Muslim state and garnered public support in the 1940s. When Jinnah and the Muslim League accepted the British plan in June of 1947, Rahmat Ali was furious. The concessions made by the League prompted Rahmat Ali to publish a leaflet entitled 'The Greatest Betrayal: How to Redeem the Millat?' (1947) and later that year the book Pakistan: The Fatherland of the Pak Nation.

In the summer of 1948 he made a trip to his home town, which was now part of India, and returned to England in October 1948. Upon return to Cambridge his health started to deteriorate. He fell ill in late January 1951 and was admitted to the Evelyn Nursing Home where he died on 3 February 1951.

Published works: 

What Does the Pakistan National Movement Stand For? (Cambridge: Pakistan National Movement, 1933)

 Letters to the Members of the British Parliament (Cambridge, 8 July 1935)

Islamic Fatherland and the Indian Federation: The Fight Will Go On for Pakistan (Cambridge: Pakistan National Movement, 1935) 

Letter to The Times, 8 December 1938

The Millat of Islam and the Menace of Indianism (Cambridge: Pakistan National Movement, n.d.)

The Millat and the Mission: Seven Commandments of Destiny for the 'Seventh' Continent of Dinia (Cambridge: Pakistan National Movement, 1942)

The Millat and her Minorities: Foundation of Faruqistan for the Muslims of Bihar and Orissa (Cambridge: The Faruqistan National Movement, 1943)

The Millat and her Minorities: Foundation of Haideristan for Muslims of Hindoostan (Cambridge: The Haideristan National Movement, 1943)

The Millat and her Minorities: Foundation of Maplistan for Muslims of South India (Cambridge: The Maplistan National Movement, 1943)

The Millat and her Minorities: Foundation of Muinistan for Muslims of Rajistan (Cambridge: The Muinistan National Movement, 1943)

The Millat and her Minorities: Foundation of Siddiqistan for Muslims of Central India (Cambridge: The Siddiqistan National Movement, 1943)

The Millat and her Minorities: Foundation of Safiistan for Muslims of Western Ceylon (Cambridge: The Safiistan National Movement, 1943)

The Millat and her Minorities: Foundation of Nasaristan for Muslims of Eastern Ceylon (Cambridge: The Nasaristan National Movement, 1943)

The Millat and her Ten Nations: Foundation of the All-Dinia Milli Movement (Cambridge: The All-Dinia Milli Movement, 1944)

Dinia: The Seventh Continent of the World (Cambridge: Dinia Continental Movement, 1946)

India: The Continent of Dinia, or the Country of Doom (Cambridge: Dinia Continental Movement, 1946)

The Pakistan National Movement and the British Verdict on India (Cambridge: Pakistan National Movement, 1946)

Pakasia: The Historic Orbit of the Pak Culture (Cambridge: The Pakasia Cultural Movement, 1946)

Bangistan: The Fatherland of the Bang Nation (Cambridge: The Bangistan National Movement, 1946)

Osmanistan: The Fatherland of the Osman Nation (Cambridge: The Osmanistan National Movement, 1946)

The Greatest Betrayal: How to Redeem the Millat? (Cambridge: Pakistan National Movement, 1947)

Pakistan: The Fatherland of the Pak Nation, 3rd edn (Cambridge: Pakistan National Liberation Movement, 1947)

The Muslim Minority in India and the Saving Duty of the U.N.O. (Cambridge: The All-Dinia Milli Liberation Movement, 1948)

The Muslim Minority in India and the Dinian Mission to the U.N.O. (Cambridge: The All-Dinia Milli Liberation Movement, 1949)

Pakistan or Pastan? Destiny or Disintegration? (Cambridge: The Pakistan National Liberation Movement, 1950) 

Complete Works of Rahmat Ali, ed. by Khursheed Kamal Aziz (Islamabad: National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research, 1978)

Now or Never: Are We to Live or Perish for Ever? (Cambridge: University of Openness Press, [1933] 2005)

Date of birth: 
16 Nov 1897
Connections: 

Nawab Sir Umar Hayat Khan Tiwana

Secondary works: 

Abdulhamid, Cauhdari Rahmat Ali aur Tahrik-i Pakistan (Lahaur: Daruttazkir, 1995)

Ahmad, Khan A., The Founder of Pakistan: Through Trial to Triumph (London: the Author, [1942]) 

Ahmad, Waheed, Choudhary Rahmat Ali and the Concept of Pakistan (Lahore: Research Society of Pakistan, 1970)

Allana, G., 'Choudhary Rahmat Ali', in Our Freedom Fighters, 1562-1947: Twenty-One Great Lives (Karachi: Paradise Subscription Agency, [1969])

Anwar, Muhammad, 'The Forgotten Hero: I', Pakistan Times (23 March 1964)

Aziz, Khursheed Kamal, Complete Works of Rahmat Ali, vol. 1,  ed. by K. K. Aziz(Islamabad: National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research, 1978) 

Aziz, Khursheed Kamal, Rahmat Ali: A Biography (Lahore: Vanguard, 1987)

Baqa, Muhammad Sharif, Cauhdari Rahmat Ali ne Kaha (Lahaur: Maktabah-yi Tamir-i Insaniyyat, 1995)

Cauhdari, Muhammad Azam, Zuamae Pakistan (Karachi: Abdullah Akaidimi, 1996)

Edib, Halidé, Inside India (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1937)

Khaliquzzaman, Choudhry, Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore: Longmans, Pakistan Branch, [1961])

Wasti, S. M. Jamil, My Reminiscences of Choudhary Rahmat Ali (Karachi: Royal Book Company, 1982)

Archive source: 

Tutorial file and other papers, Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Commonplace book, Emmanuel College Library, Cambridge

Papers and correspondence, Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge

City of birth: 
Balachaur
Country of birth: 
India

Locations

16 Montague Road
Cambridge, CB4 1BX
United Kingdom
52° 12' 52.1712" N, 0° 7' 58.4724" E
10 Albert Road (now Prince Albert Road)
London, NW1 7SS
United Kingdom
51° 32' 15.0144" N, 0° 9' 5.3136" W
Humberstone Road
Cambridge, CB4 1JG
United Kingdom
52° 12' 48.6936" N, 0° 7' 59.3616" E
Date of death: 
03 Feb 1951
Location of death: 
Cambridge
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Nov 1930
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1930-40, 1943-8, 1948-51

Tags for Making Britain: 

Chuni Lal Katial

About: 

Chuni Lal Katial was a doctor and politician. He moved to England in 1927 after graduating with a medical degree from Lahore University and working for five years with the Indian Medical Service in Iraq. He resigned his position to continue his training in public health. He studied in Liverpool and gained a diploma in tropical medicine. He later became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine. On moving to London Katial established his own practice, first in Canning Town and later in Finsbury, attending mainly to working-class patients. He was a member of the Indian Social Club and the Indian Medical Association, and was involved with the Hindu Association of Europe.

He became heavily involved with the India League and was a supporter of Krishna Menon. During the second Round Table Conference in Autumn 1931, he put himself at the disposal of Gandhi, arranging meetings and effectively becoming his chauffeur. The meeting between Charlie Chaplin and Gandhi took place at his house.

He won a seat for Labour on Finsbury Borough Council in 1934 and served as Deputy Mayor from 1936 to 1938. He became the first South Asian mayor in 1938, a position he held until 1939. In 1946, he was elected to the London County Council to represent the borough. His work as Chairman of Finsbury’s public health committee had the most wide-reaching impact, with Katial being a driving force for the creation of a health centre for the borough, which opened in 1938. It concentrated under one roof a number of services and health provisions for the borough’s population, such as doctors’ surgeries, a TB clinic, a dentist and a women’s clinic. It was a trailblazer for similar provisions which formed an integral part of the National Heath Service, created in 1948.

During the Second World War, Katial worked as a civil defence medical officer and chaired the air raid precautions medical service and food control committee. He also provided training in first aid for the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. For his services to the borough he was made a freeman of Finsbury in 1948. The same year he returned to India and worked as Director-General of the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation of India until 1953. He returned to London in the 1970s and died in Putney in 1978.

Published works: 

 Handbook Relating to Public Health Services in Finsbury (London: Finsbury Borough Council)

 

Date of birth: 
01 Jan 1898
Connections: 

Dr Bhandari, G. D. Birla, Durga Das, Mahdev Desai, M. K. Gandhi, Sir Mirza Ismail, A. S. Iyengar, M. A. Jinnah, Zafarullah Khan, Jiwan Lal Kapur, Muriel Lester, Krishna Menon, Indira Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Motilal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, Bepin Chandra Pal, Sir A. P. Patro, H. S. L. Polak, K. C. Roy, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Satis Chandra Sen (fellow doctor), Usha Sen, Muhammad Shafi, Said Amir Shah (India League), Purshottamdas Thakurdas.

Hindu Association of Europe, Indian Medical Association, Indian Social Club.

Precise DOB unknown: 
Y
Secondary works: 

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Visram, Rozina, 'Katial, Chuni Lal (1898–1978)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/71/101071630/]

 
 
Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/448-56, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Oral History Files, Nehru Memorial Library, Delhi, India

Involved in events: 
Other names: 

Dr Chuni Lal Katial

C. L.  Katial

Locations

21 Spencer Street Finsbury
London, EC1V 7HP
United Kingdom
51° 31' 41.3724" N, 0° 6' 10.5048" W
Victoria Dock Road Canning Town
E16 3AA
United Kingdom
51° 30' 35.3448" N, 0° 1' 21.7416" E
Date of death: 
14 Nov 1978
Location of death: 
Putney, London
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1927
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1927-47, 1970-8

Location: 

Liverpool, London.

Krishnarao Shelvankar

About: 

Krishnarao Shelvankar grew up in Madras, and was educated at the Theosophical School in Adyar which was founded by Annie Besant and Jiddu Krishnamurti. He was awarded a postgraduate fellowship at the University of Wisconsin in the 1920s, where he studied for an MA and a PhD. Krishnarao Shelvankar arrived in England in 1929 to study political philosophy at the London School of Economics with Harold Laski, who together with Krishna Menon had a lasting influence on his thinking. He gained notoriety with the publication of Ends are Means, a response to Aldous Huxley's Ends or Means? (1937). Krishna Menon encouraged him to write The Problem with India, a book deemed so incendiary that it was subsequently banned in India. Both books influenced many political thinkers on the Left at the time.

Shelvankar was co-editor of the the quarterly journal Indian Writing in the 1940s. He wrote for The Hindu newspaper in London from 1942-68. For two years, he worked for Nehru as his press advisor. In 1942, he was asked to work for the BBC Indian Section of the Eastern Service by George Orwell. Shevankar formed part of a wider network of South Asians working at the BBC, such as Cedric Dover, Mulk Raj Anand, and Narayana Menon. In November 1944 he became an advisor to the Federation of Indian Student Societies in Great Britain and Ireland. He spoke at the organization's weekend school, which was held at Caxton Hall in January 1945.

He later moved to Moscow, Hanoi and Oslo as ambassador to India with his Scottish wife Mary, who was also active in the independence movement. He retired in 1978 and moved back to London.

Published works: 

Ends are Means: A Critique of Social Values (London: Drummond, 1938)

The Problem of India (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1940)

Aspects of Planned Development (Chandigarh: Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, 1985)

Date of birth: 
03 Mar 1906
Contributions to periodicals: 

The Hindu

Indian Writing

Articles:

'The British Intelligentsia', Indian Writing 1.3 (March 1941)

'Science in India', Indian Writing 2 (Summer 1942)

 Book Reviews:

'East versus West', Indian Writing 1.1 (Spring 1940)

'The Indian Press',  Indian Writing 1.2 (Summer 1940)

'Nehru and the Traitor Class', Indian Writing 1.3 (March 1941)

'Molotov and Conolly', Indian Writing 1.4 (Aug. 1941)

Secondary works: 

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/639, L/I/1/1512, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham Park, Reading

City of birth: 
Madras
Country of birth: 
India
Current name city of birth: 
Chennai
Other names: 

Krishnarao Shiva Shelvankar

Location

Alhambra Hotel
6 Coram Street
London, WC1N 1HB
United Kingdom
51° 31' 26.5188" N, 0° 7' 34.1364" W
Date of death: 
19 Nov 1996
Location of death: 
London
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
19 Nov 1996
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1929-68, 1978-96

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