N. C. Daruwalla was educated at Cambridge, Colwyn Bay, Oxford, Gillingham Grammar School (Dorset) and King Alfred School, Hampstead. He was fellow of the Royal Economic Society. He taught history at various schools in Britain and India including: Zoroastrian Boarding School, Deolali; St Xavier’s College, Bombay; Dinglewood, Colwyn Bay; Gillingham Grammar School, Dorset; and King Alfred School, London. He returned to India in 1921 and taught at Government College, Lahore before partition. He was the father of the poet Keki Daruwalla.

The nephew of J. N. Tata, Shapurji Saklatvala travelled to England in 1905 to recuperate from malaria and to manage the Tata company office in Manchester. He married Sarah Marsh in 1907 (a waitress he had met at the hydro in Matlock where he had been treated). They moved to London in 1907 and Saklatvala joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1909. In 1921, Saklatvala was adopted as the Labour candidate for Battersea North, despite joining the Communist Party in the same year. In November 1922, he won the seat for Labour and was defeated in December 1923. He regained the seat in October 1924, when he stood as a Communist representative and held the seat until 1929. Saklatvala was the 3rd Asian to become an MP in Britain (all incidentally of Parsee background).

Saklatvala raised Indian issues in Parliament. He was a member of the Indian Home Rule League (founded in 1916). He was also a founder member of the Workers' Welfare League in 1917. This League was initially concerned with the working conditions of Indian seamen in London, but soon widened its objectives to improve the position of all types of Indian workers. He was an influential figure to Indian students in London in the 1920s and 1930s, but was banned from returning to India because of his Communist affiliations. He died in his home in London in January 1936 and was buried in the Parsee burial ground in Brockwood, Surrey.

George Edalji became infamous in Britain when he was convicted in 1903 for the mutilation of a horse and for writing a number of malicious anonymous letters in the parish of Great Wyrley in Staffordshire.

Edalji was the eldest son of Shapurji Edalji, the vicar of Great Wyrley. Shapurji was of Parsee origin but practiced as an Anglican vicar, having received the parish from his wife's uncle in 1875. Shapurji had married Charlotte Stoneham in 1874. George was born in 1876, followed by Horace in 1879 and Maud in 1882. George Edalji was educated at Rugely Grammar School and then Mason College, Birmingham, where he studied law. In 1893, Edalji began a five year articleship with a firm of Birmingham solicitors and then set up his own law practice in 1899. He wrote a guidebook called Railway Law for the "Man in the Train" in 1901.

The Edalji family began to receive anonymous letters from about 1888, many of them threatening. The Chief Constable of Staffordshire, George Anson, alleged that George was the author of these letters. Then in 1903, a number of livestock were mutilated in Great Wyrley, and anonymous letters were circulated accusing Edalji of these crimes. Edalji was arrested for these crimes and despite an alibi was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison. His father worked tirelessly to publicize the case and his son's innocence. Suddenly, in 1906, Edalji was released from prison with no explanation or pardon. He was unable to return to work and therefore sought to clear his name after his release.

Edalji gained the help of Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes books, who wrote two non-copyright articles in The Daily Telegraph. Edalji's case became notorious and was widely discussed. In 1907, Herbert Gladstone, the Home Secretary, appointed a Special Committee of Inquiry. The Committee cleared Edalji of the crime of mutilation but upheld the claim that he was author of the anonymous letters. Under pressure, Gladstone awarded Edalji a free pardon but did not allow Edalji to be compensated. The case was instrumental in shaping public opinion about the fallacies of the British justice system. On 28 August 1907, the Criminal Appeal Act established the Criminal Court of Appeal. After his release from prison, Edalji moved to London and practised again as a lawyer. He died in 1953.

Behramji Malabari was a Parsee journalist and writer. He was an advocate of women's social reform in India an a champion of women's suffrage in India. He met Mary Carpenter on one of her visits to India in 1875 and dedicated The Indian Muse in English Garb, published in 1876, to her. In 1880, he became editor of the Indian Spectator.

Malabari became known in Britain for his role in promoting women's rights, particularly those of the Hindu widow. On the case of Rukhmabai of 1885, a child bride ordered to live with her husband, Malabari wrote not only editorials in his own paper, but also letters to the editors of The Times. Florence Nightingale and Max Müller both became interested in the case and wrote commentary on it. Malabari's reforming role played a part in the passing of the 1891 Age of Consent Act in India.

In 1890, Malabari travelled to Britain. His journey and observations of British life were recorded in 1893 in The Indian Eye on English Life; or, Rambles of a Pilgrim Reformer. The third edition, published in India in 1895, included a chapter that was not present in the British edition, on 'Sex', or women's rights.

M. M. Bhownaggree, a Parsee from Bombay, was elected as Conservative MP for Bethnal Green in 1895 (defeating George Howell). He was the second Indian to be elected to Parliament, and the first Tory. Bhownaggree retained his seat in the next General Election of 1900, but lost his seat in 1906. Seen by many as a Conservative tool to counteract the influence of Dadabhai Naoroji and the Indian Parliamentary Party, Bhownaggree did endeavour to bring Indian issues to the fore in the House of Commons, in particular the treatment of Indians in South Africa. Despite his concerns about Indians in South Africa, Bhownaggree supported the Boer War and was seen as a supporter of British Imperialism.

Bhownaggree arrived in Britain in 1882, with an allowance from the Maharaja of Bhavanagar to study law. He was called to the Bar in 1885 and was one of the Commissioners of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition at South Kensington in 1886. Bhownaggree donated money towards the Imperial Institute in South Kensington and a window to St Lukes, Redcliffe Square, in memory of his sister. He founded a training home for nurses, a public gymnasium in London and donated money to many other local associations. In 1897, Bhownaggree was promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE).

He died in London in 1933, aged 82.

Of an elite Parsee background, Avabai Wadia arrived in Britain aged 14, accompanied by her mother and to join her brother. She attended Brondesbury and Kilburn High School in London where she was the only South Asian pupil. She excelled at school and went on to train as a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, becoming the first Ceylonese woman to pass the Bar exams. As a direct consequence of her success, the Law College in Colombo opened its doors to women. She was called to the Bar in 1934 and eventually found a chambers willing to take on a South Asian woman. Committed to women’s rights, Wadia was an active member of a number of women’s organizations in Britain. She was also involved with the Labour Party and the Indian nationalist movement in Britain. On her return to India, she pioneered the family planning movement.

The youngest daughter of Communist politician Shapurji Saklatvala and his English wife Sarah Marsh, Sehri Saklatvala was born in Twickenham in 1919 and grew up in London. Along with her three brothers and sister, Sehri Saklatvala was raised in fairly modest circumstances, despite the family connection with the Tata firm. As a young woman, she became involved with the struggle for Indian independence in Britain. Indian Political Intelligence surveillance files note her presence in 1937 at India League meetings, along with other South Asian and British intellectuals and activists such as Mulk Raj Anand, Dr S. A. Wickremasinghe, Harry Pollitt, and Reginald Sorensen, as well as Krishna Menon. In the early 1940s she was also active, at least for a short while, in the Committee of Indian Congressmen.

Born to a Parsee Indian father (a mining engineer) and a Spanish-Sicilian mother (an opera singer), Kaikhosru Sorabji was a composer of prolific output (completing over 100 pieces for piano and keyboard) and is best known for his epic composition Opus Clavicembalisticum for piano (1930), which has an approximate duration of four and a half hours. Despite having no formal training, he was also a pianist of some renown, performing in various European cities as well as Bombay but retreating from public performance as early as 1936, preferring to play to private gatherings of friends. Sorabji gave the first performance of Opus Clavicembalisticum himself, in Glasgow in 1930. Following a particularly poor subsequent performance, he stipulated that his music could only be played with his permission.

In addition, Sorabji was an established music critic, writing reviews, essays and letters on music for a range of publications. Indeed, his writing extended beyond music, covering topics such as economics, unemployment, racism and homosexuality. As a gay ‘Spanish-Sicilian’ Parsee living in early twentieth century Britain, his experience of discrimination no doubt propelled him to write about these issues. Interestingly, Rozina Visram describes his views on colonialism as ‘ambivalent’: ‘critical of British rule, he was equally scathing of Indian activities’ (p. 291).

Dadabhai Naoroji, of Bombay Parsee origin, was the first Indian to be elected to Parliament in Britain. Naoroji travelled to Britain in 1885 as a business partner of Cama and Company. A member of several businesses, he became Professor of Gujarati at University College, London (1856-65). He had also been founder-editor of the journal Rast Goftar in Bombay in 1851. He founded the London Zoroastrian Association in 1861. He was also founding member of the East India Association and London Indian Society, and became vocal in promoting Indian rights in regard to the ICS and trade. Naoroji was an economist and proponent of the 'drain theory', building up a detailed economic critique of British imperialism in India. He also established links with Irish MPs and was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress in 1885 in Bombay.

In 1886, Naoroji campaigned as Liberal Party candidate for the strongly Conservative seat of Holborn. In 1888, referring to Naoroji's defeat, the Conservative Party Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, remarked that an English constituency was not ready to elect a 'Blackman', drawing greater notoriety to Naoroji. In 1892, he contested the seat of Central Finsbury, campaigning on Gladstone's platform of Liberalism, and was successfully elected with a majority of five. He lost his seat in the General Election of 1895. In 1906, Naoroji stood as a candidate at Lambeth North but was again unsuccessful. In 1907, Naoroji left England to retire at Versova in Bombay, where he died in 1917.