The Indian Appeal was a monthly journal set up by an Indian student at Oxford University, Hira Lal Kumar. It began in September 1889 with the aims to publicise Indian questions in the UK and provide summaries of opinions from India on these questions. The journal included discussion of the achievements of other Indian students in the UK, and events at the National Indian Association and Northbrook Club.
The subscription was 3/ per annum or 3d monthly and appeared to be financed totally by subscriptions and Kumar's efforts. The last issue was published in April 1892, as Kumar was not receiving enough subscriptions to keep up with the costs.
Other names:
The Indian Appeal: a Monthly Magazine intended to give Expression to the bona fide Opinions of the Native and Anglo-Indian Press on Indian politics, etc.
Britain and India began in January 1920 as a monthly journal in order to promote understanding and unity between the two countries. It was edited by the Australian Theosophist, Mrs Josephine Ransom, in London, and was the organ of the Britain and India Association that began at the same time. The journal included articles ranging from political statements, reviews of books, interviews with key Indian individuals (including Rabindranath Tagore and Sarojini Naidu) to accounts of events in London for British and Indian audiences and reprints of speeches given by Indians in London halls (such as by C. R. Jinarajadasa and Yusuf Ali).
By August 1920, the journal had to be produced bi-monthly, and it was discontinued in December 1920 due to financial constraints. The journal was particularly concerned with responding to the Jallianwalla Bagh Massacre in Amritsar and was keen to make sure the event was not forgotten in its readers' minds. It also promoted women's associations and education for Indian women in Britain. The journal provided regular accounts of the performances put on by Kedar Nath Das Gupta's Union of the East and West. On 30 October 1920, the association hosted a conference on India in London.
Date began:
01 Jan 1920
Connections:
Contributors: Chinnammalu Amma, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, N. C. Daruwalla, Jamnadas K. Gandhi (Gandhi's nephew), Noor Inayat Khan (head of the Sufi order in England), V. K. Maulana Syed Sulaiman Nadwi (member of the Indian Khilafat Delegation), Thakur Jessarajsinghji Seesodi, Khalid Sheldrake.
Date ended:
01 Dec 1920
Books Reviewed Include:
Ali, Maulvi Muhammad, Islam: The Religion of Humanity (Unwin Brothers)
Kaumudi, Kavita, Great Ganga the Guru; or How a Seeker Sought the Real (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner)
Singh, Saint Nihal,The King’s Indian Allies: The Rajas and their India and India’s Fighters: Their Mettle, History and Services to Britain
The Ceylon Students' Association in London worked closely with the Majlis and the India League. It was very active in the 1920s. D. B. Jayatilleke and S. A. Wickremasinghe worked with Krishna Menon and Shapurji Saklatvala. They wrote the Study of the Report on Constitution together in 1928, on their responses to British constitutional reforms with particular reference to Ceylon’s Donoughmore Constitution. Many of its members were Sinhala-speaking socialist students from Buddhist Theosophist Schools who came to Britain for undergraduate or postgraduate study at the University of London. Its members went on to found the Marxist Lanka Sama Samaja Party in Sri Lanka in 1935. This London group opposed both A. E. Goonesinghe and the British Labour Party’s claims that the Ceylon National Congress were oligarchs, arguing that they preferred indigenous oligarchs to foreign rule. The Ceylon Students' Association along with the Pan-African Federation, WASU, the Federation of Indian Associations in Britain and the Burma Association, organized the Anti-Colonial Peoples' Conference in June 1945, which called for an end to imperialism.
Published works:
Wickremasinghe, S. A., Ceylon: A Study of the 'Report of the Special Commission on the Constitution'
Articles in Fourth International and British Militant
Secondary works:
Visram, Rozina, South Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)
Date began:
01 Jan 1920
Precise date began unknown:
Y
Key Individuals' Details:
D. B. Jayatilleke, N. M. Perera, C. R. de Silva (Secretary), S. A. Wickremasinghe.
Thomas Arnold was an Orientalist scholar and administrator. From 1888 to 1898, Arnold taught philosophy at the Muhammad Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh. His contemporaries were Theodore Morison (chair of the report into scholarships for Indians to study technical subjects in the UK in 1913) and Theodore Beck, the Principal of MAO college.
In 1898, Arnold joined the Indian Educational Service and taught philosophy at Government College, Lahore, where he had a profound influence upon the poet-philosopher Mohammad Iqbal. Arnold returned to London in 1904. He worked as assistant librarian at the India Office, and taught Arabic at University College, London.
In 1892, Arnold married the niece of Theodore Beck. Theodore Beck's sister, Emma Josephine Beck, was Honorary Secretary of the National Indian Association from 1905 to 1932. In 1910, when the NIA's offices were housed in 21 Cromwell Road, so were the offices of the Bureau of Information for Indian Students for whom Arnold acted as educational advisor to Indian students (1909-12). Arnold was also involved in the formation of the India Society in 1910. In 1920, he retired from the India Office and was appointed as the first holder of the School of Oriental Studies' (founded in 1917) chair of Arabic and Islamic studies.
Published works:
Bihzad and his Paintings in the Zafar-namah ms (London: B. Quaritch, 1930)
The Caliphate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924)
The Court Painters of the Grand Moghuls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921)
(with Alfred Guillaume) The Legacy of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931)
Painting in Islam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928)
The Preaching of Islam (London: A. Constable & Co., 1896)
Gibb, H. A. R., ‘Arnold, Sir Thomas Walker (1864–1930)’, rev. Christine Woodhead, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30457]
Archive source:
Correspondence and papers, School of Oriental and African Studies Archive, London
Correspondence, British Library of Political and Economic Science, LSE, London
In 1921, the Secretary of State for India appointed a committee to look into the adequacy of arrangements and relations with Indian students in Britain. The committee was chaired by Lord Lytton, the son of the former Viceroy of India. Despite intentions to visit India as well (the trip was cancelled because the Indian Legislative Assembly voted against releasing funds for their travel), the committee visited and interviewed a number of representatives from British universities, including Indian students themselves.
The Report estimated that there were 1450 Indian students in the UK in October 1921, with approximately 550 arriving each year. The three main reasons for Indians to study in Britain were (1) for a better chance of employment in India, particularly in the government services; (2) because educational facilities were more extensive in Britain; and (3) for lawyers to be called to the Bar.
The Report concluded that the development of education in India was crucial, and suggested creating an Indian Bar. They also agreed that more information needed to be provided in India to potential students before they travelled to Britain, as many students arrived in Britain without a place at any university. The committee explained that difficulties between British and Indian students were not a result of 'racism' but political barriers and wanted to encourage Indian students to get more involved in university life, particularly through sports. The committee also advised that an official organization needed to be created for students of technical and industrial subjects to insure adequate practical training and experience was provided for them when they were in Britain.
People involved:
Committee:- Lord Lytton (chair, son of former Viceroy of India), S. Aftab, L. M. Brooks, S. K. Datta, A. P. M. Fleming, M. Hammick, C. E. W. Jones, M. Ramachandra Rao, Deva Prasad Sarvadhikary.
People interviewed include:- Indian students at Birmingham University, representatives of Cambridge Majlis (including Subhas Chandra Bose), representatives of the Crocodile Club (an athletic club for Indians/Asians at Cambridge), Indian students at Edinburgh University, Indian students at Glasgow University, representatives of the Indian Students' Union and Hostel, Indian students at Leeds University, Indian students at Liverpool University, Hardit Singh Malik (Balliol, Oxford), Manchester Indian Association, representatives of Oxford Majlis (including M. C. Chagla), Indian students at Sheffield University, and other Indian students in London.
Published works:
Report of the Committee on Indian Students 1921-22 (London: India Office, 1922)
Secondary works:
Lahiri, Shompa, Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880-1930 (London: Frank Cass, 2000)
Mukherjee, Sumita, Nationalism, Education and Migrant Identities: The England-Returned (London: Routledge, 2010)
Symonds, Richard, Oxford and Empire: The Last Lost Cause? (London: Macmillan, 1986)
Archive source:
Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
The Federation of Indian Students' Societies in Great Britain and Ireland started up in 1937. It was one of a number of organizations providing a platform for Indian students, and suspected by the British Government of encouraging Communist sympathies. The society produced a quarterly journal called the Indian Student. The Federation came up in the House of Commons on 1 July 1937 when Thomas Williams, MP, asked why Prithu Pal Singh and Dr Sadashanker Chhabildas Mehta had been questioned by the police about the Indian Student.
Secondary works:
Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002)
Date began:
01 Jan 1937
Precise date began unknown:
Y
Archive source:
Hansard, 1 July 1937
L/PJ/12/4, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
CP/IND/DUTT/24/09, LP/ID/IND/1/89-99, Archives of the CPGB, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester
The Oxford Union is a student debating society that was established in 1823. As a forum for political (and non-political) debates, it has attracted a number of high-profile speakers and bred a number of international politicians.
Student members of the university could join the Oxford Union, and hence a number of South Asian students in the nineteenth and early twentieth century were members who attended the debates. Many of these debates related to Indian issues, including a debate during the First World War about the deployment of Indian troops. A number of South Asian students also tried (with varying degrees of success) to become a part of the Union Society committees, all of which were decided by election.
M. C. Chagla was elected to the Library Committee in 1921. In Michaelmas 1923, Solomon Bandaranaike was elected Secretary of the Union, and Treasurer in Trinity 1924. He stood for presidency of the Union but was defeated. Some believed that many old life-members turned out for this election specifically to defeat Bandaranaike. Humayun Kabir was elected to the Library Committee in 1929, was elected Secretary in 1930 and then Librarian in 1931. He was also unsuccessful in standing for President.
The first Indian President of the Oxford Union was D. F. Karaka. He was elected in November 1933 and so was President in the Hilary Term of 1934. He had been Secretary and Librarian previously. As Secretary of the Union in 1933, Karaka was present at the controversial debate: 'That this House will under no circumstances fight for its King and Country'. The motion was carried and Karaka's minute book was torn through this date. In the final debate under his presidency, Karaka launched a scathing attack upon the colour bar with particular reference to the Oxford Carlton Club.
Example:
Oxford Mail, 9 March 1934
Secondary works:
Hollis, Christopher, The Oxford Union (London: Evans Bros., 1965)
Karaka, D. F., I Go West (London: Michael Joseph, 1938)
Karaka, D. F., The Pulse of Oxford (London: J.M. Dent, 1933)
Symonds, Richard, Oxford and Empire: The Last Lost Cause? (New York: St Martins Press, 1986)
Content:
A report on Karaka's last debate as President of the Oxford Union.
Date began:
01 Jan 1823
Extract:
Mr Karaka’s attack on his traducers, particularly his effective conge on the newspaper correspondent, who wrote: “Now that an Indian has been elected to the office of President of the Union, it no longer will be held in such high esteem”, brought a crowded house to his side at once.
“It was ungracious of that paper to make such a remark of any person before he had been tried in that office” was his quiet comment which evoked a torrent of cheers.
Following recommendations from the Lee-Warner Committee that met in 1907 to inquire into the position of Indian students in the UK, the Secretary of State decided to find a building that would house various organizations concerned with Indian students to provide a focal point for visitors to London.
A detached corner house was found at 21 Cromwell Road, opposite the Natural History Museum and near to the Imperial Institute and the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was rented by the India Office. The National Indian Association, the Northbrook Society and a newly-created Bureau of Information for Indian Students were all housed in this building in August 1910. However, the costs of renting rooms in the building soon became high. This was regarded as one of the reasons for the financial decline of the National Indian Association by the end of the decade.
The building was used for 'at homes', lectures, meetings and soirees by the National Indian Association. It provided newspapers and recreational activities such as billiards for British and Indian visitors to the Northbrook Society. A number of rooms were provided by the Northbrook Society for short-term lodging by Indian students - primarily for Indians when they first arrived in the country, before they were able to make other arrangements. The Educational Advisor met Indian students and provided them with advice about courses, degrees and lodgings in the UK.
