London calling

Indians in London: From the Birth of the East India Company to Independent India

Author: Arup Chatterjee

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages: 570

Price: Rs 1,299

This book covers a wide canvas. It chronicles migrations and visits by Indians from the 16th century or as the author Arup Chatterjee puts it, “from the time of Shakespeare” to a little after Indian independence in 1947. His definition of India is not today’s nation-state, but a reference to the pre-independent landmass now the Indian subcontinent. Indeed, he adheres to names of Indian cities as they were before Indianisation — such as Calcutta, Bombay and Madras.

The contents are Bard-istically constructed. They are labelled “acts” rather than chapters; “scenes” being segments within them. From the baptism of “a native of Bengala”, who was rechristened Peter Pope before a “sea of upturned faces” to post-empire Britons being converted to Indian cuisine, the catalogue weaves an intriguing tale of four centuries.

In the late 16th century, William Hawkins, whom Mr Chatterjee describes as “a self-declared ambassador” to British monarchs, married an Indian woman, Mariam. The former, though, died at sea during the couple’s perilous voyage to London. The wife then, about to marry Gabriel Towerson, skipper of a ship, reached the British capital in 1614. However, her second betrothal proved to be unhappy. She, therefore, returned home to settle in Agra.

Raja Rammohan Roy’s renown as a reformer demanding abolition of Sati had preceded his arrival in 1831. He was, thus, feted in London’s political as well as women’s rights circles. Indeed, he successfully lobbied before the East India Company’s directors to considerably enhance the retired Indian emperor Shah Akbar II’s annual pension. He died in Bristol in 1833.

The wealthy and colourful Dwarkanath Tagore, Rabindranath’s grandfather and founder of the Union Bank, was hosted at a banquet thrown by Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert within days of setting foot in London in 1841 — the first of several meetings. In his address at the Lord Mayor of London’s dinner, he said India “had been saved from utter destruction by the national friendship and humanity of England”. His array of female friendships were salaciously not believed to be platonic. Returning in 1846, he breathed his last in the British capital.

Dadabhai Naoroji first stepped on British soil in 1855 and proceeded to become the first Indian to be elected to the House of Commons in 1892.

Swami Vivekananda stayed for three months in London when returning from his famous lectures in the United States in 1895.

Mohandas Gandhi entered the stage in 1888 and exited immediately after being called to the bar from Inner Temple in 1891. He, of course, visited subsequently while living in South Africa. His final trip was for the Roundtable Conference in 1931.   

Kumar Sri Ranjitsinhji Jadeja, also from the Gujarat region, landed in London the same year as Gandhi and went on to play cricket for England with dizzying distinction — he innovated the leg glance — before later succeeding as ruler of Nawanagar, now Jamnagar.  

In 1902, the maharaja of Jaipur Sawai Madho Singh II set sail from Bombay to attend the coronation of Edward VII after his mother Queen Victoria’s 63-year reign with 8,000 litres of Ganga water. This to purge himself of the evils of the black waters.

In 1912, Rabindranath Tagore reportedly lost the manuscript of the English translation of Gitanjali, his precious collection of poems, in the London underground. Much to his relief, it was found at the transport service’s “lost property” office. So, he duly obtained a vital introduction to his work from the English poet William Yeats to be honoured the following year with the Nobel Prize.  

In 1905, at the age of 15, Jawaharlal Nehru was admitted to Harrow, a public school in London suburb. Two years later he enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a Tripos in botany, chemistry and geology. His seven-year sojourn ended with him qualifying to be a barrister, also from Inner Temple.    

In 1933, Choudhry Rahmat Ali, fresh out of Cambridge, dined with Mohammad Ali Jinnah “over shrimps and Chablis” at the Waldorf Hotel. Over dessert, he proposed the carving out of Pakistan from the shoulder of British India.

A plethora of people find mention. Among them Sarojini Naidu, Satyendra Prasanna Sinha, who was conferred a hereditary peerage, Shapurji Saklatvala, a relative of the Tatas who became a communist MP in the Commons, even Vinayak Savarkar, who dreamt of becoming a barrister, but was allegedly prevented by Scotland Yard from gaining this qualification. His oral attacks on Gandhi first manifested themselves in London.    

There are references to writers Mulk Raj Anand and Nirad Chaudhuri, though the latter’s first glimpse of London was not until 1955 — he later settled at Oxford and died there at the age of 99. The distinguished Manmohan Singh, who came around that time to complete his Master’s degree from Cambridge in 1957, is overlooked. It could, perhaps, be argued he didn't quite live in London. 

The effort is in effect a history of an encounter with a metropolis that once ruled India, anecdotally expressed in an undogmatic manner. There was a time when a London-returned Indian was held in esteem by an untravelled compatriot. Perhaps, not any more in an environment in which the great and the good are trampled upon.