ANDREW WHITEHEAD
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Enthusiasms
    • London Fictions >
      • Alexander Baron
      • A walk round Baron's manor
      • John Sommerfield >
        • John Sommerfield Archive
        • John Sommerfield's Spanish notebook
        • John Sommerfield, 'More Room for Us'
      • Lynne Reid Banks
      • "Against the Tyranny of Kings and Princes": radicalism in George Gissing's 'Workers in the Dawn'
      • 'Beyond Boundary Passage'
      • 'London' by Dorf Bonarjee
    • A Mission in Kashmir >
      • Full text: A Mission in Kashmir
      • 'The People's Militia: Communists and Kashmiri nationalism in the 1940s'
      • The Rise and Fall of New Kashmir
      • The Making of the 'New Kashmir' manifesto
      • 'For the Conversion of Kashmir'
      • 'I shall paint my nails with the blood of those that covet me'
      • Freda Bedi looking 'From a Woman's Window' on Kashmir
      • Kashmir 1947: Testimonies of a Contested History
      • Kashmir @ 70
      • Kashmir 47 Images
      • Kashmir 47 on film
      • Kashmir 47 in fiction
      • Father Shanks's Kashmir 'Diary'
      • Krishna Misri: 1947, a year of change
      • Shanti Ambardar: Kashmir 1947
    • The O'Brienites >
      • Martin Boon
      • Dan Chatterton
      • George E. Harris
      • John Radford and the Kansas colony
      • Edward Truelove
      • 'New World'
    • Clerkenwell >
      • Popular Politics and Social Structure in Clerkenwell >
        • The Residents of Clerkenwell
        • The Occupational Structure of Clerkenwell
        • Clerkenwell and Reform
        • Fenians, Reformers and the Clerkenwell "Outrage"
        • Clerkenwell: Socialism Finds a Niche
        • Clerkenwell: Not Forgetting the Anarchists
      • Red London: radicals and socialists in late-Victorian Clerkenwell
      • Patriotic Club
    • NW5 and Around
  • Voices
    • Partition Voices >
      • Partition Voices: L.K. Advani
      • Partition Voices: Ram Advani
      • Partition Voices: Qazi Ghulam Ajmiri
      • Partition Voices: Angela Aranha
      • Partition Voices: Helen Baldwin
      • Partition Voices: Bali family
      • Partition Voices: Edward Behr
      • Partition Voices: Benazir Bhutto
      • Partition Voices: H.K. Burki
      • Partition Voices: Sailen Chatterjee
      • Partition Voices: Pran Chopra
      • Partition Voices: K.S. + Ayesha Duggal
      • Partition Voices: Alys Faiz
      • Partition Voices: Jugal Chandra Ghosh
      • Partition Voices: Ashoka Gupta
      • Partition Voices: I.K. Gujral
      • Partition Voices: Syed Najmuddin Hashim
      • Partition Voices: Khorshed Italia
      • Partition Voices: Pran Nath Jalali
      • Partition Voices: D.N. Kaul
      • Partition Voices: Jolly Mohan Kaul
      • Partition Voices: Basant Kaur
      • Partition Voices: Betty Keyes
      • Partition Voices: Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan
      • Partition Voices: Usha Khanna
      • Partition Voices: Frank Leeson
      • Partition Voices: Abdul Ghani Lone
      • Partition Voices: Gopal 'Patha' Mukherjee
      • Partition Voices: Kuldip Nayar
      • Partition Voices: Amrita Pritam
      • Partition Voices: Francis Rath
      • Partition Voices: Annada Sankar Ray
      • Partition Voices: Bhisham Sahni
      • Partition Voices: Sat Paul Sahni
      • Partition Voices: Sir Ian Scott
      • Partition Voices: Sir Paul Scott
      • Partition Voices: Sheila Sengupta
      • Partition Voices: Mahmooda Ahmad Ali Shah + Sajida Zameer Ahmad
      • Partition Voices: Bapsi Sidhwa & Urvashi Butalia
      • Partition Voices: Air Marshal Arjan Singh
      • Partition Voices: Bir Bahadur Singh
      • Partition Voices: Karan Singh
      • Partition Voices: Khushwant Singh
      • Partition Voices: Shingara Singh
      • Partition Voices: H.S. Surjeet
      • Partition Voices: Ben and Marguerite Suter
      • Partition Voices: Leela Thompson
      • Partition Voices: K.B. Vaid
    • Kashmir Voices >
      • Kashmir Voices: Asiya Andrabi
      • Kashmir Voices: Mirwaiz Umar Farooq
      • Kashmir Voices: George Fernandes
      • Kashmir Voices: General J.R. Mukherjee
      • Kashmir Voices: Abdullah Muntazir
      • Kashmir Voices: Ali Mohammad Sagar
      • Kashmir Voices: Syed Salahuddin
    • Communist Voices >
      • Communist Voices: Manmohan Adhikari
      • Communist Voices: Jyoti Basu
      • Communist Voices: Brian Bunting
      • Communist Voices: Guillermo Cabrera Infante
      • Communist Voices: Benoy Choudhury
      • Communist Voices: Anima Dasgupta
      • Communist Voices: Sailen Dasgupta
      • Communist Voices: Denis Goldberg
      • Communist Voices: Grootvlie miners
      • Communist Voices: Indrajit Gupta
      • Communist Voices: Chris Hani
      • Communist Voices: Lionel Martin
      • Communist Voices: Vishwanath Mathur
      • Communist Voices: Geeta Mukherjee
      • Communist Voices: E.M.S. Namboodiripad
      • Communist Voices: John Rettie
    • Political Voices >
      • Political Voices: Sally Alexander
      • Political Voices: Lou Appleton
      • Political Voices: Murray Bookchin
      • Political Voices: Fenner Brockway
      • Political Voices: Tony Cliff
      • Political Voices: Nellie Dick
      • Political Voices: Leah Feldman
      • Political Voices: Jeffrey Hamm
      • Political Voices: Denis Healey
      • Political Voices: Eric Hobsbawm
      • Political Voices: Ian Mikardo
      • Political Voices: Mick Mindel
      • Political Voices: Adrian Mitchell
      • Political Voices: Phil Piratin
      • Political Voices: Betty Reid
      • Political Voices: Fermin Rocker
      • Political Voices: Ralph Russell
      • Political Voices: John Saville
      • Political Voices: Alfred Sherman
      • Political Voices: Screaming Lord Sutch
      • Political Voices: Dorothy Thompson
      • Political Voices: E.P. Thompson
      • Political Voices: Tom Wilson
      • Political Voices: Harry Young
      • The Land Song
      • Harry Pollitt on disc
    • The British New Left >
      • New Left: T.J. Clark
      • New Left: Chuck Taylor
      • New Left: Headopoly
    • South Asia
    • Burma
  • Collecting
    • Political Pamphlets
    • Political Journals
    • Political Badges
    • Political Tokens
    • Political Ephemera
  • Radio Gems
    • 'What's Left of Communism?'
    • 'India: a people partitioned'
    • India's Minorities
    • Documentaries and Features
    • From Our Own Correspondent >
      • FOOC: Working at Westminster 1990
      • FOOC: Ulster's Talking Shop 1991
      • FOOC: House Rules at Westminster 1992
      • FOOC: India's Red Fort State
      • FOOC: Keeping Kosher in Cuba
      • FOOC: Italy's Gourmand Communists 1992
      • FOOC: Scoundrel Politicians - 1993
      • FOOC: Kashmir's New Puritans 1993
      • FOOC: The Rajah of Bihar 1993
      • FOOC: Bringing the Gospel to Mizoram 1993
      • FOOC: Netaji, India's Lost Leader 1994
      • FOOC: A Self-Respect Wedding 1994
      • FOOC: The Miseries of Manipur 1994
      • FOOC: Village Bangladesh 1994
      • FOOC: Calcutta's Communists Discover Capitalism 1995
      • FOOC: Localism in Ladakh 1995
      • FOOC: Bhutan, not quite Paradise
      • FOOC: Crime and Indian Politics 1995
      • FOOC: Sonia Gandhi 1995
      • FOOC: Sri Lanka's Missing Leaders 1995
      • FOOC: India Votes 1996
      • FOOC: Communism Revisited 1996
      • FOOC: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan 1996
      • FOOC: Kerala's Jewish Community 1996
      • FOOC: India's Corruption Scandals 1996
      • FOOC: The Maldives Crowded Capital 1996
      • FOOC: India's Polluted Capital 1996
      • FOOC: Jinnah, Pakistan's Quaid 1997
      • FOOC: Mauritius, an Indian Ocean melting pot
      • FOOC: The Hijras Blessing 1998
      • FOOC: Massacre at Baramulla 2003
      • FOOC: An Old Photo from Kashmir 2007
      • FOOC: Prosperity Driven from Detroit 2008
      • FOOC: An Atheist in MLK's Atlanta2013
      • FOOC: San Francisco's City Lights 2014
      • FOOC: Kashmir Revisited 2014
      • FOOC: By Ferry in Burma 2014
      • FOOC: Toyah's Grave 2017
      • FOOC: The Tibetan Colony in Kashmir 2017
      • FOOC: Stars of Tamil Politics 2018
      • FOOC: Koreans in Chennai 2018
      • FOOC: Epitaph to Empire 2019
      • FOOC: Armenians in India 2019
      • FOOC: Lahore's Bradlaugh Hall 2020
    • What's your favourite political song?
    • London Snapshots
  • Writing
    • Bibliography
    • Tramping Artisans
    • Working Class Housing in Jericho, Oxford
    • New Statesman
    • The Freethinker
    • Outlook
    • Asian Age
    • Indian Express
    • miscellaneous writing
  • Gallery
  • Contact




​Andrew Whitehead's
Blog

Raj, Tagore + Jind Kaur: a walk round Kensal Green

7/2/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Kensal Green cemetery on the Harrow Road dates from the 1830s and is still in use. It was the first of the 'magnificent seven' garden cemeteries encircling the growing city of London - these were large private burial grounds intended to take the pressure off central London graveyards.

I didn't go there looking for the Indian aspect - but it was impossible to avoid.

Picture
Picture
The greater number of India-linked burials are of British generals administrators and officials of the East India Company - here's a selection:
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Both the Anglican and the Dissenters' chapels have a real elegance ...
Picture
Picture
... though the general impression is of a crowded, higgledy-piggledy Victorian burial ground.
Picture
Picture
Picture
And the other graves and memorials? Well, I missed the Robert Owen memorial and the Reformers' memorial - so that's a good reason to go back.

But take a look at these ... and yes, the caricaturist and temperance advocate George Cruikshank was initially buried here (and then dug up and moved to St Paul's Cathedral) and the final gravestone, no, nothing to indicate whose grave it marks!
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
0 Comments

The other India House

23/7/2020

3 Comments

 
Picture
No, this isn't India House on Aldwych - completed in 1930 and from 1947 the Indian government's High Commission in London. This is a smaller, older, more anonymous building on Cromwell Avenue in north London, in that limbo land between Archway and Highgate. 

The building bears a rather generously worded GLC blue plaque for Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. He was a founding ideologue of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism and is something of an intellectual hero to the more cerebral supporters of Narendra Modi's BJP.

​Savarkar was and remains a deeply controversial figure. He was tried as a co-conspirator in the Gandhi murder trial and was acquitted. In the photo below of the accused, he's the older man with glasses on the front row. To his right as we are looking at the photo is Nathuram Godse who fired the shots that killed Gandhi and who was executed for his murder in November 1949.
Picture
Picture
Savarkar had another brush with the law - again alleged complicity in a political assassination - during his sojourn on Cromwell Avenue forty years earlier. We'll get to that in a moment. But this building was much more than Savarkar's temporary home.

65 Cromwell Avenue became, in 1905, a hostel for Indian students in London, taking the name India House. It was more than simply a place to live. There was a political purpose to India House. It was intended to be a nurturing place for a new and more assertive generation of Indian nationalists. It certainly was where Indian revolutionaries of different hues got to meet and organise. Ironically, perhaps, Gandhi visited here while in London in 1906.

India House was opened on 1 July 1905 by H.M. Hyndman, a veteran socialist (and founder in the 1880s of the SDF) with a longstanding interest in India. Also present at the opening ceremony were Dadabhai Naoroji, who a decade earlier had been the first Indian elected to the House of Commons, a radical Liberal and constitutional nationalist, and two much more revolutionary-minded women activists, Charlotte Despard, suffragist and Irish republican, and Madame Cama, a Paris-based Parsee who was at the centre of the web of militant Indian nationalists and socialists in Europe.

The founder of India House was Shyamji Krishna Varma, a scholar and barrister who founded the India Home Rule Society. He published the curiously named Indian Sociologist - and fled London for Paris in 1907 after some of his more intemperate remarks and articles attracted official attention. The journal continued to appear - the maverick anarchist Guy Aldred took over as publisher and was sentenced at the Old Bailey to twelve months hard labour for his troubles.
Picture
India House provided a base for an array of political activists of different hues. The communist and anarchist M.P.T. Acharya was among those associated with the building on Cromwell Avenue. So too was Madan Lal Dhingra, who came to London from Punjab to study mechanical engineering at University College.

On 1 July 1909, Dhingra fired seven shots at Sir William Curzon Wyllie, the political aide-de-camp of the British government's Secretary of State for India (at that time John Morley), on the steps of the Imperial Institute in London. Wyllie was killed, as was a Parsee doctor, Cawas Lalcaca, who sought to come to his aid. It was one of the most renowned political assassinations in London of agents of British rule in India - the most notorious being Udham Singh's killing of Sir Michael O'Dwyer more than thirty years later. 

Dhingra was tried at the Old Bailey and, within seven weeks of the killing, was hanged in the grounds of Pentonville jail. A memorial tablet for Wyllie stands in the crypt of St Paul's cathedral.
Picture
There were suggestions that Savarkar had supplied Dhingra with the gun used in the killing and he certainly declined to criticise the assassination. Savarkar was eventually arrested and it was decided that he should stand trial in India.

While on board ship moored near Marseilles, Savarkar escaped - which doesn't say much for the competence of the Imperial authorities. When he eventually turned up in Bombay he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. He spent ten years in the cellular jail on the Andaman islands and many subsequent years in prison and internment.

By the time Savarkar was released in 1937, he had written his commanding work, Hindutva: what is a Hindu? He became the head of the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha and died in Bombay in 1966.

And what of India House? Well, after Wyllie's assassination the hostel was closed and the property sold. 65 Cromwell Avenue reverted to being an ordinary suburban home - but what a back story it has!
Picture
The plaque to Savarkar was unveiled by the Labour left-winger Fenner Brockway in 1985 - a staunch opponent of Empire and advocate of colonial freedom.

Picture
Ten years ago came a remarkable footnote to the India House story. A full-size replica of 65 Cromwell Avenue was built in the town of Mandvi in Gujarat, the birthplace of Shyamji Krishna Varma, as a memorial to the man who established the students' hostel. A little bit of Highgate in western India!

3 Comments

The Ayahs' Home in Hackney

19/6/2016

12 Comments

 
Picture
What an astonishing photograph! It appears in George Sims' Living London, published in three volumes from 1901. The Ayahs' Home at that time was on King Edward's Road, close to the southern end of Mare Street.

Ayahs are Indian nannies - hundreds came over with British colonial-era families returning from India, and quite a few ended up abandoned, or homeless as they sought new employment. An ayahs' home seems to have been set up in Aldgate from the 1820s or a little later. The home had moved to a large house at 26 King Edward's Road by 1891, when it came under the management of the London City Mission.
 ​
Picture
This photo of the exterior of the Ayahs' Home appeared in the London City Mission magazine in 1900. The mission of course was trying to save souls as well as help the distressed - and clearly seeking to reassure its donors that this was a well-run enterprise. 


The building still stands - none of the signage survives, but otherwise it is much as it was when ayahs sought refuge here a century and more ago. I went down to King Edward's Road today - this is what No. 26 looks like:
Picture
Picture
Picture
The First World War made it all but impossible for ayahs to return home. And during or more probably just after the war, the home moved one-hundred yards or so to slightly bigger and more modern premises at 4 King Edward's Road. And that building too is still standing - again with none of the old signage, but with the porch and rudiments of the exterior design little changed, and perhaps even the same railings:
Picture
Picture
Picture
Its not clear when the Ayahs' Home closed - perhaps in the mid-1920s, though one imagines that the problem of stranded ayahs may well have persisted into the 1950s. Perhaps as the Indian population in the UK grew, ayahs were able to seek help from within the community.

You can find out more about the Ayahs' Home at the following sites and in an article by Suzanne Conway in a volume entitled Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World. And thanks to the Geffrye Museum in Dalston - it was a mention of the Ayah's Home in their current exhibition 'Swept under the Carpet?: Servants in London Households, 1600-2000' which put me on this track.


http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/ayahs-home
http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item124195.html
http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/celia-fiennes-and-ayahs-home-very-short.html

Picture
12 Comments

Downstairs at the Nanking restaurant

28/1/2016

6 Comments

 
Picture
Denmark Street - that enticing and endangered link between St Giles High Street and Charing Cross Road - is much more than simply London's faded Tin Pan Alley, the once legendary home of music publishers and recording studios. It's the most substantial surviving remnant of old St Giles, one of the more notorious of the rookeries of mid-Victorian London. The wonderful early eighteenth century St Giles-in-the-Fields is yards away, and the area around was a stronghold of artisan radicalism 150 years ago. Denmark Street still has a handful of marvellous late seventeenth century buildings - and is still choc-a-bloc with guitar shops and music businesses which give it a wonderfully louche air. 

It was also the spot where one of South Asia's most influential literary movements, the leftist Indian Progressive Writers' Association, was founded. The venue was the basement of the Nanking restaurant - and the date, according to the scholar Carlo Coppola, was probably the evening of Saturday, 24 November, 1934.
​
Picture
I've long wondered where exactly the Nanking restaurant was - whether it was a precursor of the Giaconda, the dining rooms where music magnates lunched (and now an up-market burger bar). With the help of a 1940 street directory in Holborn Library, I've cracked it. The Nanking was at number 4 (the street hasn't been renumbered), on the south side, and towards the St Giles High Street end. It was next to a labour exchange (that's now a Fernandez and Wells coffee shop). 

After the Nanking, no. 4 became the Regent Sounds Studios, where the Rolling Stones put together their first album back in 1964 and where Black Sabbath, Elton John, the Kinks and Jimi Hendrix also recorded. So - quite a shrine to the golden age of British rock. There's more about the street's musical heritage here.

The main business in no. 4 today is Regent Sounds, not studios but a guitar shop specialising in Fender and Gretsch. And the basement - the spot where the IPWA met - is a bar and live music venue, the Alley Cat.

In the early thirties, Denmark Street was buzzing with Chinese and Japanese restaurants and businesses. The China Rhyming blog uncovered a description from the Queenslander newspaper (not quite sure why they were showing such interest, but I am glad they did) in 1932. Here it is:
“….enter Denmark Street, which is now almost wholly given over to Chinese and Japanese restaurants and emporia. Undoubtedly the most amusing of these places is The Nanking, presided over by Mr. Fung Saw. Mr. Fung is some thing of a politician, and to his restaurant come many of the more youthful of the budding Parliamentarians. These, together with composers and song writers, their publishers and film artists, comprise the chief of Mr. Fung’s clientele. The hall of feasting is reached by long, steep steps, which lead to an exceptionally large, light, and lofty basement. There is another and a mere prosaic entrance through a hall door on the ground floor, but somehow no one ever seems to notice it, and so we descend the more picturesque steps. Inside, the decorations are reminiscent of a Chinese junk, and the walls are decorated in vermilion and in greens and yellows, which only a Chinese artist is able to use to Oriental perfection. On the opposite side of the road are two Japanese restaurants, and just round the corner we can enter the banqueting hall of Wah Yeng, who contents himself with catering, to the exclusion of everything else. Mr. Yeng explained that he had a largo back room, which he reserved for Chinese business men, but as Chinese merchants do not so often come to London the hall at the back is usually thrown open to all.”
Picture
By 1940, there were only a couple of Chinese and Japanese restaurants on Denmark Street - though the East Asian aspect was reinforced by a number of Japanese shops and businesses. 
Picture
And high-up on the north side of the street there's a ghost sign which, unless I'm imagining the trace of the Orient in its design, may have belonged to one of the Japanese businesses. It's too smart to be graffiti.

Does anyone recognise the logo or the initials?
But the directory demonstrates that by the outbreak of the Second World War, Denmark Street was already established as the centre of the music publishing industry - there were eighteen music related businesses in this single, short street as well as a handful of movie enterprises.
Picture
Picture
In his reminiscences, Sajjad Zaheer gave an account of the Association's first meeting: 'A Chinese restaurant owner of London was very considerate towards us and used to offer the back room of his restaurant free of charge. This small, unventilated cellar could accommodate forty to fifty people with difficulty. Our regualr meeting was held there.' (Zaheer wrote a novella about Indian student life in and around Bloomsbury, A Night in London - here's an excellent account if it and the context in which it was written.)

According to the novelist and founder member Mulk Raj Anand, it was at a monthly meeting of the Association at the Nanking restaurant in the followng year, 1935.that its manifesto was adopted. It opens with these stirring words:
​
Radical changes are taking place in Indian society. Fixed ideas and old beliefs, social and political institutions are being challenged. Out of the present turmoil and conflict, a new society is arising. The spirit of reaction, however, though moribund and doomed to ultimate decay, is still operative and is making desperate efforts to prolong itself.

It is the duty of Indian writers to give expression to the changes taking place in Indian life and to assist the spirit of progress in the country. 
Picture
Picture
And a closing thought: Denmark Street sports a blue plaque celebrating Tin Pan Alley. Shouldn't there be one for the Indian Progressive Writers' Association too, perhaps on the outside of the Alley Cat?
6 Comments

A Passage to India

24/11/2014

1 Comment

 
Picture
This charming yet deeply tragic memorial tablet is on the walls of St Anne's, Highgate - the church where John Betjeman was baptised. You can only imagine the excitement amid which Doris Tanner, newly married, headed out to India. Within a year she was dead. Aged just 23. It's not clear where in India she was buried.

Her husband was an 'A.S.P. India', by which I take it that he was an Assistant Superintendent in the Indian Police Force. Jocelyn Tanner outlived his wife by almost sixty years, dying in 1973. He appears to have made his career in the Indian Police and was awarded the King's Police Medal. He married again, and his new wife, Aileen, lived until 1983. They are buried in the same grave at Haughley in Suffolk. 
1 Comment

Walter Crane goes round the world in Chancery Lane

15/6/2014

1 Comment

 
Picture
It's strange the things you spot at summer parties. Sir Rick Trainor (he taught me almost forty years ago) yesterday evening hosted his last summer party as Principal of King's College, London - he heads off over the summer to be the Rector of Exeter College, Oxford. 

Picture
The party was in the hidden away grounds of King's Maughan Library on Chancery Lane - and it's there that I came across these remarkable panels designed (it seems) by Walter Crane. 

Crane was an influential artist and book illustrator - and a pioneering socialist ... indeed his designs featured on the membership cards, in the masthead designs, everywhere, in the socialist movement of the 1880s. He was a close ally of William Morris in particular.


These panels were designed for St Dunstan's House, a publisher's office, when it was built on Fetter Lane in 1886 (when Crane was most actively involved in the socialist movement). His authorship of the design seems to be less than absolutely certain. The building has been demolioshed - and the panels moved to King's property nearby, where they have been incorporated into what you might call a feature, though one sadly rather hidden away alongside the bicycle racks.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
What's are these designs all about? Well the company based at St Dunstan's House published maps and novels including Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days. There's no particular reason to believe that these panels were their commission - thought it would sort of make sense. There's a bit more detail here. 
Picture
1 Comment

A Parsee in Regent's Park

27/5/2013

7 Comments

 
Picture
In the northern half of Regent's Park, not far from that venerated open-air cafe 'The Honest Sausage', stands this wonderful Gothic style monument. A watering hole, in its most literal meaning. And as you can see, enormously in demand on a wonderfully sunny bank holiday weekend.

What I hadn't appreciated until now is the India - indeed the Parsee - connection.

The fountain was built in 1869 by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association (not many charitable endeavours encompass both human and animal welfare quite so magnificently), inuagurated by a member of the royal family, and paid for by a wealthy Bombay (now Mumbai) based Parsee industrialist.

Parsees - Zoroastrians by religion, a community numbering only in the tens of thousands - have had, and continue to have, an influence out of all proportion to their numbers. They have played a role in Indian industry and commerce akin to that of the Quakers in Britain a couple of centuries ago. Their role in politics, in India at least, has been less evident - though both M.A. Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and Indira Gandhi married Parsees. But quite remarkably in Britain, the first three Asian MPs were all Parsees - Dadabhai Naoroji ('Mr Narrow Majority'), elected Liberal MP for Central Finsbury in 1892, Sir M.M. Bhownagree  a Conservative representing (unlikely as it seems) a seat in the East End of London, and Sharpurji Saklatvala, a communist who represented Battersea in Parliament in the 1920s.

Picture
The plaque on the drinking fountain in Regent's Park omits to mention the full name of its Parsee benefactor, and what a marvellous name it is - Sir Cowasjee Jehangir Readymoney. Here's his Wikipedia entry. As you can see, the plaque records that Sir Cowasjee provided the funds for the fountain 'as a token of gratitude to the people of England for the protection enjoyed by him and his Parsee fellow countrymen under the British rule in India.' This was barely a decade after the 1857 Rebellion/Mutiny - decsribed by some as India's First War of Independence -  so quite a bold statement.

Above the plaque is what appears to be a likeness of the benefactor - judge for yourself how well it captured his features:
Picture
Picture
7 Comments

    Andrew Whitehead's blog

    Welcome - read - comment - throw stones - pick up threads - and tell me how to do this better!

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010

    Categories

    All
    1857
    648
    A.A. Gill
    Absolute Beginners
    Adrian Mitchell
    Afghanistan
    Africa
    Agra
    Aird Uig
    Ajanta
    Akbar Khan
    Alan Dein
    Alexander Baron
    Alexandra Park
    Algarve
    Alys Faiz
    Amit Chaudhuri
    Amwell
    Anarchism
    Anc
    Andy Roth
    Anna Bhushan
    Annie Besant
    Anthony Cronin
    Anthony Kirk-Greene
    April Fool
    Archives
    Archway
    Armenian Church
    Arnold Circus
    Arnold Wesker
    Arsenal
    Arthur Conan Doyle
    Arthur Morrison
    Arthur Whitehead
    Atlanta
    Attia Hosain
    Ayahs' Home
    Baden Powell
    Badges
    Bangalore
    Bangladesh
    Barbican
    Batley
    Battersea
    Battyeford
    Ben Chisnall
    Bernard Kops
    Bessie Braddock
    Bethnal Green
    Bill Fishman
    Bjp
    Blackberries
    Blackfriars
    Blackwall
    Bloodsucker Stanley
    Bloomsbury
    Blue Carbuncle
    Blustons
    Bob Dylan
    Boer PoWs
    Bombay
    Borowitz
    Boundary Passage
    Boundary Street Estate
    Brendan Behan
    Brick Lane
    Bridget Riley
    British Library
    Britishness
    Broadway Market
    Bronterre O'Brien
    Burgh Castle
    Burma
    Burston Strike School
    Bus
    Bush House
    Buzzard
    Cable Street
    Calcutta
    Caledonian Road
    Camden
    Canvassing
    Cape Coast
    Captain Wimbush
    Carmarthen
    Cashmere
    Cecil Tyndale-Biscoe
    Charles Bradlaugh
    Charles Darwin
    Charles Dickens
    Charles Pooter
    Charlie Gillett
    Charlotte Despard
    Chartists
    Chelsea
    Chennai
    China
    China In London
    Churchill
    Clapham
    Clapton
    Clerkenwell
    Clive Branson
    C.N. Annadurai
    Cnd
    Cochin
    'Cohen The Crooner'
    Colin Macinnes
    Colin Ward
    College Lane
    Common Wealth
    Communists
    Connaught Place
    Contemporary India
    Cormorant
    Covent Garden
    Covered Reservoir
    Crete
    Cricket
    Cricks Corner
    Cromer
    Cromer Street
    Crouch End
    Curious Kentish Town
    Cyril Satorsky
    Dalston
    Dan Chatterton
    Dante
    Dartmouth Park
    David Edgar
    Delaware
    Delhi
    Denis Healey
    Denmark Street
    Derby
    D.H. Lawrence
    Dina Wadia
    Docklands
    Dorothy 'Dorf' Bonarjee
    Dorset
    Dr Quraishi
    Earl Cameron
    Earl's Court
    Easby
    Easingwold
    East End
    Edinburgh
    Education
    Edward Truelove
    Ela Sen
    Election 2010
    Emerald Court
    Emmanuel Swedenborg
    English Civil War
    Ephemera
    E.P. Thompson
    Eric Hobsbawm
    Ewan Maccoll
    Fabians
    Facebook
    Fairport Convention
    Faith
    Faiz Ahmed Faiz
    Faroes
    Fergal Keane
    Fermin Rocker
    Fiction As History
    Finsbury
    Fitzrovia
    Fleet River
    Fortis Green
    Frank Bostock
    Frank Kitz
    Freda Bedi
    Fred Bakunin
    'Freedom'
    Fresh Garbage
    Fulham
    Gallan Head
    GE2015
    George E. Harris
    George 'Jonah' Jones
    George Orwell
    Ghana
    Ghost Signs
    Gibbons
    Gildersome
    Glasgow
    Godstow
    Golders Green
    Gordon Brown
    Gospel Oak
    Graham Greene
    Grand Union Canal
    Granta
    Grateful Dead
    Greenwich
    Ground Zero
    Guardian
    Guy Aldred
    Hackney
    Hadleigh Castle
    Haggerston
    Hammersmith
    Hampstead Heath
    Hangover Square
    Harry Pollitt
    Headopoly
    Henry George
    Herbert Read
    Herons
    H.H. Asquith
    H.H. Champion
    Highgate
    Highgate Camp
    Highgate Cemetery
    Hindi
    History Workshop
    H.M. Hyndman
    Holborn
    Holloway
    Holly Village
    Holywell Street
    Hoopoe
    'HOPE'
    Hornbeam
    Hornsey
    Houndsditch
    Huddersfield
    Huddersfield Town
    Iain Sinclair
    Ian Jack
    Ibex House
    Iceland
    Igor Clark
    ILP
    India
    India In London
    Indian Students
    Indira Gandhi
    Ireland
    Ironbridge
    Islington
    Jack Kerouac
    Jago
    Jean McCrindle
    Jeff Cloves
    Jericho
    Jethro Tull
    Jill Mcgivering
    Jinnah
    John Cornford
    John Pym
    John Rety
    John Simonds
    Joseph Grimaldi
    Jyoti Basu
    Kamala Markandaya
    Karachi
    Karaganda
    Karl Marx
    Kashmir
    Kensal Green
    Kensal Rise
    Kentish Town
    Khorshed Italia
    Kilburn
    King Dido
    King's Cross
    Knossos
    Kohima
    Kovalam
    Labour Party
    Lahore
    Land And Labour League
    Land Song
    Las Vegas
    Latin
    Laura Del-Rivo
    Laurence Hope
    Lavenham
    Lawrence Ferlinghetti
    Leeds
    Leeds Postcards
    Leicester
    Leonard Motler
    Leyton Orient
    Lgs
    Lib Dems
    Libya
    Limehouse
    Lincoln's Inn
    Liverpool
    Liz Rorison
    Lodhi Gardens
    Loft
    London Fields
    London Occasionals
    London View
    London Views
    Lost And Starving Dogs
    Louisiana Bayou
    Lowdham
    Lower Marsh
    Lucknow
    Madurai
    Mahatma Gandhi
    Major Cartwright
    Malden Road
    Malta
    Margaret Harkness
    Margaret Thatcher
    Margaret Whitehead
    Marie Stopes
    Marques & Co.
    Marrakesh
    Martand
    Martin Boon
    Martin Carthy
    Marylebone
    Mary Wollstonecraft
    Maurice Margarot
    Max Bacon
    May Morris
    Michael Foot
    Mildmay Club
    Mile End
    Mirza Waheed
    Monopoly
    Monteath Mausoleum
    Moravians
    Morley
    Mortimer Terrace
    Mosque
    Mumbai
    Muridke
    Muriel Walker
    Museum In Docklands
    Muswell Hill
    Myanmar
    Nairobi
    Narendra Modi
    National Secular Society
    Nedou
    Nehru
    New Left
    New River
    New York
    NHS
    Noida
    Novotel
    Old Delhi
    Olympics
    Oral History
    Orange Street
    Orkney
    Oxford
    Oz
    Paintballing
    Parakeets
    Parkland Walk
    Parsees
    Partition
    Pat Dooley
    Patrick Hamilton
    Peeli Wali
    Peggy Seeger
    Pendragon Castle
    Penny Black
    Peter Kropotkin
    Peterloo
    Philip Spratt
    Poetry
    Political Badges
    Political Pamphlets
    Political Song
    Pondicherry
    Primrose Hill
    Pubs
    Queen
    Queen's Crescent
    Queen's Park
    Quiz
    Radio
    Raj
    Rajiv Gandhi
    Ram Advani
    Ram Nahum
    Ramsay Macdonald
    Rangoon
    Raph Samuel
    Reading
    Red Beryl
    Red Herring
    Red Kite
    Reform League
    Regents Park
    Rena Stewart
    Rent Strike
    Rethymnon
    Reynold Eunson
    Rhubarb
    Richard Carlile
    Richard Thompson
    Richmond
    Riff Raff Poets
    Rinkoffs
    Ripping Yarns
    Robert Blatchford
    Robert Bradnock
    Robert Owen
    Robert Peel
    Roger Casement
    Rolling Stones
    Rosa Branson
    Rosie Hogarth
    Roy Amlot
    Rude Britannia
    Rudolf Rocker
    Sachin Pilot
    Saffron
    Saklatvala
    Sam Lesser
    Samye Ling
    Sanchita Islam
    San Francisco
    'Sapphire'
    Sarah Wise
    Sarmila Bose
    Sausages
    Scottish Borders
    Sekondi
    Sheikh Abdullah
    Shetland
    Shoreditch
    Shrew
    Sidis
    Sidney Street
    Simla
    Sir Francis Burdett
    Sir Frederick Sykes
    Slavery
    Smiley Sun
    Sobha Singh
    Socialist Worker
    South Africa
    Southall
    Spanish Civil War
    SPGB
    Spinalonga
    Spitalfields
    Srinagar
    Stairway To Heaven
    Stalin
    Stanley Hall
    Stanley Menezes
    St Barnabas
    Stepney
    Steptoe And Son
    Steve Winwood
    St Giles
    St Martin's
    Stoke Newington
    Stork
    St Pancras
    Stroud Green
    Strumpet
    Stuart Hall
    Subhas Bose
    Susie Crockett
    Tariq Ali
    Tate Britain
    Tazi Shahnawaz
    Thames
    Theosophy
    The Pamphleteer
    Thomas Bolas
    Thomas Paine
    Thomas Spence
    Tibetan Muslims
    Tichborne
    Tom Mann
    Tommy Jackson
    Tom Paine
    Torriano
    Tottenham
    Toyah Sofaer
    Trump Protest
    Tube Disaster
    Tufnell Park
    Turtles
    Twitter
    Tyburn
    Uher
    Ukraine
    Underground
    Unitarians
    Unity Theatre
    Upper Street
    Usw
    Vale Of Health
    Victoria Cross
    Vikings
    Vinyl
    Vizag
    Walter Batty
    Walter Crane
    Walthamstow
    Wankers
    Warren Street
    Wartime Propaganda
    War Writing
    Waterlow Park
    West Bengal
    Whidborne Street
    White Heat
    Whittington
    Whittington Park
    Willesden
    William John Pinks
    William Morris
    Woodberry Wetlands
    World Cup
    World Music
    World Service
    Wren
    York Rise
    Zadie Smith
    Zainul Abedin
    Zina Rohan
    Zombies

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Enthusiasms
    • London Fictions >
      • Alexander Baron
      • A walk round Baron's manor
      • John Sommerfield >
        • John Sommerfield Archive
        • John Sommerfield's Spanish notebook
        • John Sommerfield, 'More Room for Us'
      • Lynne Reid Banks
      • "Against the Tyranny of Kings and Princes": radicalism in George Gissing's 'Workers in the Dawn'
      • 'Beyond Boundary Passage'
      • 'London' by Dorf Bonarjee
    • A Mission in Kashmir >
      • Full text: A Mission in Kashmir
      • 'The People's Militia: Communists and Kashmiri nationalism in the 1940s'
      • The Rise and Fall of New Kashmir
      • The Making of the 'New Kashmir' manifesto
      • 'For the Conversion of Kashmir'
      • 'I shall paint my nails with the blood of those that covet me'
      • Freda Bedi looking 'From a Woman's Window' on Kashmir
      • Kashmir 1947: Testimonies of a Contested History
      • Kashmir @ 70
      • Kashmir 47 Images
      • Kashmir 47 on film
      • Kashmir 47 in fiction
      • Father Shanks's Kashmir 'Diary'
      • Krishna Misri: 1947, a year of change
      • Shanti Ambardar: Kashmir 1947
    • The O'Brienites >
      • Martin Boon
      • Dan Chatterton
      • George E. Harris
      • John Radford and the Kansas colony
      • Edward Truelove
      • 'New World'
    • Clerkenwell >
      • Popular Politics and Social Structure in Clerkenwell >
        • The Residents of Clerkenwell
        • The Occupational Structure of Clerkenwell
        • Clerkenwell and Reform
        • Fenians, Reformers and the Clerkenwell "Outrage"
        • Clerkenwell: Socialism Finds a Niche
        • Clerkenwell: Not Forgetting the Anarchists
      • Red London: radicals and socialists in late-Victorian Clerkenwell
      • Patriotic Club
    • NW5 and Around
  • Voices
    • Partition Voices >
      • Partition Voices: L.K. Advani
      • Partition Voices: Ram Advani
      • Partition Voices: Qazi Ghulam Ajmiri
      • Partition Voices: Angela Aranha
      • Partition Voices: Helen Baldwin
      • Partition Voices: Bali family
      • Partition Voices: Edward Behr
      • Partition Voices: Benazir Bhutto
      • Partition Voices: H.K. Burki
      • Partition Voices: Sailen Chatterjee
      • Partition Voices: Pran Chopra
      • Partition Voices: K.S. + Ayesha Duggal
      • Partition Voices: Alys Faiz
      • Partition Voices: Jugal Chandra Ghosh
      • Partition Voices: Ashoka Gupta
      • Partition Voices: I.K. Gujral
      • Partition Voices: Syed Najmuddin Hashim
      • Partition Voices: Khorshed Italia
      • Partition Voices: Pran Nath Jalali
      • Partition Voices: D.N. Kaul
      • Partition Voices: Jolly Mohan Kaul
      • Partition Voices: Basant Kaur
      • Partition Voices: Betty Keyes
      • Partition Voices: Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan
      • Partition Voices: Usha Khanna
      • Partition Voices: Frank Leeson
      • Partition Voices: Abdul Ghani Lone
      • Partition Voices: Gopal 'Patha' Mukherjee
      • Partition Voices: Kuldip Nayar
      • Partition Voices: Amrita Pritam
      • Partition Voices: Francis Rath
      • Partition Voices: Annada Sankar Ray
      • Partition Voices: Bhisham Sahni
      • Partition Voices: Sat Paul Sahni
      • Partition Voices: Sir Ian Scott
      • Partition Voices: Sir Paul Scott
      • Partition Voices: Sheila Sengupta
      • Partition Voices: Mahmooda Ahmad Ali Shah + Sajida Zameer Ahmad
      • Partition Voices: Bapsi Sidhwa & Urvashi Butalia
      • Partition Voices: Air Marshal Arjan Singh
      • Partition Voices: Bir Bahadur Singh
      • Partition Voices: Karan Singh
      • Partition Voices: Khushwant Singh
      • Partition Voices: Shingara Singh
      • Partition Voices: H.S. Surjeet
      • Partition Voices: Ben and Marguerite Suter
      • Partition Voices: Leela Thompson
      • Partition Voices: K.B. Vaid
    • Kashmir Voices >
      • Kashmir Voices: Asiya Andrabi
      • Kashmir Voices: Mirwaiz Umar Farooq
      • Kashmir Voices: George Fernandes
      • Kashmir Voices: General J.R. Mukherjee
      • Kashmir Voices: Abdullah Muntazir
      • Kashmir Voices: Ali Mohammad Sagar
      • Kashmir Voices: Syed Salahuddin
    • Communist Voices >
      • Communist Voices: Manmohan Adhikari
      • Communist Voices: Jyoti Basu
      • Communist Voices: Brian Bunting
      • Communist Voices: Guillermo Cabrera Infante
      • Communist Voices: Benoy Choudhury
      • Communist Voices: Anima Dasgupta
      • Communist Voices: Sailen Dasgupta
      • Communist Voices: Denis Goldberg
      • Communist Voices: Grootvlie miners
      • Communist Voices: Indrajit Gupta
      • Communist Voices: Chris Hani
      • Communist Voices: Lionel Martin
      • Communist Voices: Vishwanath Mathur
      • Communist Voices: Geeta Mukherjee
      • Communist Voices: E.M.S. Namboodiripad
      • Communist Voices: John Rettie
    • Political Voices >
      • Political Voices: Sally Alexander
      • Political Voices: Lou Appleton
      • Political Voices: Murray Bookchin
      • Political Voices: Fenner Brockway
      • Political Voices: Tony Cliff
      • Political Voices: Nellie Dick
      • Political Voices: Leah Feldman
      • Political Voices: Jeffrey Hamm
      • Political Voices: Denis Healey
      • Political Voices: Eric Hobsbawm
      • Political Voices: Ian Mikardo
      • Political Voices: Mick Mindel
      • Political Voices: Adrian Mitchell
      • Political Voices: Phil Piratin
      • Political Voices: Betty Reid
      • Political Voices: Fermin Rocker
      • Political Voices: Ralph Russell
      • Political Voices: John Saville
      • Political Voices: Alfred Sherman
      • Political Voices: Screaming Lord Sutch
      • Political Voices: Dorothy Thompson
      • Political Voices: E.P. Thompson
      • Political Voices: Tom Wilson
      • Political Voices: Harry Young
      • The Land Song
      • Harry Pollitt on disc
    • The British New Left >
      • New Left: T.J. Clark
      • New Left: Chuck Taylor
      • New Left: Headopoly
    • South Asia
    • Burma
  • Collecting
    • Political Pamphlets
    • Political Journals
    • Political Badges
    • Political Tokens
    • Political Ephemera
  • Radio Gems
    • 'What's Left of Communism?'
    • 'India: a people partitioned'
    • India's Minorities
    • Documentaries and Features
    • From Our Own Correspondent >
      • FOOC: Working at Westminster 1990
      • FOOC: Ulster's Talking Shop 1991
      • FOOC: House Rules at Westminster 1992
      • FOOC: India's Red Fort State
      • FOOC: Keeping Kosher in Cuba
      • FOOC: Italy's Gourmand Communists 1992
      • FOOC: Scoundrel Politicians - 1993
      • FOOC: Kashmir's New Puritans 1993
      • FOOC: The Rajah of Bihar 1993
      • FOOC: Bringing the Gospel to Mizoram 1993
      • FOOC: Netaji, India's Lost Leader 1994
      • FOOC: A Self-Respect Wedding 1994
      • FOOC: The Miseries of Manipur 1994
      • FOOC: Village Bangladesh 1994
      • FOOC: Calcutta's Communists Discover Capitalism 1995
      • FOOC: Localism in Ladakh 1995
      • FOOC: Bhutan, not quite Paradise
      • FOOC: Crime and Indian Politics 1995
      • FOOC: Sonia Gandhi 1995
      • FOOC: Sri Lanka's Missing Leaders 1995
      • FOOC: India Votes 1996
      • FOOC: Communism Revisited 1996
      • FOOC: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan 1996
      • FOOC: Kerala's Jewish Community 1996
      • FOOC: India's Corruption Scandals 1996
      • FOOC: The Maldives Crowded Capital 1996
      • FOOC: India's Polluted Capital 1996
      • FOOC: Jinnah, Pakistan's Quaid 1997
      • FOOC: Mauritius, an Indian Ocean melting pot
      • FOOC: The Hijras Blessing 1998
      • FOOC: Massacre at Baramulla 2003
      • FOOC: An Old Photo from Kashmir 2007
      • FOOC: Prosperity Driven from Detroit 2008
      • FOOC: An Atheist in MLK's Atlanta2013
      • FOOC: San Francisco's City Lights 2014
      • FOOC: Kashmir Revisited 2014
      • FOOC: By Ferry in Burma 2014
      • FOOC: Toyah's Grave 2017
      • FOOC: The Tibetan Colony in Kashmir 2017
      • FOOC: Stars of Tamil Politics 2018
      • FOOC: Koreans in Chennai 2018
      • FOOC: Epitaph to Empire 2019
      • FOOC: Armenians in India 2019
      • FOOC: Lahore's Bradlaugh Hall 2020
    • What's your favourite political song?
    • London Snapshots
  • Writing
    • Bibliography
    • Tramping Artisans
    • Working Class Housing in Jericho, Oxford
    • New Statesman
    • The Freethinker
    • Outlook
    • Asian Age
    • Indian Express
    • miscellaneous writing
  • Gallery
  • Contact