'Finding Nanking, Where It Began'

Noor Zaheer

Andrew Whitehead

I was recently honoured to be asked to give a talk to Urdu Culture London and Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu UK about the spot where the Indian Progressive Writers' Association gathered for their first meeting.

Noor Zaheer had seen an earlier post on this site which prompted her to extend the invitation. She was sitting alongside me as I spoke about her father, the distinguished Urdu writer and leftist Sajjad Zaheer - and happily she confirmed the details of his personal life which I shared in the talk.

​Here is the text of what I said:

The Nanking restaurant was in the basement, down those steep outside stairs

In the course of a few minutes I am going to take you on a journey in search of the birthplace of the Indian Progressive Writers Association – we’ll take in Little Tokyo, Tin Pan Alley, the Rolling Stones and Revolution. And we’ll end up at a now deserted basement not more than a mile from here.

The renowned Urdu writer, Sajjad Zaheer, in his reminiscences gave an account of the first meeting of the IPWA: '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.’ 

The venue was the basement of the Nanking restaurant in Denmark Street - and the date, according to the scholar Carlo Coppola, was probably the evening of Saturday, 24 November, 1934.

Mulk Raj Anand says that it was at a meeting at the Nanking restaurant in the following year, 1935, that the Association’s historic manifesto was agreed
The first All-India Progressive Writers' Conference was held in Lucknow on 10 April 1936 under the leadership of Sajjad Zaheer.

But where was the long gone Nanking restaurant? Yes, Denmark Street – a short street off Charing Cross Road still associated with music and instruments - Tin Pan Alley as was, centre of the sheet music trade – before that Little Tokyo, hub of the small Japanese commuity in London – and earlier still a haunt of the radical O’Brienites, followers of the Chartist and socialist Bronterre O'Brien who met at the Eclectic Hall in Denmark Place and mustered alongside Karl Marx in the International Working Men's Association.

I come at this from two perspective: a keen interest in fiction set in London which has a strong sense of place, and Sajjad Zaheer’s novella ‘London ki ek raat’ is exactly that, in large part a lightly fictionalised account of the lives of Indian students and recent graduates in Bloomsbury in the mid-1930s. The Lucknow-based scholar, Madhu Singh, has written about the title on a website I set up, London Fictions.

My interest also arose because I was working on a biography of Freda Houlston – Freda Bedi – a woman from Derby from a non-privileged background who studied at Oxford in the early 1930s. There she met and married an Indian student and communist from Lahore, B.P.L. Bedi - and from that moment, long before she had set foot on Indian soil, decided that she was unequivocally Indian. She lived most of her adult life in India, died there, two of her sons live there today – one of them of course is the actor Kabir Bedi.

Oxford Mail, February 1933

At Oxford, Freda had two close friends: Barbara Betts, who became better known as Barbara Castle, and was really the first woman cabinet minister to make a big mark on British politics; and Olive Shapley, who became a broadcaster on the BBC notably as the host of Woman’s Hour on the radio.

Freda was emboldened to have an Indian boyfriend by her friend, Olive. At Oxford, Olive Shapley was a fervent class-against-class Communist and Olive’s boyfriend was ... Sajjad Zaheer. They never married of course nor intended to marry. I suspect Olive is the model for Sheila Green in Zaheer’s novella, who is told by her Indian boyfriend that he is returning home because he loves his country and its national cause even more than he loves her.

At Oxford, Zaheer was an evangelical communist. He took over the publication of the Oxford Indian students, Bharat, and turned it into a revolutionary publication. The only copy I’ve been able to trace is in the India Office Records. On the cover is the slogan: ‘Inquilab Zindabad’. It survives only because a British civil servant wanted to ban it and sent a copy to government lawyers for their view. They said it was, in effect, already illegal in India so no further action was needed. 

Olive Shapley and Sajjad Zaheer remained on cordial terms. Indeed Olive’s son tells me that as a teenager he accompanied his mother to India, and they called on Sajjad Zaheer and his wife and daughters at their home in Delhi.

So let’s get back to Denmark Street. What do we know of the Nanking restaurant where the IPWA held its early meetings? Rather wonderfully there’s an account of the street from a visitor in 1932:

“….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. ... 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.”

And where exactly was the Nanking restaurant? Well, a 1940 street directory answers that. It was at no. 4 Denmark Street, sharing the elegant six-storey building with a bookseller, a music publishers, a film casting agent and a commercial artist. And no, the street hasn't since been renumbered.

It was in the basement that Zaheer and his comrades met. So when I discovered that 4 Denmark Street was the spot, a decade back, I went round with my good friend Sam Miller. It was a bar, the Alley Cat, which promised live music nightly. When we navigated our way down the outside metal staircase and entered, there was no music and no other customers. The bartender told a story of tough times. The bar subsequently closed down.

That basement space is derelict today. There must be a business opportunity there. And it really deserves a blue plaque asthe birthplace of the IPWA..

The floors above became Regent Sounds Studios. Back in the day, they all recorded here: Hendrix, Elton John, Black Sabbath, the Kinks. The ground floor is now a shop specialising in electric guitars but the studio signage survives.

There’s a sign in the window saying that the Stones’ recorded ‘Not Fade Away’ here in 1964. You know the song, I'm sure. It goes: 'Your love for me has got to be real, Love is real and not fade away’.

Part of our common purpose today is to ensure that the progressive legacy of those who gathered in the basement of the Nanking restaurant all those decades ago does not fade away.