Sastrya arrived in Britain in Spring 1936 to train as a journalist. In December 1936 he approached the India League to offer his support for as long as he remained in the UK. According to India Office Records, Sastrya had found it difficult to find work as a journalist in the English Press. He worked for a while for the Orient Press Service and supplemented his income by working in the Indian Stores department. He later moved to the Midlands to take up work with Albert Herberts Ltd. in Coventry. He studied economics in evening classes and completed his course in July 1940. In 1941, he was working as a shop steward for Daimler and later as an Inspector in the Gauge Control Department of the BSA Works in Birmingham.

Sastrya was a committed socialist and was a driving force in organizing Indian workers in the Midlands. He was actively involved with the Indian Workers Association and became its secretary in October 1941. He drafted a constitution for the IWA and was instrumental in helping the IWA expand by setting up a central committee functioning from Birmingham with branches in Coventry, Bradford, Newcastle, Sheffield, Manchester and other towns and cities with large Indian communities in the UK. He also helped to set up a newsletter which was published in both English and Urdu. In order to pursue his work for the IWA more effectively he resigned from his BSA job on grounds of ill-health.

Sastrya was committed to protecting the interests of Indian workers in the UK, working with great enthusiasm and making full use of his organizational skills. He was a driving force for the expansion of the organization. He campaigned for Indian independence and was of the opinion that Indians had to publicize the cause of Indian independence not only to an Indian audience in Britain but amongst all people living in the UK. Sastrya’s work was instrumental in politicizing the Indian community living and working in the Midlands at the time.

He was employed by the Socialist Appeal, a Trotskyist journal, and was also a member of the Independent Labour Party. In 1944 he went on a tour to speak at a series of ‘Quit India’ demonstrations held in Birmingham, Coventry, Bradford, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle. Sastrya also worked closely with Surat Alley as part of the Federation of Indian Associations in Great Britain. He lost his position as secretary of the organization when Akbar Ali Khan became its president in 1945 and pursued a policy of disengaging the IWA from the Federation of Indian Associations in Great Britain.

Khushwant Singh is a journalist and novelist. Born in a Sikh family in Punjab, Singh tells in his autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice, that his exact date of birth is not known but it was sometime in August 1915. His father was a building contractor in Delhi.

Following a degree from Government College, Lahore, Singh went to London in 1934 and registered for a LLB degree at King's College. He also enrolled at the Inner Temple. In his second year he lived in lodgings with English and Scottish students and then in his third year he lodged with Indians near Hampstead. Singh competed for the ICS but was unsuccessful. Following his success in the LLB exams he returned to India and was called to the Bar in abstentia.

Upon return to India in 1939, Singh set up a law practice in Lahore but he gave this up seven years later. He left Lahore in 1947 in the face of partition riots. Through the Indian Ministry of External Affairs he was appointed to a job in public relations at India House, London, and then worked in Canada. He then joined the All-India Radio and Singh became a full time writer, editing journals, writing novels and political commentary. He remains a popular journalist today (2010).

Maharajkumari Indira Devi was born on 26 February 1912 to Maharaja Paramjit Singh and Maharani Brinda of Kapurthala. She left India for Britain in 1935 at the age of twenty-three. Only her sisters Princesses Sushila and Ourmilla knew of her intentions. In England she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London with a view to becoming a movie star. While she did not fulfil this ambition, she managed to work briefly with Alexander Korda at London Films, who wanted to launch her as his next big star after Merle Oberon. However the difficulties of the film industry in the late 1930s meant she did not get her big break in the movie business.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Indira Devi successfully passed the St John Ambulance examination and drove motor ambulances during air raids. She also worked for a while as a postal censor. She joined the BBC in 1942 and became known as the ‘Radio Princess’. She hosted a half-hour radio programme in Hindustani for Indian forces stationed in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. She broadcast the programme 'The Debate continues', a weekly report to India on the proceedings in the House of Commons, where she was the only woman in the Press Gallery. She broadcast many talks series for the Indian Section of the Eastern Service Division. She also broadcast on the Home Service. She was offered a permanent contract with the Overseas Service Division in 1943. She continued to work for the BBC until 1968. Princess Indira died in Ibiza, Spain in September 1979.

Venu Chitale was a talks broadcaster and assistant to George Orwell at the BBC’s Indian Section of the Eastern Service. She arrived in Britain in the mid-1930s. She had come to Britain with her teacher in Poona, Winnie Duplex, to study at University College, London.

She joined the BBC in 1940 when the service expanded to broadcast different Indian languages including Marathi, her mother tongue. From 1941, Chitale assisted George Orwell in his work as a talks programme assistant for the BBC Indian section of the Eastern Service from 1941-43. She broadcast on his series of talks ‘Through Eastern Eyes’ as well as his 1942 magazine programme 'Voice'. She also broadcast as part of the series of talks ‘The Hand That Rocks The Cradle’, which focused on the role of women in the war effort. Like Indira Devi of Kapurthala, she also broadcast on the Home Service, where she served as a newsreader at the height of the war. She contributed to programmes such as ‘Indian Recipes’ and the ‘Kitchen Front’ series, which was produced by Jean Rowntree. Orwell was particularly impressed by Chitale and she was often complimented for her speaking voice. She became a full-time member of staff as the Marathi Programme Assistant in 1942.

While in London, Chitale also became involved with the India League and forged a close relationship with Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Jawaharlal Nehru’s sister. She returned to India in 1950 and married Prof T. G. Khare. She published several novels and died in 1995.

Balraj Sahni worked in London as a Hindi-language broadcaster for the BBC's Indian Section of the Eastern Service. His wife Damjanthi Sahni also worked for the BBC. Before moving to London, Sahni had worked with Gandhi in 1938 and taught Hindi and English at Rabindranath Tagore's Visva-Bharati University in Shantiniketan.

He became a successful movie star in India after independence.