The Indian Students’ Union and Hostel was founded in 1920 by the Indian National Council of YMCA’s to provide living and social facilities for Indian students in London. Laurence Binyon gave the inaugural address at the opening ceremony. Originally housed in a building known as ‘Shakespeare Hut’ on the corner of Keppel Street and Gower Street, it moved to premises to 106-112 Gower Street in 1923, which were bombed during the Battle of Britain. One student was killed. The new home in 1923 was opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The premises were moved around after that until they became permanently settled, and continue to exist, at 41 Fitzroy Square in 1950, opened by V. K. Krishna Menon.

Although the hostel element was important, especially for students as they arrived and before they could find permanent lodgings, the Union provided recreational space and food for other Indian visitors. By 1925, approximately 2000 members had been through the Union. The Union organized entertainment such as trips and various sporting activities. They also hosted a number of visitors who gave talks and lectures. These included British speakers and Indian speakers such as Gandhi, Nehru and Tagore. The Union produced a journal, The Indus, from May 1921 and provided a space for students to write about the hostel and their experiences in Britain. With its central location and openness, the hostel was an important and influential landmark for Indian students.

The Cambridge Majlis was founded around 1891 for Indian students at the university. In its early days it met at the home of Dr Upendra Krishna Dutt. The society became a debating organization where Indian students at Cambridge could reason and practise debates, as well as socialize and discuss political matters. It was named after the Persian word for assembly. A number of Indian nationalist politicians came to Cambridge to address the Majlis. The Cambridge Majlis had close links with its Oxford counterpart, founded in 1896, with various joint dinners and debates.

The Oxford Majlis was a debating society founded in 1896 at the University by Indian Students. Following the format of the Oxford Union, and the Cambridge Majlis (founded 5 years earlier), Indian students would meet on Sunday evenings to hold formal debates. They would also hold other social events such as music, dancing and lectures from invited speakers. Each year they would hold a debate against the Cambridge Majlis.

Before Indian Independence, the Oxford Majlis would often take up debates of a political nature relating to empire and Indian’s relationship with Britain. The majority of Indian students at the University felt compelled to be part of the organization and take part in these political debates, even if they were intending to take up positions sympathetic to the British in India such as in the Indian Civil Service. The Majlis was not only restricted to Indian students; Sri Lankan and Burmese students were an integral part of the ‘Indian student’ community before 1947. The India Office and New Scotland Yard kept an eye on the Majlis in the early part of the twentieth century and were particularly concerned about their Communist sympathies in the late 1920s and 1930s.

The Edinburgh Indian Association was founded in 1883. It was a society for students from India who had come to study in Edinburgh. In supplying figures to the 1907 Lee-Warner Committee into Indian Students, they mentioned eighty-four Indian members. They held regular social events and debates for Indians in Edinburgh and for Scottish members.

In 1911, the Association was involved in litigation in order to win independence from the university authorities. 

From an idea that was formed in 1879, founded in February 1880, as a sub-committee of the National Indian Association, the Northbrook Society was originally designed as a reading room and club providing Indian and other newspapers for Indian visitors to London and British members. Named after Lord Northbrook, former Viceroy of India, who was their president, the Society became a separate entity to the NIA in September 1881. In 1910, the Northbrook Society was housed along with the NIA and Bureau for Information for Indian Students at 21 Cromwell Road, South Kensington. The Society was then able to provide a small number of rooms as temporary lodgings for Indian visitors and students.

The British Museum was established by an Act of Parliament on 7 June 1753, but the origins of the Museum lie with Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), who wanted his collection of more than 71,000 objects, along with his library and herbarium, to be preserved after his death. On 15 January 1759, the British Museum opened to the public and access to view the collections became possible. The round Reading Room at the centre of the museum was constructed from 1854 to 1857.

It is this Reading Room which was frequented by a number of South Asians and their English friends. An article in the Star in January 1926 describes the constituency of the Reading Room thus: ‘From the Centre Desk…to the circumference, long tables radiate like the spokes of a spider’s web; and here sit hundreds of human flies, male and female, black, white, yellow and brown; some digging hard in pursuit of knowledge and scratching their heads at the hard words, others curled up and sleeping like babes’ (quoted in Harris, p. 29).

On his arrival in Britain as a student in 1888, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi used the Reading Room. Other South Asian users include Fredoon Kabraji, Sasadhar Sinha, mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, Cedric Dover, Aubrey Menen, the writer Mulk Raj Anand and his friend Nikhil Sen. Jomo Kenyatta also frequented the Reading Room when he studied at the London School of Economics.

In Conversations in Bloomsbury (1981), Anand relates a meeting between himself, his friend Nikhil Sen and literary critic Bonamy Dobree in the Museum Tavern. Anand also records meetings with Aldous Huxley, Laurence Binyon (who was Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum at the time) and Emily Richardson in the Reading Room.