Paira Mall (1874-1957) was of Indian descent.

An MD, Paira Mall worked as an agent for Sir Henry Wellcome and was sent to India in 1911 to collect materials for a museum of medical history. Mall was involved in the inception of the India Society in 1910.

In 1925, India Society membership records noted Paira Mall's address as c/o National Bank of India, 26 Bishopsgate, London, EC2.

Eric Gill was one of the most significant sculptors to work in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. As well as being a talented stone carver, he was also a gifted draughtsman, letterer, typographer and printer. Rejecting the established techniques of making sculpture with the aid of the pointing machine, Gill is credited with re-establishing the practice of ‘direct carving’ in Britain and influencing the work of subsequent generations of sculptors, including Henry Moore.

Gill began to make sculpture in 1909, having trained in the offices of the architect W. D. Caroë and enrolled in evening classes in masonry at the Westminster Technical Institute and calligraphy at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. His first figural sculpture, Estin Thalassa (now lost), combined cut lettering, for which he had already become well known, and a naked, crouching woman. He showed photographs of this work to William Rothenstein and Roger Fry who became crucial supporters of his work. Whilst Rothenstein was travelling in India, Gill wrote to him telling him about his own exposure in Britain to images of Indian architecture and sculpture through a publication called Wonders of the World.

In 1908, Gill met Ananda Coomaraswamy at a lecture given by the latter at the Art Workers’ Guild in London. Through these acquaintances, Gill became interested in the art and culture of India and he joined the India Society in 1910 (as did fellow sculptor Jacob Epstein). Gill took a specific interest in the religious carving which adorned South Asian temples, heavily influenced by Coomaraswamy’s publications. In his Autobiography, Gill wrote of Coomaraswamy: ‘I dare not confess myself his disciple; that would only embarrass him. I can only say that I believe that no other living writer has written the truth in matters of art and life and religion and piety with such wisdom and understanding.’ Gill also wrote an introductory essay on ‘Art and Reality’ for Mulk Raj Anand’s The Hindu View of Art and contributed a full-page engraving to Anand’s The Lost Child, published in 1934.

Havell was Principal of the Madras School of Industrial Arts from 1884 to 1892 and Principal of the Calcutta School of Art and Keeper of the Government Art Gallery from 1896 until 1906. In Calcutta, Havell worked with Abanindranath Tagore, nephew of Rabindranath Tagore, in developing a Bengal School of Art by reforming the art education at the Calcutta School of Art to gain inspiration from Mughal art rather than western methods.

In February 1910, Havell gave a lecture in London to the Royal Society of Arts on Indian Art, to which the Chair, George Birdwood, responded that India had no fine art tradition. Partly as a response to this, Havell was instrumental in founding the India Society - he convened a meeting at his house in March 1910 where the idea of the Society was concretized. The India Society was formed to bring attention to Indian Art in Britain and the West. The Society organized lectures, exhibitions and produced publications on Indian Art, including Havell's 1920 publication of a Handbook of Indian Art.

Havell was also appointed to the Indian Section Committee of the Festival of Empire held at Crystal Palace in 1911. From 1916 to 1923 Havell was a member of the British legation in Copenhagen. He died on 30 December 1934 at the Acland Nursing Home, Oxford.

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was the son of Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy, from Ceylon, and his wife Elizabeth Clay Beeby, from Kent. Coomaraswamy joined Wycliffe College in Gloucestershire in 1889 and then studied Botany at University College London, graduating in 1900. He married Ethel Mary Partridge in 1902 and worked for the Minerological Survey in Ceylon, 1903-6.

In 1910, Coomaraswamy was involved in the formation of the India Society in London - a society dedicated to promoting Indian art. He wrote a number of pamphlets on Indian art and in 1917 took up a position as Research Fellow in Indian, Persian and Muhammadan Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

In 1912, he divorced his first wife. His second wife was Alice Richardson, a performer of Indian music. His third wife was the American artist Stella Bloch, but this marriage was short-lived.

Laurence Binyon was a poet, critic, artist, dramatist and curator. He worked in the British Museum from 1892 till his retirement in 1933 and was instrumental in promoting Asian Art in the Museum. He was introduced to Indian literature and philosophy by the poet Manmohan Ghose. They met as schoolboys at St Paul's School, in a seventh form English class when Ghose quoted Othello in class. They became fast friends, bonding over their love for poety and Classics and admiration of Matthew Arnold. Binyon followed Ghose to Oxford in 1888 (Ghose had joined in 1887) and they were involved in producing a short selection of poems under the title of Primavera in 1890, which was among others, reviewed favourably by Oscar Wilde in the Pall Mall Gazette.

In 1910, Binyon became involved with the India Society in London, designed to promote Indian Fine Art. Binyon became friends with the art-historian Ananda Coomaraswamy, who introduced him to Rajput paintings. In June 1912, Binyon met Rabindranath Tagore at William Rothenstein's house and held an admiration for Tagore that lasted until his death. Binyon had been introduced to the work of Tagore by Manmohan Ghose who had returned to India in 1894 but maintained a correspondence for some years - providing inspiration for Binyon's poem 'Asoka' or 'The Indian Prince' in 1900. When Ghose died in 1924, his daughter, Lotika, came to England to meet Binyon and show him her father's manuscripts. This inspired Binyon to write an introductory memoir for an edition of Ghose's poems that was published in 1926 under the title Songs of Love and Death.

Shortly before the Armistice, in November 1918, Binyon met Kedar Nath Das Gupta in London. Das Gupta, a friend of Tagore's, was organizer of the Union of the East and West. He had prepared a rough translation of Sakuntala, which he wished to put on the stage; Binyon agreed to rewrite Kalidasa's play for the stage, and two performances were put on in November 1919, produced by Lewis Casson and starring Sybil Thorndike. In 1920, Binyon gave the inaugural address for the Indian Students' Union and Hostel opened in Gower Street. Another connection to India was realized through Binyon's introduction to the Indian artist, Mukul Dey's My Pilgrimages to Ajanta and Bagh (London: Thornton & Butterworth, 1925). Binyon did not manage to visit India in his lifetime, despite the desires he expressed to the Oxford Majlis society in 1929. Upon his death in 1943, the Oxford Majlis passed a resolution in honour of Binyon as a 'lifelong friend' of India.