Upending the Telescope

Abstract

In September 2010 at a conference at the British Library in London, ‘Bharat Britain: South Asians Making Britain 1870–1950’, the historical significance of the South Asian presence in Britain was made clear in no uncertain terms. Building on Rozina Visram’s seminal text, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (2002), the conference showed conclusively the extensive reach of Indians in British life before the migration watershed of 1945.1 The myth of a white pre-1945 Britain was exploded. Some papers traced the visits of eminent Indians to London such as Rabindranath Tagore and Sarojini Naidu, while others looked at the presence of lascars and merchants, Indian women travellers and settlers in Britain. Still others explored mixed-race marriages, mosque-building in the UK before the First World War and Indian scientists in London during the Second World War. There was no singular ‘South Asian experience’ of coming to the UK. From princes...