National Indian Association

NIA

The National Indian Association (NIA) was founded in 1870 by Mary Carpenter in Bristol, with the assistance of Keshub Chunder Sen. The organization's full name was originally National Indian Association in Aid of Social Progress in India.

In 1871 Mrs Manning and her stepdaughter Elizabeth Adelaide Manning started a London branch. Mary Carpenter died in 1877 and the London branch became the headquarters for the Association. The NIA also had branches in other cities in the UK and in India. After the death of Manning in 1905, E. J. Beck, sister of Theodore Beck, became Honorary Secretary until her retirement in 1932.

The initial aim of the Association was to encourage female education in India. It also sought to educate and inform the British about Indian affairs. As the number of Indians in Britain grew, an increasingly important function was to facilitate social intercourse between Indian visitors and the British. The Association held soirées, conversaziones, lectures and meetings and often organized guided tours of sights. The NIA produced a monthly journal from 1871, providing information about their activities. In 1880 a sub-committee, the Northbrook Indian Club, was formed to look after a reading room for Indian students. This became a separate society in 1881, called the Northbrook Indian Society.

In 1910 the offices were moved to 21 Cromwell Road in South Kensington, to be housed alongside the Bureau of Education for Indian students. The Association began to decline after its jubilee year in 1920. Few of its original members remained alive and an increasing array of different organizations arose in London to cater for Indian interests. The Association stayed alive in a residual form after Indian independence, merged with the East India Association in 1949 and was incorporated into the Royal Society for India, Pakistan and Ceylon in 1966.