Auxiliary Ambulance Station 50 (Indian Section)

Auxiliary Ambulance Station 50 (Indian Section) was created in 1939 and was the initiative of Dorai Ross, an entrepreneur and rubber plantation owner from the Straits Settlement, in response to the authorities' call for volunteers and support in Britain’s war effort.

The station was mainly crewed by men and women drawn from London’s South Asian community, including students and professionals such as doctors and barristers. Photographs, including one of the most iconic images of women in saris with ARP tin hats and gas marks, feature volunteers from the station.

The station included people of different religious and professional backgrounds and was staffed by around 100 volunteers. Whilst the station featured in wartime publicity materials of the time to highlight the manifold South Asian support for Britain’s war effort, reports of the situation in the ambulance stations across London tell a different story.

Archival documents in the India Office Records collection reveal that they faced discrimination. They were excluded from the Compulsory Military Service Act and, although eligible for local civil defence recruitment – for example, the auxiliary fire service, stretcher parties and auxiliary ambulance service – the Ministry of Labour and National Service was reluctant.

In autumn 1939 Reginald Sorensen, MP raised a parliamentary question about incidents where South Asians had been dismissed from Air Raid Precautions stations. R. Singh, of Upper Berkley Street, in an angry letter to the Medical Officer of Health highlighted that ‘barring Indians for no other obvious reason than that of colour, does not show much for the so called lip service and self advertisement of the Unity of the British Empire’ (L/PJ/7/2884). On 6 October 1939 the India Office also received an angry letter about Indian ambulance workers being dismissed from Ambulance Station 50, alleging discrimination.