Hindustani Social Club

Like the Hindustan Community House, the main purpose of the Hindustani Social Club was to do social and educational work among seamen and pedlars in the East End. A key figure in the HSC was Surat Alley, a political activist whose main concern and area of activism was the working conditions of Indian seamen. The Club also served as a social centre for Indians in the East End. In 1939 Alley organized a charity performance by the Indian dancer Ram Gopal and his troupe for the entertainment of the Club’s members (L/PJ/12/630, p. 60).

The Club also functioned as a political meeting-place and as a forum where Indian activists could educate and mobilize working-class Indians against British colonial rule. Alley issued to its members news bulletins in Urdu and Bengali on the British Government’s oppression of Indian workers and peasants, and in 1942 the Club hosted an ‘Indian Independence Day’ meeting, attended by Mulk Raj Anand as well as numerous well-known activists (L/PJ/12/454, pp. 13–16). With Alley as its Honorary Secretary, it inevitably had links with the Colonial Seamen’s Association as well as other organizations for lascars, and, according to a government surveillance report, in 1939 it served as a meeting-place for striking lascars (L/PJ/12/630, p. 25). In the eyes of the government, Alley’s association with the Club made it particularly suspect; in 1940 its premises (also Alley’s home at the time) were searched because of his links with Udham Singh (L/PJ/12/630, p. 81).