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India House
‐
House in Highgate for Indian revolutionaries
Location(s)
Highgate
London
N6 5HH
United Kingdom
About
Not to be confused with the offices of the Indian Embassy in Aldwych, India House was set up as a hostel for Indian students and became a hotbed for Indian revolutionaries in Europe. The House was opened on 1 July 1905 by H. M. Hyndman in Highgate. Other prominent figures present at the opening included Dadabhai Naoroji, Charlotte Despard and Bhikaiji Cama. The Indian Home Rule Society held weekly Sunday meetings at India House, passing resolutions condemning arrests in India and advocating total independence for India. They held annual Martyrs’ Day celebrations to commemorate the 1857 Rebellion.
Founded by Shyamaji Krishnavarma, leadership was taken up by V. D. Savarkar in 1907 as Krishnavarma was exiled to Paris. Krishnavarma's journal, The Indian Sociologist, was an organ of India House. The organization disbanded after its implication in the murder of Sir Curzon Wyllie in July 1909. The assassin, Madan Lal Dhingra, had been known to frequent India House and Savarkar refused to condemn his actions. Following their arrests, India House was closed down and sold.
Madame Cama, Lala Har Dayal, Charlotte Despard, Madan Lal Dhingra, M. K. Gandhi (stayed there on a visit in 1906), David Garnett, H. M. Hyndman, Dadabhai Naoroji.
Ghadar Party
The Indian Sociologist, journal edited by Krishnavarma (1905–14 and 1920–2)
Savarkar’s Indian War of Independence, translated from Marathi to English at India House and published in London in May 1909
Garnett, David, The Golden Echo (London: Chatto & Windus, 1953)
Ker, J. C., Political Troubles in India, 1907–1917 (Calcutta: Superintendent Govt Printing, 1917)
Laursen, Ole Birk, 'Spaces of Indian Anti-Colonialism in Early Twentieth-Century London and Paris', South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 44.4 (2021), pp. 634–50
Srivastava, Harindra, Five Stormy Years: Savarkar in London (June 1906 – June 1911) (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1983)
Tickell, Alex, 'Scholarship Terrorists: The India House Hostel and the "Student Problem" in Edwardian London', in Rehana Ahmed and Sumita Mukherjee (eds) South Asian Resistances in Britain 1858–1947 (London: Continuum, 2012), pp. 3–18
Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002)
Metropolitan Police Report, File 3264 (2 Sep 1908), L/PJ/6/890, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Image credit
Photo taken for 'South Asian Britain'
