Sasadhar Sinha

1925–32, 1933–45

Sasadhar Sinha travelled to Britain to study for a BSc at the London School of Economics. He stayed on to complete a PhD at the same institution, returning to India shortly afterwards. On his return, Sinha failed to get a job because of the anti-government content of his journalism and lectures. Fearing arrest, he soon returned to Britain, where, in 1935, he opened the Bibliophile Bookshop at 16 Little Russell Street. The Ceylonese writer Alagu Subramaniam worked as Sinha’s assistant there, and the magazine Indian Writing, to which Sinha contributed regularly, was also based there. Indeed, the Bibliophile became known as a political meeting-place for Indians.

As well as being prominent in anti-colonial and left-wing political circles in Britain, Sinha worked as an evening lecturer at Eltham Literary Institute and at Lewisham and Dulwich Literary Institute, lecturing on current affairs, Indian history, economics and political science. Along with several other South Asians during this period, he was a regular reader at the British Museum Reading Room, where his reading matter was monitored by government officials who kept surveillance reports on politically active South Asians in Britain. He was married to Marthe Goldwyn, a teacher at Prendergast Girls’ School, Lewisham, and registered as a conscientious objector during the Second World War. By 1941 the Bibliophile was running out of funds and Sinha began to incur debts. He sold the bookshop in 1942 – to either Krishna Menon or one Robert Scott Cleminson – but remained its manager. In 1945 he returned to India to take ‘an active part in the nationalist movement in Bengal’ (L/PJ/12/467, p. 17).