Introducing the ‘Remaking Britain’ project in South Asian Heritage Month

By Professor Sumita Mukherjee, Dr Florian Stadtler, Dr Aleena Din, Dr Rehana Ahmed and Dr Maya Parmar

We’re excited to launch the new project Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1830s to the present. Remaking Britain is an AHRC-funded research project led by the University of Bristol (Sumita Mukherjee, PI and Florian Stadtler, Co-I) and Queen Mary University of London (Rehana Ahmed, Co-I) in partnership with the British Library. Aleena Din (Bristol) and Maya Parmar (QMUL) are researchers on the project. 

Remaking Britain will reveal the significance of South Asian people and communities as agents of change to Britain’s cultural, economic, political and social life from the period of empire in the 1830s to the present. Through the exploration of archival records and the capturing of oral histories, the project will produce a free, interactive and widely accessible digital resource with accompanying learning materials and oral history interviews, designed for researchers of all types from academics to community and family historians, to interested members of the public.  

We are working closely with the Bristol Research IT team, led by Tessa Alexander, with Mike Jones, as well as user experience consultant Stu Church and web designer Tom Waterhouse. This resource, with roughly 750 entries, will be launched in the summer of 2025. 

To mark South Asian Heritage Month, which takes place between 18th July-17th August, we have spotlighted five individuals, events and organisations which will feature in our digital resource.  

Atiya Fyzee (1877-1967), author, social reformer and arts patron

Image of Atiya Fyzee wearing a head-covering light-colored veil with a pearl ornament, and an embroidered/jeweled bodice.
Atiya Fyzee. Source: Basanta Koomar Roy, “Picturesque India”, The Mentor vol. 9 (May 1, 1921).

As a youth, Atiya was involved in women’s organisations and made contributions to reformist journals for Muslim women, including Tahzib un-niswan (Lahore) and Khatun (Aligarh). She was sent to London by her parents for an education and undertook a teaching qualification at Maria Grey Training College. While in London, Atiya wrote a travel diary which documented her networks and connections in Britain. This was later published as Zamanai-tahsil (A Time of Education) in 1921.  

During her short time in Britain, she became part of influential social networks, travelled across Europe and made significant cultural contributions through her groundbreaking observations of life as a Muslim woman in early 20th century Britain.  

 

Amrit Kaur (1889-1964), activist and politician

Image of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, from a 1936 issue of ''The Indian Listener''. Amrit has her head covered with a shawl and is sat down looking towards the camera.
Amrit Kaur. Source: “Rajkumari Amrit Kaur”, The Indian Listener (November 7, 1936): 1096.

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur was a leading member of the Indian suffrage movement in the 1920s and 1930s, visiting London numerous times to campaign for Indian women’s rights, and went on to become Independent India’s first female cabinet minister.

Amrit Kaur was the first Indian to study at Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset. She joined the school in 1902, following the coronation of Edward VII, and left in 1906 as Head Girl and Captain of Games. Amrit Kaur also served as one of Mahatma Gandhi’s private secretaries for 16 years and was an active member of the non-cooperation movement. In 1950, her suffrage campaigning saw success as the new constitution of India enfranchised all adult men and women over the age of 21. 

 

 

Chuni Lal Katial (1898-1978), doctor and politician 

Chuni Lal Katial graduated with a degree in medicine from Lahore University, and then continued his studies in Liverpool in public health and tropical medicine in 1927. After moving to London, he initially worked as a doctor in Canning Town, and later set up a surgery in Finsbury, attending mainly to working class communities. He was elected as a councillor for the Labour Party in 1934, and in 1938 he became the first South Asian mayor in the UK. He was a driving force as Chairman of the Public Health Committee in the setting up of the pioneering Finsbury Health Centre, which offered a range of health facilities all in one location, including a tuberculosis clinic, dentist and women’s clinic. During the Second World War, Katial was a civil defence medical officer. 

Katial was also heavily involved with the campaigning pressure group the India League. During the Second Round Table Conference in 1931, he became Gandhi’s chaperone in London, and a famous meeting between Gandhi and Charlie Chaplin took place at his house.  

Embed from Getty Images

M K Gandhi meeting actor, Charlie Chaplin, in London’s East End. Also in the picture from left to right are: Dr Katial and the poet, Sarojini Naidu, 22nd September 1931 (Photo by Popperfoto via Getty Images/Getty Images) 

 

Indian Writing (1940-45) 

South Asian writers played a significant part in London’s literary and political life in the early twentieth century. One node of a substantial network which connected South Asian, British and other anti-colonial writers, intellectuals and activists was the magazine Indian Writing (1940-45), edited by Iqbal Singh, Ahmed Ali, Krishnarao Shelvankar and Alagu Subramaniam. Run from Sasadhar Sinha’s Bibliophile Bookshop, located just a stone’s throw from the British Museum at 16 Little Russell Street, the magazine published short fiction, non-fiction and book reviews. On the cusp of Indian independence, it brought together fierce political critique and literary talent at the heart of the imperial metropolis. 

Image of an advertisement for Indian Writing magazine. The advertisement reads: 'Indian Writing: A New Quarterly. The spring number contains stories, articles, and reviews by Mulk Raj Anand, Iqbal Singh, K. S. Shelvankar, Raja Rao, Ahmed Ali, Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, A. Subramaniam, Cedric Dover, and others.'
Advertisement for Indian Writing, published in the magazine, Life and Letters and the London Mercury and Bookman [Shelfmark: P.P.5939.bgf.; Courtesy of the British Library]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

South Asians and the NHS

The NHS as we know it today has been built – and continues to be sustained – by migrant contributions. South Asians have played a major role in this. But we can place South Asians in the medical profession in Britain, long before the NHS was formed. Bari Chohan, who shared his family history for the Millenium Memory Bank (MMB), described how his family arrived in England in the 1870s, having practiced homeopathy and opthalmics on the subcontinent. They then opened medical clinics all over England. Bari’s great uncle Dr Chirag Din Chohan, who was a hakim (practitioner of alternative medicine) and an eye specialist, opened his first practice in Harrogate in the early 1920s. He later moved to his wife Florence’s hometown of Middlesbrough in 1925 where, in 1933, he opened a practice on Kensington Road. In 1937, Dr Chohan opened a second practice on nearby Linthorpe Road.  

Embed from Getty Images

An Indian doctor examines a patient, UK, October 1955. Original publication: Picture Post – 8572 – Indians in London unpub. (Photo by Thurston Hopkins/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)] 

The team chose to spotlight these lives and organisations as they showcase the wide range of interests of the project including gender, literary and cultural life, political activism and campaigning, religion, as well as workers’ experiences  

Contact us

We’d love to hear from anyone with project queries, expressions of interest in oral history participation, or any information relating to the rich history of South Asians in Britain from the 1830s to the present. 

To contact the project team, please email remaking-britain-project@bristol.ac.uk.

You can find more information on how to contact us on our website, including our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Mariners: Religion, Race and Empire in British Ports, 1801-1914 – One year on

The fabulous Bristol Harbour Festival is on again! This means it is over a year since Professor Hilary Carey, Professor of Imperial and Religious History, and Dr Sumita Mukherjee, Associate Professor in Modern History, received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for a project examining missions to British and Asian seafarers in the ports of Bristol, Liverpool, Hull and London. 

What progress has been made? 

The most important change is that we are now a team.  

We are delighted to introduce Dr Lucy Wray who comes to us from Belfast where she has been working on the Madill Archive project, a collection of over 5,000 photographs documenting the history of Irish boats. Lucy is working on the stream of the project which focuses on lascars, a term often used for non-European seafarers employed on British ships. Lascars were predominately from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. 

We also welcome Dr Manikarnika Dutta, who is an historian of colonialism, medicine and public health. Her DPhil thesis at Oxford studied the health and welfare of European seamen in Indian port cities such as Calcutta and Bombay. In this project, she will be working on British mariners and the imprint the network of sailorshomes, missions, orphanages and welfare services had on port cities. 

Our research administrator is Jess Kirkby, who has lived in Bristol for the last ten years and has worked for a number of charities in the culture and environment sectors, including the RWA Gallery and the Forest of Avon Trust. 

In the sections below we outline some of our work in the past few months. 

Port histories 

We are only getting started, but already we are finding that archival records relating to the merchant marine are voluminous and very widely scattered. Partly because they were situated in liminal settings, literally by the shore and within easy access to commercial ports, many of the buildings that used to cater for the peripatetic merchant marine are no more.  

We are currently building a project website where we hope to map out some of the historical traces that missions and seafarers left on port cities, including Bristol.  

During the Bristol blitz of 1940, the Seamen’s Mission Church on Prince’s Street was partly destroyed and remains an eyesore in the heart of the city.

Former Seamen’s Church and Institute, Prince Street Bristol 1920s. Source: Hartley Collection at M Shed.
Former Seamen’s Church and Institute, Prince Street Bristol in 2023. Source: George Thomas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In May 2023, BristolLive reported that there were plans to restore the building, with one proposal advocating the creation of a Museum and Memorial to the Victims of Enslavement. If so, it will have fared better than the magnificent Liverpool Seaman’s Mission, of which all that remains are the gates – now part of the portside shopping centre.  

Gates to Liverpool Seaman’s Mission, opened in 1850 and demolished in 1974. Source: Jessica Moody, 10 July 2023

Race and empire histories 

Lucy Wray has been scouring the print records of missionary societies looking for visual sources for the project. The illustration below encapsulates the project’s key themes around race, religion and empire. The scene from 31 May 1856 shows Prince Albert surrounded by guests of different ethnicities in a room strewn with flags from the empire and a biblical banner reading ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers’. The monarch was welcomed by waving crowds at London’s West India dock as he laid the foundation stone for The Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders. 

 

Prince Albert lays the foundation stone of the Strangers’ Home, 31 May 1856, Illustrated London News, 14 June 1856. Source: Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons

 

 

Lucy is exploring how religious institutions like the Strangers Home for Asiatics interacted with lascars. In the nineteenth century, the British Merchant Marine was transformed by the employment of lascars. On the outbreak of war in 1914, 30% of merchant crews were born abroad, and lascars comprised 1 in 6 of these men.   

In addition to difficult working conditions, restrictions, lower pay, and prejudice, lascars struggled to find accommodation in British ports. For most of the nineteenth century, voluntary religious societies and missions were the mainstays of welfare, accommodation and support services for this extensive, vulnerable, multi-ethnic and multi-religious labour force. By exploring visual sources, alongside print sources, Lucy hopes to offer insights into the gendered and racialised ways in which missions and lascars interacted across the century. 

British mariners, missions and welfare 

Manikarnika Dutta has been working in the Hull History Centre which holds the records of the Anglican Mission to Seafarers, who are our project partners. 

She has found extensive annual reports of the Port of Hull Society for the Religious Instruction of Seamen and the Hull Sailor’s Home. These reports describe the religious and moral advice to British seamen through ministries and the promotion of healthy living practices through institutional accommodation between voyages.  

Manikarnika has been particularly struck by the institutions created for the families of seafarers, and the extent to which the women of maritime ports supported charitable and religious outreach to sailors. One example was the Hull Seamen’s and General Orphan Asylum, ‘established for the maintenance, clothing and education of the Fatherless children of seamen and others’ 

A very interesting part of the archives are the Hull Mariners’ Church Orphan Society records that describe the welfare for the children of seamen, especially local fishermen, who died in shipwrecks or from other causes in service. Manikarnika will be studying this further to understand the history of orphanages as charitable institutional care and compare different trajectories of Victorian debates on child welfare. She hopes to address broader themes such as poverty, homelessness, criminality along with compassion, love and charity and Christian morals to write an emotional, social and religious history of care homes for seamen. 

 

Hull Seamen’s and General Orphan Asylum, 1860. Hull History Centre, The Records of the Hull Seamans and General Orphanage, ALBUM 1863-1900, C DSHO 2/56. Credit: Hull City Archives, Hull History Centre

 

 

In May 1871, the children of the Orphan Asylum sang a special hymn with these words: 

Thou Who are the Orphans’ Father 

Deign to hear the Orphans’ prayer 

While they round Thy footstool gather, 

Humbly trusting in Thy care. 

Here no father’s arm defends them, 

Here no father’s love can bless, 

Strangers’ aid alone befriends them, 

Father! Help the fatherless! 

Source: Hull History Centre, The Records of the Hull Seamans and General Orphanage, ALBUM 1863-1900, C DSHO 2/56. Credit: Hull City Archives, Hull History Centre. 

What comes next? 

We are eagerly looking forward to further discoveries in Liverpool, Hull and Bristol. We are excited to find how different these cities were and how diverse and adventurous the lives of the sailors who visited them were.  

We are especially keen to find out how British and Asian mariners worked together and why the merchant marine became so racially, religiously and socially divided. If any readers have any of their own stories or images to share about this fascinating history, please get in touch with the project team! 

Contact us 

You can follow the development of the Mariners project through our Bristol blog. Or do send us an email:

Hilary Carey hilary.carey@bristol.ac.uk

Sumita Mukherjee sumita.mukherjee@bristol.ac.uk

Lucy Wray lucy.wray@bristol.ac.uk

Manikarnika Dutta manikarnika.dutta@bristol.ac.uk

Jess Kirkby jess.kirkby@bristol.ac.uk