
In September 1600, Queen Elizabeth and London are made to believe that the East India Company will change England's fortunes forever. With William Shakespeare's death, the heart of Albion starts throbbing with four centuries of an extraordinary Indian settlement that Arup K. Chatterjee christens as Typogravia.
In five acts that follow, we are taken past the churches destroyed by the fire of Pudding Lane; the late eighteenth-century curry houses in Mayfair and Marylebone; and the coming of Indian lascars, ayahs, delegates, students and lawyers in London. From the baptism of Peter Pope (in the year Shakespeare died) to the death of Catherine of Bengal; the chronicles of Joseph Emin, Abu Taleb and Mirza Ihtishamuddin to Sake Dean Mahomet's Hindoostane Coffee House; Gandhi's experiments in Holborn to the recovery of the lost manuscript of Tagore's Gitanjali in Baker Street; Jinnah's trysts with Shakespeare to Nehru's duels with destiny; Princess Sophia's defiance of the royalty to Anand establishing the Progressive Writers' Association in Soho; Aurobindo Ghose's Victorian idylls to Subhas Chandra Bose's interwar days; the four Indian politicians who sat at Westminster to the blood pacts for Pakistan; India in the shockwaves at Whitehall to India in the radiowaves at the BBC; the intrigues of India House and India League to hundreds of East Bengali restaurateurs seasoning curries and kebabs around Brick Lane... Indians in London is a scintillating adventure across the Thames, the Embankment, the Southwarks, Bloomsburys, Kensingtons, Piccadillys, Wembleys and Brick Lanes that saw a nation-a cultural, historical and literary revolution that redefined London over half a millennium of Indian migrations-reborn as independent India."Gandhiji said if he was not in India fighting for independence, he would live in London. Indians in London explains why and how London became a second home for Indians (including Pakistanis and Bangladeshis). Arup K. Chatterjee has unearthed a treasure trove and found London peopled with scores of Indians over five centuries. This is the most comprehensive account of Indians in London I have read and you will enjoy it too.'" --Lord Meghnad Desai
"Chatterjee's fascinating book flows eruditely and creatively among literary and historical sources to highlight Indians in London over five centuries, as portrayed by themselves and by Britons." --Michael H. Fisher "Indians in London is a riveting narrative that investigates the lives and experiences of numerous Indians who visited, stayed, and left their mark in the imperial capital of London from around the time of Shakespeare to Indian independence in 1947. Interestingly, Arup Chatterjee has divided the book into five acts and scenes by replicating the structure of a Shakespearean play, through which he reveals the Indian psyche that clung to the idea of London." --The European Legacy