British Indians are citizens of the United Kingdom (UK) whose ancestral roots are from India. Currently, the British Indian population exceeds 2 million people in the UK, making them the single largest visible ethnic minority population in the country. They make up the largest subgroup of British Asians and are one of the largest Indian communities in the Indian diaspora, mainly due to the Indian–British relations (including historical links such as India having been part of the British Empire and still being part of the Commonwealth of Nations). The British Indian community is the sixth largest in the Indian diaspora, behind the Indian communities in the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and Nepal. The majority of British Indians are of Punjabi and Gujarati origin with various other smaller communities from different parts of India including Kerala, West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
History
Among the first Indians to travel to the United Kingdom was a young boy called Peter Pope. The boy was given by a commander of a Dutch ship on its way to Myanmar to the British sailor, Thomas Best in 1612. The boy was brought to England in 1614 where he was placed under the care of Patrick Copland who was a chaplain and who subsequently taught him to read and write in English. His education in England was paid for by the East India Company.
Under Patrick Copland's recommendation, the boy was baptised on 22 December 1616 and given the name of "Peter" which was given by King James I. A few months after his baptism, he returned to India with Copland to "convert some of his own nation".
18th–19th centuries
People from India have been travelling to Great Britain since the East India Company (EIC) recruited lascars to replace vacancies in their crews on East Indiamen whilst on voyages in India. Initially, these were men from the Indo-Portuguese or Luso-Asian communities of the subcontinent, including men from Bombay, Goa, Cochin, Madras and the Hugli River in Bengal. Later men from Ratnagiri were hired. Some of them were then unable to obtain passage back due to the price and had no alternative than to settle in London. There were also some ayahs, domestic servants and nannies of wealthy British families, who accompanied their employers back to Britain when their stay in South Asia came to an end. British soldiers would also sometimes marry Indian women and send their children back to Britain, although the wife often did not accompany them. Indian wives of British soldiers would sometimes ask for passage home after being divorced or widowed if they did accompany their children. In 1835, the husband (a British soldier serving in His Majesty's 1st Foot Regiment) of Bridget Peter, a native of Madras, died. She petitioned the Directors from Chelsea Hospital 'in a state of destitution' to pay for her return to India. They agreed to pay to return her and her three children.
The Navigation Act 1660 restricted the employment of non-English sailors to a quarter of the crew on returning East India Company ships. Baptism records in East Greenwich suggest that a small number of young Indians from the Malabar Coast were being recruited as house servants at the end of the 17th century, and records of the EIC also suggest that Indo-Portuguese cooks from Goa were retained by captains from voyage to voyage. In 1797, 13 were buried in the parish of St Nicholas at Deptford.
During the 19th century, the East India Company brought thousands of Indian lascars, scholars and workers to Britain largely to work on ships and in ports. It is estimated 8,000 Indians (a proportion being lascar sailors) lived in Britain permanently prior to the 1950s. Due to the majority of early Asian immigrants being lascar seamen, the earliest Indian communities were found in port towns. Naval cooks also accompanied them.
The first Western-educated Indian to travel to Europe and live in Britain was I'tisam-ud-Din, a Bengali Muslim cleric, munshi and diplomat to the Mughal Empire who arrived in 1765 with his servant Muhammad Muqim during the reign of King George III.C.E. Buckland, Dictionary of Indian Biography, Haskell House Publishers Ltd, 1968, p.217 He wrote of his experiences and travels in his Persian book, Shigurf-nama-i-Wilayat (or 'Wonder Book of Europe'). This is also the earliest record of literature by a British Indian. Also during the reign of George III, the hookah-bardar (hookah servant/preparer) of James Achilles Kirkpatrick was said to have robbed and cheated Kirkpatrick, making his way to England and stylising himself as the Prince of Sylhet. The man was waited upon by the prime minister of Great Britain William Pitt the Younger, and then dined with the Duke of York before presenting himself in front of the King.
One of the most famous early Indian immigrants to Britain was Sake Dean Mahomet, a captain of the British East India Company and a native of Patna in the Indian state of Bihar. In 1810, he founded London's first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostanee Coffee House. He is also valued for introducing shampoo and therapeutic massage to the United Kingdom. Another early Indian to settle in the United Kingdom was the Mughal noblewoman of Purnea in Bihar, Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa, who married into the aristocratic Ducarel family and moved to the United Kingdom in 1784 where she lived until 1822 when she died in Newland, Gloucestershire.
In July 1841, David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, an Anglo-Indian born in India, became the first person of Indian descent to be elected to British Parliament. He was the member of Parliament for Sudbury but was later removed in April 1842 due to allegations of bribery.
Between 1600 and 1857, some 20-40,000 Indian men and women of all social classes had travelled to Britain, the majority of them being seamen working on ships. Lascars lodged in British ports in between voyages. Most Indians during this period would visit or reside in Britain temporarily, returning to India after months or several years, bringing back knowledge about Britain in the process.
20th century In the early twentieth century, some Indian nationalists, such as Sukhsagar Datta came to Britain because they feared arrest in India itself and hoped to propagate the cause of Indian Independence.Rohit Barot, Bristol and the Indian Independence Movement (Bristol Historical Association pamphlets, no. 70, 1988), pp. 15-17 This group went on to found the India League in England in 1928, under the leadership of V. K. Krishna Menon.
The 1931 Census of India estimated that there were at least 2,000 Indian students in English and Scottish Universities at the time, from an estimated, and overwhelmingly male population of 9,243 South Asians on the British mainland, of which 7,128 resided in England and Wales, two thousand in Scotland, with a thousand in Northern Ireland, and 1 on the Isle of Man. Their origins were recorded as:
+ Indian population of Great Britain by region of birth, 1931 England and Wales Northern Ireland Scotland Region of birth Total Male Female Total Male Female Total Male Female Bengal 2,229 2,189 40 - - - 615 614 1 Bombay 929 851 78 - - - 261 257 4 Madras 382 342 40 - - - 84 79 5 Punjab 1,088 1,062 26 - - - 374 374 - Other provinces 1,867 1,779 88 - - - 357 353 4 Unspecified 634 621 13 1,003 485 518 312 309 3 India 7,179 6,844 285 1,003 485 518 2,003 1986 17 Year British IndianPopulation1931 10,1861932 (estimate)7,128 1951 31,000 1961 81,000 1971 375,000 1981 676,000 1991 840,000 2001 1,053,411 (1.79%) 2011 1,451,862 (2.30%)2021 (census)1,843,248
In 1932, the Indian National Congress survey of "all Indians outside India" (which included modern Pakistani and Bangladeshi territories) estimated that there were 7,128 Indians living in the United Kingdom, which included students, lascars, and professionals such as doctors. The resident Indian population of Birmingham was recorded at 100 by 1939. By 1945 it was 1,000.
Following the Second World War and the breakup of the British Empire, Indian migration to the UK increased through the 1950s and 1960s. This was partly due to the British Nationality Act 1948, which enabled migration from the Commonwealth with very few limits. In 1950 there were probably fewer than 20,000 non-white residents in Britain, almost all born overseas. The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 and Immigration Act 1971 largely restricted any further primary immigration, although family members of already-settled migrants were still allowed. In addition, much of the subsequent growth in the British Indian community has come from the births of second- and third-generation Indian Britons.
Although post-war immigration was continuous, several distinct phases can be identified:
Workers were recruited to fulfill the labour shortage that resulted from World War II. These included Anglo-Indians who were recruited to work on the railways as they had done in India. Workers mainly from the Bengal, Punjab and Gujarat regions arrived from India in the late 1950s and 1960s. Many worked in the foundries of the English Midlands. Large numbers of Gujaratis worked in the textile manufacturing sector in the northwest industrial towns of Blackburn, Dewsbury, Bolton, Lancaster, Manchester and Preston. Sikhs coming to London either migrated to the East to set up businesses where the wholesale, retail and manufacturing elements of the textile industry were located. Many Sikhs also moved to West London and took up employment at Heathrow airport and the associated industries and in the plants and factories of major brands such as Nestle around it. During the same period, medical staff from India were recruited for the newly formed National Health Service. These people were targeted as the British had established medical schools in the Indian subcontinent which conformed to the British standards of medical training. During the 1960s and 1970s, large numbers of East African Indians, predominantly Gujaratis but also sizeable numbers of Punjabis who already held British passports, entered the UK after they were expelled from Kenya, Uganda and Zanzibar. Many of these people had been store-keepers and wholesale retailers in Africa and opened shops when they arrived in the UK. In 2001 East African Indians made up 16% of the total British Indian population. After Brexit, EU nationals working in the health and social care sector were replaced by migrants from non-EU countries such as India. About 250,000 people came from India in 2023.
Demographics + British Indians by region and countryRegion / Country2021201120011991NumberNumberNumberNumber 1,843,248 3.26% 1,395,702 2.63% 1,028,546 2.09% 823,821 1.75% —Greater London 656,272 7.46% 542,857 6.64% 436,993 6.09% 347,091 5.20% —West Midlands 276,030 4.64% 218,439 3.90% 178,691 3.39% 158,731 3.08% —South East 241,537 2.60% 152,132 1.76% 89,219 1.12% 64,888 0.87% —East Midlands 229,831 4.71% 168,928 3.73% 122,346 2.93% 98,859 2.50% —North West 140,413 1.89% 107,353 1.52% 72,219 1.07% 55,823 0.83% —East of England 136,974 2.16% 86,736 1.48% 51,035 0.95% 39,292 0.78% —Yorkshire and the Humber 81,322 1.48% 69,252 1.31% 51,493 1.04% 40,752 0.84%—South West 58,847 1.03% 34,188 0.65% 16,394 0.33% 10,915 0.24%—North East 22,021 0.83% 15,817 0.61% 10,156 0.40% 7,470 0.29% 52,951 0.97% 32,706 0.62% 15,037 0.30% 10,050 0.20% 21,070 0.68% 17,256 0.56% 8,261 0.28% 6,384 0.23% Northern Ireland 9,881 0.52% 6,198 0.34% 1,567 0.09% 1,927,150 2.88% 1,452,156 2.30% 1,053,411 1.79% 840,255 1.53%
Population
In the 2021 Census, 1,864,318 people in England and Wales were recorded as having Indian ethnicity, accounting for 3.1% of the population. In Northern Ireland, the equivalent figure was 9,881, or 0.5% of the population. The census in Scotland was delayed for a year and took place in 2022, with a population of 52,951 representing 1.0% of the population.