The Edinburgh Indian Association, anti-colonial cosmopolitanism and the politics of accommodation in Scotland’s capital, 1883–1947

At the start of the twentieth century, hundreds of South Asian students arrived each year in Edinburgh. Although a small, middle-class, transient body, these students constituted one of the largest South Asian communities in Scotland for several decades and provide a crucial insight into the history of Edinburgh as an imperial space. Socially and politically, they came together in one of the country’s most militant student organisations, the Edinburgh Indian Association (EIA). After its formation in 1883, the EIA quickly accrued a dedicated membership, considerable funds and a clubhouse at 11 George Square, organising important debates, socials and protests. Acting as a fulcrum of local anti-colonial politics, the EIA contested racist restrictions in university halls, housing, clubs and cafes from 1905, and focused considerable energy on the issue of accommodation, both in terms of the ‘digs’ where students stayed and the broader social attitudes of the Scots they encountered. Significantly, as tensions around class, race and gender heightened again in the interwar period, EIA members also helped re-fashion what it meant to be cosmopolitan in Edinburgh. Rejecting a pro-imperial, male-dominated, middle-class egalitarianism, the EIA espoused a more inclusive worldliness that encompassed women and workers, and tried to break free from colonial hierarchies and prejudices.