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South Asian women in 19th and early 20th-century Britain

South Asian nannies, known as ayahs, would offer care to children and families who travelled from South Asia to Britain across the 19th and early 20th century. Before the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, the ship journey from South Asia to Britain could take six to seven months and ayahs would travel with families on these long journeys. After it opened the voyage was much quicker and the number of journeys by ayahs increased. Once in Britain, some would continue to care for children and families, while others were abandoned because they were no longer needed as domestic servants. The Ayahs’ Home in London, which may have been founded as early as 1825, was a place of respite for ayahs and amahs (nursemaids from China). Supported by the London City Mission from 1900, the Ayahs’ Home helped travelling ayahs return to the Indian subcontinent. Some, however, stayed in Britain for longer and others returned multiple times working for different families.

South Asian women enrolled in schools and universities in Britain in the 19th century, despite barriers to education for women at this time. Some were pioneers in education. Cornelia Sorabji (1866–1954) was the first woman, of any nationality or ethnicity, to study law at Oxford University (in 1889) and Mithan Lam (née Tata) (1898– 1981) was one of the first women, of any nationality or ethnicity, to be called to the Bar (in 1923).

Campaigns for political rights

As more South Asian women were afforded educational opportunities and entered the world of work, they began to challenge the inequalities they faced. By the early 20th century, South Asian women were involved in campaigns for political equality, including campaigns around equal citizenship and the vote. Princess Sophia Duleep Singh (1876– 1948) and her sister Catherine (1871–1942), who were the daughters of the exiled Maharaja of Punjab, Duleep Singh (1838–1893), were both involved in the British suffrage movement. Sophia campaigned nationally and locally in Kingston and Richmond, and was often seen selling The Suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court Palace. She was a prominent member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, whose slogan was ‘No Vote, No Tax’. Mithan Tata (1898–1981) and Susie Bonnerjee (c. 1872–1920), who were pioneers in education, were also heavily involved in suffrage campaigns in the 1910s.

While some of the early South Asian women in Britain were employed in domestic service as ayahs, by the mid-20th century women were increasingly employed by the state. In the 1950s, the British Government actively recruited nurses and midwives from other countries to work for the National Health Service (NHS), which had been founded in 1948. Many nurses and midwives were recruited from across the British Empire and former empire, including from India, Pakistan, Uganda and Guyana. Alongside members of the Windrush generation, these healthcare professionals have been the backbone of the NHS.  For example, Gulzar Waljee (born 1940) was recruited in 1959 from the port town of Tanga in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) at the age of 19 to train at Royal Surrey County Hospital and had a 30-year career in midwifery and nursing in Cambridge.

From the mid-20th century onwards, South Asian women also worked in factories while, in turn, working to resist discriminatory employment practices. For example, in 1972 500 South Asian men and women went on strike at Mansfield Hosiery Mills in Loughborough over discrimination. In August 1976, workers at the Grunwick photographic film-processing factory in Willesden, north London went on strike over pay and dignity. The strikers were mainly South Asian women and led by Jayaben Desai (1933–2010). They started a hunger strike in 1977 and the strike was called off in 1978. In October 1979 workers at the Chix confectionery factory in Slough, who were mainly South Asian women, went on strike to gain recognition of their trade union.

Social justice

In addition to trade union activism, or earlier anti-colonial and suffrage activism, by the 1970s, South Asian women were involved in other social justice and anti-racist campaigns. Established in 1979, the Southall Black Sisters supported notable campaigns against racism, sexism, domestic violence and immigration legislation. They worked alongside other feminist groups such as the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and the political campaigning group the British Black Panthers. Their work continues today with their Director and founding member Pragna Patel. More recently, the Belfast Asian Women's Academy (BAWA) was founded in 2019 to support and empower South Asian women in Northern Ireland.

From the earlier examples of Cornelia Sorabji and Sarojini Naidu, to more contemporary writers such as Monica Ali (born 1967) or Kamila Shamsie (born 1973), women of South Asian heritage have been actively involved in writing and publishing their work and gaining attention in Britain. Attia Hosain (1913–1998), for example, moved to Britain in 1947 and presented a women's programme for the Indian Section of the Eastern Service of the BBC from 1949. Her novel Sunlight on a Broken Column was published in 1961.

South Asian women also began to establish new magazines and wrote for periodicals with increasing urgency in the 1980s. Mukti was a magazine started in 1983 by a collective of South Asian women in London and was published in six languages: English, Urdu, Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali and Punjabi.

Conclusion

South Asian women have made their mark on British history and culture from the 19th century to the present day. From ayahs (nannies) in the 19th century, to suffrage campaigning and university study in the early 20th century, to social justice campaigns, trade unionism and activism in the late 20th century. In the 21st century, women of South Asian heritage are now prominent politicians, broadcasters, writers and thinkers, among many other roles.

Credit: Remaking Britain team (Rehana Ahmed, Aleena Din, Sumita Mukherjee, Susheila Nasta, Maya Parmar, Florian Stadtler, Rozina Visram).