The India Club (Photo: courtesy of Jake Tilson)
When: 30th January – 1st March 2019
Where: The India Club, 143 Strand, London WC1R 1JA
£: The exhibition is free of charge but tickets are required. There is a fee for the special events
What is it?
The National Trust’s A Home Away from Home: The India Club is a site-specific exhibition that shines a light on the rich social history of this iconic club on the Strand.
The exhibition showcases the significance of the India Club as an important meeting point and community space, initially for migrants arriving from the Indian subcontinent, and gradually spreading to a wider intellectual community.
Originally located at 41 Craven Street before moving to 143 Strand, the India Club is perhaps best known for its links with the India League, with founding members such as Krishna Menon, the first Indian High Commissioner to the UK, President Nehru and Lady Mountbatten.
As well as having one of the UK’s early Indian restaurants, the India Club quickly became an important hub for a rapidly growing British South Asian community in the aftermath of Indian independence and partition, making it an important site for understanding how the Indian diaspora in the UK established itself as an integral part of British culture and society.
The India Club bar (Photo: courtesy of the India Club)
Virtually unchanged for over 50 years, the India Club is a unique space that acts as a vibrant hub for a range of Anglo-Indian organisations and an extended community of journalists, writers, artists, academics and students who regularly meet there. Recently, this vital space has come under threat from potential redevelopment.
This audio-based exhibition will provide visitors with the opportunity to intimately engage with the intangible heritage found at 143 Strand, offering a glimpse into the lived experiences of those who considered the Club a ‘home-away-from-home’, from the late 1950s to the present day.
The exhibition comes at a particularly poignant moment, following an extensive campaign and petition signed by over 26,000 people to prevent the redevelopment of the India Club.
A Home Away from Home is a small immersive exhibition based around a newly-formed and fascinating archive of oral history interviews carried out by National Trust volunteers. These give voice to a wide variety of people connected with the India Club, from freedom fighters and descendants of its founding members, to former staff, BBC reporters who worked in nearby Bush House, and artists and writers.
Wedding Day of Joeseph Gyanapraksan (head waiter at the India Club) in 1966 (Photo: courtesy of David Joeseph)
Following the exhibition, these rich oral histories will be permanently housed at the British Library. The National Trust are also working with Chocolate Films to produce a short documentary on the India Club to ensure the legacy of this new research.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of supper clubs, artist talks, screenings and conversations that will contextualise the project within the wider history of South Asian migration in the UK and the changing landscape of London’s highstreets and city centre.
Collaborators will include the Migration Museum, Chocolate Films, Comfort Food Stories, Migrateful, and artist collective Specular Assembly.
More info: www.nationaltrust.org.uk
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