Ram Singh Nehra – the full story now online in one accessible document

 Guest post by Philip Grant

Regular readers may remember a short series of local history articles which Martin published last December about “a Wembley Indian in the 1930s”.

 

Ram Singh Nehra in London, c.1930. (Courtesy of Tyrone Naylor)

 

By good chance, the “Wembley Matters” blog for Part 1 was found on the internet by one of Nehra’s grandchildren, living in Canada. He provided me with some extra information and images. Some of those were used in the Part 3 article, but I was able to include more, and make some minor corrections, when preparing a single, accessible version of Ram Singh Nehra’s story for Brent Archives.

 

Ram Singh Nehra, as a newly qualified barrister in 1921. (Courtesy of Tyrone Naylor)

 

After my “Wembley Matters” articles had been shared with other members of the family, I was put in touch with two more granddaughters, and with Nehra’s daughter by his second marriage. One of the corrections I’ve had to make was how Ram Singh met his first wife, Myfanwy. He was visiting another lawyer’s office, soon after qualifying as a barrister of the Middle Temple, when they noticed that a button had come loose on his suit. The lawyer called in his secretary and asked her to sew the button back on. Ram Singh was impressed with her sewing, and with the secretary! She got to know him better, and later sailed to Mombasa to marry him.

 

Eileen Myfanwy Brazel in the early 1920s. (Courtesy of Elizabeth Sansom)

 

My articles quoted from articles which Nehra had written in a magazine he published, called “The Indian”. The full version includes several more interesting snippets, as well as illustrations from the magazine itself.

 

A cover, and a column, from “The Indian” in 1935. (Images from the internet)

 

My original article mentioned that Nehra had been an early member of The League of Coloured Peoples, founded in 1931 by the Jamaican-born doctor, Harold Moody. In the accessible version of the story, I’ve been able to include a photograph taken, at a garden party held for the League, at the Nehra’s Chalkhill Road home around 1936. Ram Singh Nehra is the man in the white suit, with Harold Moody, wearing glasses, just behind him.

 

Members of The League of Coloured Peoples at a garden party in Wembley, c.1936.
(Courtesy of Tyrone Naylor)

 

Ram Singh Nehra’s story tells us a lot about Britain and its Empire the 1930s, through the eyes of an Indian lawyer. It also shares an insight into the man himself, and his efforts to break down prejudice between races and religions, through his own example. 

 

You can find the accessible pdf on the Brent Archives local history articles Google Drive , by “clicking” on the link. I hope you will read it, and share it with others. 

 

Thank you.

Philip Grant.

Ram Singh Nehra – a Wembley Indian in the 1930s – Part 3

 Philip Grant concludes his fascinating series on a pioneering Indian in Wembley

Thank you for joining me for this final part of Ram Singh Nehra’s story. If you missed Part 2, you can find it here. At the end of that episode, I asked: ‘Did Nehra stand for election to Parliament?’

 

Ram Singh Nehra in the 1930s. (Extract from a family photograph, courtesy of Tyrone Naylor)

 

I’ve not been able to find out whether Nehra was chosen as a possible Labour Party candidate for the Commons, but the records of by-elections from 1936 to 1938 make no mention of him. I wonder whether his view of British politicians would have changed, if he had been elected, from that in his report on Parliament’s consideration of the India Bill, in the autumn of 1935:

 

‘Politicians are wonderful people. Their power of speech knows no limits of any kind. They wield such magic through their words that listeners often wonder if the world is fast approaching its end or the millennium is just about to dawn. The press is usually an obedient mistress of the clever politicians. Very few English people know the real facts and circumstances in their proper prospective.’

 

There was some happy news for Nehra and his wife in June 1936, when their third child, Brian, was born (the birth again being recorded in the Hendon Registration District, which included Wembley). However, by 1938, Nehra was making the news for the wrong reasons. The headline on a report about him in January read: “SOLICITOR FINED £100” (which may not seem much now, but would be about six months’ starting salary for an ordinary local government employee then). 

 

A disciplinary committee, ‘sitting in public in the Court Room, Carey-street, London, W.C.’, had found him guilty of breaching the Solicitors’ Practice Rules. His crime? ‘That he had done or permitted in the carrying on of his practice acts and things which could reasonably be regarded as touting or advertising or as calculated to attract business unfairly.’ Solicitors were not allowed to advertise! Was this an advertisement, in his magazine: ‘If you have any just cause or grievance and have no medium of expression, write to the Editor of “The Indian”’?

 

  

Local newspaper cutting from April 1938. (Image from the internet)

 

A few months later, another newspaper report records that ‘Mr R. Nehra, of Chalk Hill Road, Wembley,’ had knocked down an elderly lady in Dartmouth Road, Willesden, with his car. I don’t know whether any action was taken against him following this accident, but by that time Nehra had other activities that he was pursuing.

 

I referred previously to Nehra writing that his hobbies were ‘building, books, journalism and social gatherings’. I’ve recently learned that he had “The Shalimar” built for him and his family on a plot of land he’d bought in Chalkhill Road, but I don’t know whether he did any other building in the Wembley area. In 1937, however, he bought a block of land on the coast near Eastbourne. Mr and Mrs Nehra became directors of Pevensey Beach Buildings Ltd, and their company began developing an estate of seaside bungalow homes on the East Sussex coast.

 

A Pevensey Beach Buildings Ltd compliments slip. (Courtesy of Tyrone Naylor)

 

The Martello Estate was on a block of land between the main coast road and the beach. Near the seaward end was a Martello Tower, one of 103 small round stone forts built along the south-east coast of England in the early 19^th century, to defend against a possible invasion by Napoleon’s French army. The company built two streets of bungalows there, between 1937 and 1939. At first, Nehra drove down from London a couple of times a week, to check on progress. Later, the family moved down to a rented home at Westham Drive, Pevensey Bay.

 

Nehra found himself in trouble again, and in December 1938 he was in court, defending his company against a prosecution brought by Hailsham Rural District Council. Hailsham Petty Sessions (the local magistrates) heard that the company had connected the drains from its estate to the local Council’s sewers. However, it had failed to notify the Council that it was doing so, or to provide plans showing what it proposed to do, so was in breach of the Public Health Act, 1936!

 

Headline from “The Sussex Agricultural Express”, 23 December 1938. (Image from the internet)

 

By 1939, the Nehra family moved to 3 Grenville Road (the street probably named after their oldest child) on the Martello Estate. In July 1939 their fourth child, Ruby, was born, and her birth was registered in the Hailsham District [although Pevensey Bay is some distance from the inland town of Hailsham itself, its Rural District stretched down to the coast]. The household, by this time, appears to have included a nanny, Emily Westgate from Hastings, and an under-nurse, Maureen Pickett from St Leonards-on-Sea.

 

Martello Estate bungalows in Grenville Road, Pevensey Bay. (Image from Google Streetview)

 

In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, Britain declared war on Germany, and the Second World War broke out. The following January, the Nehra family sailed from England for India, and their nanny, Miss Westgate, went with them. They travelled First Class, arriving in Bombay (Mumbai) the following month. Nehra had hoped that he could be reconciled with his family, who had disowned him when he married a woman who was white, and not a Hindu. But when he called on them with Myfanwy, they were not even allowed into the house.

 

Luckily, Nehra did have friends in India, and he and his family were offered the use of a wing in a palace, in the Himalayan “hill station” resort of Mussoorie, for as long as needed. Myfanwy wrote about this in a letter from Lucknow to her twin sister, Kathleen (“Kit”), in March 1940:-

 

Opening page of Myfanwy Nehra’s letter to her sister, 24 March 1940. (Courtesy of Tyrone Naylor)

 

The letter said that they would have to travel ‘the last few miles by rickshaw’. Writing again ten days later, from the Dilaram Palace in Camel’s Back Road, she told her sister: 

 

‘We are 7000 feet above sea level and 6000 of it all up one mountain. How they made the road I don't know. It's swerves round and round – the most fearful hairpin bends - just a narrow road & ravines straight down. I shut my eyes half the time - beautifully green – trees etc. - Then rice growing, other parts wild. Not a bit flat just climbing all the time, round and round. As we turned round some bends one could see all our cavalcade - about 30 coolies with trunks and boxes on their backs…. [and] five or six men pushing each rickshaw.’

 

Myfanwy, Ram, Grenville and Sheila, with Palace servants and coolies. (Courtesy of Tyrone Naylor)

 

Despite the idyllic surroundings, Myfanwy reported that she had not felt well. We’ve seen before that, in 1935, Nehra had referred to ‘my wife’s serious illness’. After just a few months in Mussoorie, the family moved to New Delhi, for better medical facilities, but on 29 September 1940 Myfanwy Nehra died from breast cancer, in the Lady Irwin Hospital.

 

His wife’s death, and the collapse of his solicitor business in London (in the hands of an employee who proved untrustworthy), left Ram depressed and without an income. Emily the nanny and his teenage son Grenville rallied round, and for the rest of the war the family ran a succession of hotels for British soldiers on leave, in various cities including Gwalior, Old Dehli and Srinigar. As soon as they could, after the Japanese surrender had brought the war in the east to an end, they returned to England, only this time sailing Third Class.

 

By October 1945, Nehra was back in England, and sold his detached house in Chalkhill Road to clear his debts. He already knew that the bungalow at 3 Grenville Road had been repossessed by the Halifax Building Society during the war, but he went down to Pevensey Bay, to sort out matters there. 

 

Not long after the Nehra’s had left for India, the beach and the tower at the edge of it, had been declared a prohibited area, and fenced off with barbed wire. Britain feared that this stretch of coast might be where a German invasion landed, with good reason. A mile to the east was Norman’s Bay, where William the Conqueror’s army landed in 1066. The Romans had built a “Saxon Shore” fort (now Pevensey Castle, with wonderfully intact walls), to protect their British province from invaders, and the Martello Tower itself was built for fear of a Napoleonic attack.

 

Aerial view of the Martello Estate, from the sea. (Image from Google maps)

 

Nehra had arranged for some friends, Mr and Mrs Wilson, who’d bought a home in Grenville Road, to look after the furniture from his bungalow, and other materials and plant belonging to his building company, which had been stored in the Martello Tower. After the war, some had been sold, but they could not account for the proceeds, or what had happened to the rest. This led to the Wilsons being prosecuted, although they were acquitted by the local magistrates.

 

Cutting from the “Eastbourne Herald”, 2 November 1946. (Image from the internet)

 

The newspaper report of the case said that Nehra lived at 3 Grenville Road, ‘and also at Preston-road Wembley’. The 1948/49 Curley’s Directory shows his address as 121 Preston Road, and I’ve now learned that this was the Nehra family’s first home in Wembley, when they arrived back from Kenya. Ram Singh Nehra had bought the recently-built semi-detached house around 1929, and named it “Mombasa”. It was rented out when they moved “upmarket” several years later, but it became their home again after the war.

 

L to R: daughter-in-law Betty, Ram and Emily, their daughter Julia and her friend Elizabeth, outside 121 Preston Road, early 1960s. (Courtesy of Tyrone Naylor)

 

This article was about ‘a Wembley Indian in the 1930s’, but Nehra’s story here continued into the 1940s and beyond. In 1947, he married his children’s former nanny, Emily Louisa Westgate, and they had a daughter, Julia, in 1949. He went back to work as a solicitor, specialising in criminal cases at the Old Bailey. He also continued his interest in causes he’d championed in the 1930s:

 

Headed notepaper of the Coloured People’s Aid Society, c.1960. (Courtesy of Tyrone Naylor)

 

121 Preston Road was Nehra’s home for the rest of his life, and he died there, ‘peacefully, after a short illness’, on 29 June 1965. This story began with a garden party at “The Shalimar”, and the home which Nehra had built for his family in the early 1930s also came to a sad end at around the same time. 43 Chalkhill Road was one of the many houses which the new Brent Council compulsorily purchased, in order to build its Chalkhill Estate (1 to 41, numbered from Blackbird Hill, were spared!). Einstein House now stands on its site.

 

Chalkhill Road demolition, c.1966, and Einstein House now. (Brent Archives / Google Streetview)

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about Ram Singh Nehra. His story not only tells us about the 1930s, through the eyes of an Indian gentleman, but also raises some thought-provoking points which are still relevant today. If you have any comments, or any further information (perhaps you knew Julia Nehra at Preston Manor School in the 1960s?), please add them below.

 

Philip Grant*, Wembley History Society, December 2021.

 

* Although I’m the one who has written this article (and any errors are mine), it would not have happened without the initial enquiry from Winston, and some excellent online research by my Wembley History Society colleagues, Christine and Malcolm, to help answer it. Further details about the family came from Myfanwy’s great-nephew, Arthur, and more recently from Ram’s grandson, Tyrone, and I’m grateful to them both for their contributions. Local history societies in Hailsham and Pevensey & Westham also kindly answered some queries from me.

Ram Singh Nehra – a Wembley Indian in the 1930s – Part 2

Philip Grant continues his Guest series.

 

 Welcome back to this story of an Indian solicitor who lived in Wembley around 90 years ago. If you missed Part 1, you can find it here. 

 

We left Ram Singh Nehra when he was standing as a Labour candidate for Fryent Ward, in elections for the new Wembley Council in March 1934. I asked: ‘would the people of Wembley in the 1930s vote for a man who wasn’t white?’ The answer was “yes”, but not quite enough of them to win him a seat on the Council. Whether his colour meant that he didn’t receive the small number of extra votes which would have seen him elected is something we will never know.

 

The Fryent Ward election result, from the “Wembley News”, 30 March 1934. (Brent Archives)

 

The Fryent Ward count, at Wembley Council’s Park Lane School on the evening of the election, must have been a tense affair. The result was very close, with only 35 votes separating Mr Crook, who topped the poll, from his fellow Labour candidate, Mr Nehra, at the foot of the list. In between were the two representatives of the Ratepayers’ Association, both existing Kingsbury councillors. Mr Ashman, who’d been Chairman of Kingsbury U.D.C., was so shocked to lose his seat that he demanded a recount!

 

The “Wembley News” report about Labour’s 1934 Fryent Ward election campaign.

(From the local newspaper microfilms at Brent Archives)

 

The newspaper report above shows how good canvassing in Fryent Ward beforehand had helped the Labour Party to win a local Council seat in Kingsbury for the very first time. This enabled them to ensure that all their likely supporters, who might not have been able to get to the polling station at Fryent School without assistance, were taken there by motor car to vote! 

 

You might not expect that a “working class” party in 1934 could muster ‘a fleet of cars’ on polling day, but that is where Mr Nehra and his wide circle of friends played their part. Imagine the surprise of some residents, when a chauffeur driven limousine, with a coat of arms on its side, drew up outside their home to take them to the polling station! It had been loaned for the day by the Saudi Arabian Ambassador.

 

Sheikh Hafiz Wahba (and his limousine) in 1930. (Image from the internet)

 

Sheikh Hafiz Wahba was the Saudi Ambassador to the UK from 1930 until 1956. You may remember that he was one of the VIP guests at the Nehra’s Garden Party in July 1934, and he had come to know Ram Singh Nehra quite well. This was partly because Nehra’s Central Hindu Society saw Hinduism as a cultural identity much as a religion, and was keen on promoting Hindu-Muslim co-operation.

 

There is evidence of this from a 1935 report in “The Indian”, headed “Prophet’s Birthday”:

 

‘The Muslim Society in Great Britain held a reception on Wednesday, the 12th of June, at 8 p.m., at Portman Rooms, Baker Street, to celebrate the Birthday of the Holy Prophet Mohammad. His Excellency Sheikh Hafiz Wahba, the Saudi Arabian Minister to the Court of St. James’s, was in the chair. 

 

Proceedings began with a recitation from the Qoran. Before starting further proceedings, the following message from Mr. R. S. Nehra, the President of the Hindu Society, was read — To the President, British Muslim Society, London: 

 

Dear Sir,

Hearty congratulations on the celebration of the birthday of the Holy Prophet. His example is a beacon guidance to all human beings of the necessity, practicability and virtues of democracy in daily life. 

 

Sorry my wife’s serious illness prevents me from joining you all this evening.’

 

Sir Abdul Qadir in 1935. (Image from the internet)

 

Sir Abdul Qadir was a leading member of The Muslim Society at the time, and like Nehra was also born in Ludhiana. Nehra’s good relations with the Muslim community may well date back to his childhood. Although Ludhiana was in the 

 

Punjab, when Nehra was growing up there in the early 20^th century only around 5% of its citizens were Sikhs. Of the rest, about two-thirds were Muslims and one-third Hindus. It is sad that Nehra’s good relationship with fellow Indians of a different religion was not widely reflected among the people of the sub-continent, when independence from Britain was achieved in 1947, and partition led to sectarian violence.

 

In a biographical article in “The Indian”, about ‘the editor’, Nehra described himself as ‘a man of very abstemious habits.’ He disliked smoking and drinking, and preferred lemonade to tea. Of his daily routine he wrote:

 

‘Even though he has been away from India for so many years, yet he is an early riser and starts work at six and never misses his morning bath. He takes pleasure in his work and that is why he works for 14 hours and sleeps for 8 and the rest of the time he employs in attending to daily needs and a little relaxation between the hours of 8 and 9 in the evening.’

 

He believed in devoting 10% of his profits and 5% of his time to charitable work and institutions. His hobbies were ‘building, books, journalism and social gatherings’, and his sporting interests were ‘swimming, tennis and driving.’ Both Mr and Mrs Nehra were keen tennis players (perhaps that is how they met, in Mombasa), and as the “Metroland” homes in Chalkhill Road were built on large plots, some would have had a tennis court in their back garden.

 

Aerial view of the Chalkhill and Barn Hill estates, March 1939, with “The Shalimar” arrowed.
(Source: Brent Archives)

 

Although Nehra claimed in his biographical note that ‘by temperament he is always cheerful and hospitable’, and that he did not ‘indulge in anger or fiery outbursts’, he was not afraid to express his views quite forcefully. One regular feature of “The Indian” was his “Open Letters for the Public Good”, and he wrote them ‘without fear, favour or malice’. 

 

Being free to speak truth to power is an important part of any good democracy. One of his letters was to the newly appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies, in Stanley Baldwin’s National Government of June 1935. After giving ‘hearty congratulations on your appointment’, he encouraged the Minister to ‘follow the spirit expressed by His Royal Majesty the King in his memorable Jubilee message’, and respect the rights of all people of different classes, colour, creed and countries. He went on:

 

‘You know, Indians form a larger majority of immigrants in the Colonies than any other race. Owing to the peace-loving disposition of Indians, their legitimate rights and interests have so far not been well protected in any of the Colonies. The local white immigrants out of sheer short-sightedness and selfishness are ill-treating the British Indians in nearly all the Colonies. The local Governors often yield to the local influence of the white agitation and pressure. It is for you to keep the balance and assist or direct, as the case may be, the local governors to treat Indians justly and fairly. Remember that the interests of the Empire and world peace are more important and vital than the interests of a handful of Englishmen or Europeans in a Colony.’

 

Nehra was well aware of the injustices which could occur in the Colonies, because he was a Privy Council agent. That meant he could act as a legal representative, on behalf of people or companies appealing to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. This acted as the Court of Appeal for cases decided in High Courts across the British Empire. 

 

“The Indian” included a section devoted to reports of Privy Council hearings. One interesting case was an appeal by a lawyer and a newspaper editor, seeking to overturn a judgement against them by the Allahabad High Court for contempt of court. Their “contempt” was publicly alleging that inferior judges had been appointed to the Allahabad High Court, and that better qualified candidates had been overlooked, because of their caste.

 

R. Nehra & Co are shown as the agent in a number of cases. In one, Nehra represented the respondent in an appeal by the Bombay Commissioner of Income Tax, against a judgement of the High Court in Bombay (Mumbai), where the point at issue was ‘whether the rights of a woman under a family settlement have been forfeited owing to unchastity.’

 

Through his magazine, Nehra published the results of all Indian students who had come to England to study law, as well as giving the overall results for Bar exams. One example from 1935 was: ‘Examined, 223; Passed,154 (Indians, 44)’. He also gave advice to Indians coming to here to study:

 

‘Do not buy or bring many suits with you from India, because they will not be used in England owing to their inferior cut and poor material. One or two pairs of shoes would be sufficient until your arrival in England. If possible, wait until you arrive here before you purchase your overcoat.’

 

As “The Indian” had a wide circulation among not just the worldwide Indian community, but also people in Britain with an interest in the sub-continent, it often carried “small ads”. Here are just a couple of typical examples:

 

INDIAN LADY medical student requires board lodging with a private family, 2 years’ course or more. Give full particulars. — Box 454, c/o The Indian. 

 

CEYLON STUDENT wants boarding house near a tennis club. — Write Box 458, c/o The Indian.

 

Nehra welcomed new Indian students to London with a reception at Veeraswamy’s in Regent Street. This was the capital’s first Indian restaurant, and had introduced Indian food to this country in the Indian Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition, held at Wembley in 1924/25.

 

Veeraswamy’s Restaurant, in a BEE advertisement and at Regent Street. (Images from the internet)

 

This was Nehra’s advice on food to Indians coming here:

 

‘You may find some difficulty regarding food. There are many Indian Restaurants and Hostels that cater for Indians. At the beginning it will be of great help if you make use of these establishments, till you slowly get thoroughly accustomed to the western tasteless foods.’

 

As well as all of his other interests, Ram Singh Nehra still had political ambitions. This paragraph appeared in a newspaper in April 1936:

 

(Image from the internet)

 

Did Nehra stand for election to Parliament, and what other twists and turns did his life take in the late 1930s? Please join me next weekend, for the concluding part of his story.


Philip Grant,
December 2021.