Sure A Not

The place is nondescript; if you don’t look for it, you may not find it. And yet, for over 70 years, many Indians in London have sought it out, looking for familiar flavours and faces – a taste of home abroad.

The India Club – an iconic lounge-cum-restaurant and bar – that sits inside the Hotel Strand Continental on a busy stretch of road in central London, has been a historically and culturally significant space for the South Asian community in the city for decades.

It was set up in the 1950s as a place for early Indian immigrants to meet and connect, but now the India Club is set to shut down as the owners of the building it is housed in want to demolish a part of the structure to set up a more modernised hotel.

Many patrons say they are saddened by the news as the closure of the Club will lead to the city losing a part of its history.

The Club has been battling against closure for years. A couple of years ago, its owners – Yadgar Marker and his daughter, Phiroza – won their battle against the demolition after their campaign to save the place received thousands of signatures.

But last week, they told the press that 17 September would be the last day the Club would remain open.

The news has come as a blow to many as the place is steeped in history. Located on the first floor of the Hotel Strand Continental, the India Club was started by the members of the India League – a Britain-based organisation that campaigned for India’s independence in the 1900s. India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru is said to have been among the Club’s founding members. The Markers bought the lease to the property in the 1990s.

Reports say that India’s freedom activists initially used the Club as a meeting space, but later it became a place for people from the South Asian community to forge friendships over shared meals and events.

“In the 1950s and 60s, it was the only place Indians could go to meet people who spoke their language and ate their food,” says Kusoom Vadgama, a historian who regularly visited the Club after she moved to the UK in 1953.

“The India Club helped all of us feel a little less alone in our new home,” she said, adding that people would often meet there to celebrate birthdays, weddings or even Indian festivals like Diwali – the Hindu festival of lights.

Ms Vadgama grew up under colonial rule in East Africa and moved to the UK to study. Many people from India had also immigrated to the UK in the years following the country’s independence, but there were hardly any cultural establishments for the Indian diaspora in London back then, she said.

The India Club filled this gaping hole for the community. It served up dishes that were familiar to the Indian palate, such as south Indian staples like dosas (a pancake made from fermented rice) and sambhar (a lentil gravy seasoned with spices); north Indian delicacies like butter chicken (chicken cooked in a buttery curry); Indian street food like pakoras (vegetable fritters) and, of course, coffee and masala chai (milk tea infused with spices).

Even the interiors of the Club were designed to mimic the coffee shops of pre-independence India, where people met to chat about culture and politics over cigarettes and cups of chai. The chandeliers, Formica tables and straight-backed chairs of the Club have remained largely unchanged since it was set up more than 70 years ago.

In an ode to its rich socio-political history, the walls are lined with portraits of prominent Indian and British personalities who visited over the years, such as Dadabhai Naoroji, the first British Indian MP, and philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Over the years, the Club became a popular “watering hole” for not just immigrants, but people from all walks of life, including journalists and for various India-British groups and associations.

Journalist and author Shrabani Basu remembers frequenting the restaurant with fellow journalists in the 1980s. “It was one of the few places that served affordable Indian food in central London,” she says, adding that the India Club is like the city’s “hidden secret”, and she loves taking friends and family who visit from India there.

Smita Tharoor, a motivational speaker, says her father Chandan Tharoor, who was one of the Club’s founding members, had a lot of fun stories about the place which he frequented as a bachelor, including one about “a bar lady who would refuse to serve drinks to men she thought were drunk”.

When he came to visit her in London years later, her father took her to the Club. Since then, Ms Tharoor has become a regular visitor too. “After my father passed away, I held an event at the India Club in his honour. I also held my husband’s 50th birthday there,” she says. “The India Club has a very special place in our hearts, and it’s sad to see it go. Now, only the memories remain,” she says.

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Taiwan’s opposition vote will be split three ways in the January 2024 presidential election. Can the frontrunner be beaten?

The “law of holes” is reputed to have been coined by British Labour politician Denis Healey. It states that if you are in a hole and it’s difficult to get out, the first thing to do is stop digging.

This law could be applied to Taiwan’s political opposition. In a winner-takes-all presidential system, when there are already two opposition candidates vying to unseat the incumbent party, adding a third probably isn’t going to make the task easier.

And yet that is exactly what happened on Monday.

The latest to join the race for Taiwan’s presidency is Terry Gou, 72-year-old billionaire, and founder of the world’s largest electronics manufacturing company. Hon Hai Industries is better known around the world as Foxconn.

Mr Gou is a charismatic businessman with a great rags-to-riches story, pots of cash, and serious name recognition. Observers here in Taipei say if he was the only candidate standing against the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Mr Gou would have a pretty good shot. But he isn’t.

Like another charismatic businessman across the Pacific, Mr Gou first attempted to get himself made the candidate of Taiwan’s main right-of-centre party, the old nationalist KMT (Kuomintang). Unlike in the United States, he failed.

The KMT chose another candidate, and Mr Gou quit the party in disgust. But the KMT isn’t Mr Gou’s only problem.

Taiwan has another opposition party, called the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), and it is led by another charismatic populist called Ko Wen-je. Mr Ko is the former mayor of Taipei city and is currently running second in polls. He is doing particularly well among younger Taiwanese voters.

Terry Gou’s main selling points are not just his wealth and business success. It is his experience working in and with China.

Foxconn became the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer by pioneering the model of combining Taiwanese engineering knowhow with skilled Chinese labour. In the 1980s and 90s Terry Gou built huge manufacturing campuses in southern China and recruited tens of thousands of young Chinese to work in them.

The model was so successful he eventually persuaded Apple to outsource much of the manufacturing of MacBooks and iPhones to Foxconn. It made Foxconn Taiwan’s biggest company and Mr Gou one of its richest entrepreneurs.

Now Mr Gou says he can use that same experience of investing and working in China to protect Taiwan’s security. Terry Gou says he wants to prevent Taiwan from “becoming another Ukraine”. Announcing his candidacy, he said he would lead Taiwan “back from the abyss of war with China”.

He is not the only one who sees the threat from China as increasingly perilous. In the last year Beijing has hugely increased its military operations around the island.

China and Taiwan: A really simple guide

Last week the People’s Liberation Army released a highly produced propaganda video showing Chinese troops practising for what looked very much like an invasion of Taiwan’s beaches.

Last week the People’s Liberation Army released a highly produced propaganda video showing Chinese troops practising for what looked very much like an invasion of Taiwan’s beaches.

The difference is who Mr Gou blames – not Beijing, but Taiwan’s own President Tsai Ying-wen.

He says it is the ruling DPP’s hostility to Beijing that has led the island to the edge of this “abyss”. Mr Gou says he would return Taiwan to a previous status quo negotiated between Beijing and Taipei back in 1992 and further, he says, he would seal an agreement that would bring peace to the island for the next 50 years.

There are many here who are deeply sceptical of whether such an agreement is attainable.

But that is not Mr Gou’s biggest challenge. Instead, that is the electoral maths. What Mr Gou is proposing is just not that popular with Taiwan’s electorate.

Opinion polls here show most Taiwanese do not believe it is their government that is to blame for the growing tensions with Beijing. They are not in favour of making concessions to Beijing on sovereignty in order to secure peace. A large majority of Taiwan voters now identify themselves as Taiwanese, not Chinese, and say they would be prepared to fight to defend the sovereignty of their home.

Opinion polls also show that around 40% of voters are pretty solid supporters of the ruling DPP. That means the ruling party can be beaten. But to have any chance the opposition would have to unite around a single candidate.

Mr Gou clearly thinks that should be him. He says the three opposition candidates are like “the three little pigs” who must unite to defeat the “big bad wolf” of the ruling DPP. But there is no sign of that happening. Instead, despite his wealth and fame, Mr Gou’s candidacy looks more likely to divide the opposition vote further.

And that means even with 40% of the vote, William Lai, from the ruling DPP, is still the most likely candidate to become Taiwan’s next president.