GREAT BRITAIN AND INDIA [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Knowing your interest in promoting international understanding and the work you have already done in helping to bridge the gulfs between the races, I should like to bring to your notice one or two facts. Coloured students and visitors to London find it more and more difficult to obtain suitable accommodation. On enquiring at hotels or boarding- houses they are either told quite bluntly that they are not welcomed or else put off with the excuse of no vacancies. To give two definite examples—in the whole of Gower Street and Bloomsbury Street there is only one hotel, and that a small one kept by a continental, which will take coloured students. The second example is the case of a well-known and distinguished Indian visitor. On two occasions the room booked for him was cancelled by the hotel people on a flimsy excuse after they realised that he was coloured.
In addition to these practical difficulties the coloured student is followed by social disabilities throughout his stay in London. This is in marked contrast to his or her reception on the Continent. How are these facts going to react on future international and inter-racial relations? These students of to-day will to-morrow be the leaders of their countries. Can England afford to send back home every year hundreds of embittered and disillusioned students with nothing but unhappy memories of their stay in England ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
Indian Students' Union and Hostel, J. S. AIBIAN. 112 Gower Street, W.C. 1.
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