Bevin trainees were Indian men in technical training brought to the UK during the Second World War via a scheme created by Ernest Bevin, to work in factories. They were better recognised in India, and sometimes informally referred to as 'Bevin boys', causing confusion with the adolescent Bevin Boys sent to work in coal mines in the UK. Broadcaster Princess Indira Devi of Kapurthala introduced some of them on BBC Radio, so they could send messages back to India. Foreign office entrants after 1945 have also been referred to as Bevin boys.
Bevin trainees featured in a popular BBC Radio series, in which Salamu and Chandu, two fictional mice, travelled from India to England in the suitcase of a trainee, and witnessed life in Britain.
References
- ^ Webster, Wendy (2018). "3. The Empire comes to Britain". Mixing it: Diversity in World War Two Britain. Oxford University Press. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-19-873576-2.
- Sinha, Jagdish N. (1988). "Technical Education in India During The Second World War". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 49: 498–504. ISSN 2249-1937. JSTOR 44148437.
- ^ Hickman, Tom (2008). "Notes". Called Up, Sent Down: The Bevin Boys' War. The History Press. p. 230. ISBN 978-0-7509-4547-9. OCLC 254076105.
- "Divided loyalties: the historical presence of South Asian men and women in Britain has been ignored for too long, says Shompa Lahiri, who has investigated their experiences during the Second World War. - Free Online Library". www.thefreelibrary.com. Retrieved 23 July 2022.
- Fisher, Michael Herbert; Lahiri, Shompa; Thandi, Shinder S. (2007). A South-Asian History of Britain: Four Centuries of Peoples from the Indian Sub-continent. Greenwood World Pub. p. 156. ISBN 978-1-84645-008-2.
- Potter, Simon J. (2022). "3. Propaganda and war 1939-1945". This is the BBC: Entertaining the Nation, Speaking for Britain, 1922-2022. Oxford University Press. p. 99. ISBN 978-0-19-289852-4.
Further reading
- O'Brien, John (23 September 2017). "Essays by 'Bevan Boys': How Britain convinced Indians to join engineering training during WWII". Scroll.in. Retrieved 23 July 2022.
External links
- "Bevin Indian Trainees during the Second World War". blogs.bl.uk. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
- BBC documentary: 19 Metre Band ("Go behind the scenes of Indian programmes on the BBC General Overseas Service (later the World Service)")