THE British Raj has been a long time dying. One vestige — the restaurant Veeraswamy — established 100 years ago in London’s Regent Street, is threatened with closure.

Before 1947, visiting Indian aristocracy patronised it. it catered also for ‘India-returns’ — a sentimental breed of white Britishers who wished to recall imperial aromas. The restaurant claims the abstemious Mahatma Gandhi as a client. That is implausible. In 1931, when Gandhi travelled to London to attend the Round Table Con­fe­rence, he took two goats with him to provide him fresh milk. It is unlikely his goat would have been carried to Veer­a­s­wamy’s first floor restaurant. (It was such dietary obsessions that caused Gandhi’s acolyte Sarojini Naidu to complain: “It costs a lot of money to keep this man in poverty.”)

Pre-1947, Veeraswamy’s menu offered “Madras chicken curry and khurgosh ka salan (rabbit curry)”. Many have forgotten that war-time Britain survived on rabbit meat until, in the 1950s, the myxomatosis epidemic destroyed rabbits as a source of protein.

By 1952, as migration from the subcontinent to the UK increased, the menu adapted to a more discerning demand. It advertised: chicken korma, chicken vindaloo, tikka kabab,........

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