Many people who have made Edinburgh their home have contributed hugely to the city’s story – particularly those who have come to live here from elsewhere.
According to the latest version of Edinburgh by Numbers “In the ten years to 2024, Edinburgh’s population grew by 9.4% from an estimated 485,270 to an estimated 530,680 people. In the same period Scotland’s population grew by 4%.
Overseas migration is the “main driver of population change in Edinburgh. The net effect of births and deaths on Edinburgh’s population from 2013 to 2023 was 4,485.”
Around a quarter of the people who move to Scotland from other countries outside the UK come to live in Edinburgh.
However, the net effect of migration was more than ten times higher at 51,540 and, without migration, our city’s population would be static – or even in decline.
The City of Edinburgh Council says it is very aware of its role in fostering trust, inclusion and a shared sense of belonging for all who live here and is working closely with major organisations across the city, including the NHS, police, universities and colleges to develop anew campaign, ‘Edinburgh is Our Home’.
As part of the campaign, The Edinburgh Reporter has spoken to several people who have come from elsewhere, but who now call Edinburgh home – and who are making a welcome and positive difference to our city.
This article features an excerpt from the first in a series of interviews which we will share on our podcast channel, The Edinburgh Report, and on the council’s and our social media channels.
This interview is with Vineet Lal, who describes himself as a Southsider, although the family settled in Leith on first arriving in the capital. Vineet is from an auspicious Edinburgh family. Both his mother and father were involved in many initiatives in Edinburgh to combat racism in the city, in education and in civic life. He is mindful of that legacy as he prepares for the Saroj Lal awards this week – the awards for school children and city schools which are named after his mother.
Saroj Lal was one of the first Asian women to teach in a Scottish primary school when she began her role at South Morningside Primary School in 1970. Her many successes included being at the forefront of race relations during a period of immense political and social change, delivering anti-racism training and starting the first local authority interpreting and translating service in Edinburgh.
Following her death in 2020, Saroj’s many achievements in equality, women’s rights, education, and community work are being formally recognised with the awards.
Vineet’s father, Amit, died earlier this year, and is remembered for setting up the Edinburgh Hindu Mandir. This is in St Andrew’s Place in Leith and is a centre for “the advancement of religion, education, and cultural diversity”. Amrit, died aged 93, and he lived a life defined by constant upheaval and perseverance in the face of obstacles. Born in rural Punjab, educated in piecemeal fashion in villages and towns across pre-Partition northern India, and forcibly shaped by hardship into a young apprentice, engineer and educator, he eventually settled in Edinburgh, where his enduring legacy would be the Mandir itself. Together with his wife, Saroj Lal, he gave the city’s Hindu community a permanent spiritual and cultural home.
Vineet Lal
Listen to the podcast version of this article here.
Vineet is proud of his parents and their work, which he continues in his own way with the awards, and a statue is also planned. He was three when he came to live in Edinburgh and he has worked in tourism, promoting Scotland, before turning to literary translation using his language skills.
He relates his story: “I live on the Southside of Edinburgh, which is pretty much where I’ve always lived – not far from The Meadows and the University and Marchmont, where it is green and leafy. I think once a Southsider, always a Southsider. That’s kind of my patch.
“My career has been a story of two halves, to use the cliché. A lot of my working life has been spent in the tourism industry, so working with the national tourism agencies. In Edinburgh, that has been, as you might expect, VisitScotland. Although I started off with another organisation – it was called many things, Marketing Edinburgh, Edinburgh Marketing, Edinburgh Lothians Tourist Board and ELTB.
“Eventually all of the area tourist boards were subsumed into VisitScotland. So VisitScotland was my home for a long time. And in fact, I didn’t finish up there until something like 2017. That was a career that embraced consumer marketing and also also business focus. So working with the Scottish tourism industry.
“And one of the most exciting things I did in that career was working on getting a lot of the new direct air routes into Scotland. So I’m talking about 2015 – 16, we were working with the likes of Qatar and Etihad and Emirates. At one point, I think we were delighted that all three were operating, although I think we have now lost Etihad.
“So that was my career and it involved a lot of travel and it was great. It was really exciting. And it followed on from a career in London where I worked for the UK national tourism industry – including Visit Britain and Visit England. In 2017, I left and I went back to what I hadd studied at university – languages. And I somewhat rashly thought I could make a career out of becoming a literary translator, in my case, translating from French into English.
“It involved some tenacity and resolve because it’s not an easy career to get into. I’ve been really quite successful and I’ve translated a swathe of books, know, adult fiction, crime fiction, children’s books. I work only with literature. I don’t do what most people in translation do – that’s what’s called commercial translation. So I purely do literature, and that’s what I’ve been doing since before Covid, and all the way through Covid.
“But then for other reasons which you’re aware of, to do with family circumstances, like a lot of us, I’ve kind of consciously stepped away from that because I have in many ways other priorities now. My role as an activist is coming to the fore and I’m enjoying that too. So that’s a very complicated answer to your question.”
Vineet arrived with his mother and father and sister in the late sixties, and his first memory is of Smith’s Place in Leith where they lived and where he said he was very much a “child of the street”.
Vineet explained: “It was in 1968 my dad arrived in Edinburgh because he was offered a job at what was then Napier College of Science and Technology, now Napier University. We moved here, from Birmingham, where he’d been doing a postgraduate degree.
“I was born in Singapore and I came to Scotland when I was about three. I have memories of being in Birmingham, vaguely, but actually my memory happily actually coincides with moving to Edinburgh. So our first home back in the late sixties was in Leith. We lived on Smith’s Place, which is a cul-de-sac just off Leith Walk.
“And I have very clear memories of that. It was a very difficult time for first-generation migrants to the UK and financially we were really not well off at all. My dad had the teaching job, but that didn’t pay very much. My mum was about to embark on a postgraduate teaching degree at Moray House, and we had very little in terms of income. So we literally lived in one room on Smith’s Place. And I remember that room very well.
“I also remember I was very much a child of the street. And I know that times have changed now, but my mum would just let me run amok in the street. I would have been, you know, three, four, four, five years old. Isn’t that incredible that in those days people just perceived that there was no great inherent danger.
“I somehow survived. I remember playing up and down the stairs in Smith’s Place, making friends with the neighbours. There was a kindly Italian woman across the road who had an ice cream parlour, and she would give me ice cream. That’s my earliest memory just off Leith Walk, and going for haircuts in the Kirkgate Shopping Centre to a barber’s that still exists today.
“There’s a huge sense of nostalgia when I drive past that street nowadays. So those were the early days.”
Both his parents came from what at that time was called British India which is where they were born. Vineet explained: “British India is what we call the subcontinent pre partition in 1947. My mum was born in a city called Gujarawala, which was then British India, and which, following the division in 1947 ended up being in what is today Pakistan. My dad, on the other hand, was born in the part of Punjab that remained in India after partition. So they were both born in British India because of the year that they were born. Following the separation of India into India and Pakistan, my mum’s birthplace ended up being in modern-day Pakistan, whereas my dad’s birthplace remains, if you like, in independent India.
“Of my two parents, it was only my mum’s family who actually had in 1947 to migrate across the new border. My dad’s family were already, if you like, “on the right side”.”
Vineet’s mother “made” the decision on living in Edinburgh
As to the decision to come to Britain, Vineet is quite clear how it happened as the family had “talked about this quite a lot”. He said: “When my dad arrived in Edinburgh in 1968, that was not his first rodeo in Scotland. As a young man, he left on a ship from Bombay in 1952 – I know what ship he left on – it was a Polish ocean liner called the MS Batory. And he sailed on the MS Batory from Bombay to Southampton.
“He arrived on Armistice Day, the 11th of November, 1952 in Southampton, and then took a train from Southampton to Glasgow. Through my grandfather’s contacts – my grandfather was in the British army – he had managed to get him an apprenticeship to work as an engineer at Albion Motors in Scotstoun in Glasgow. For a decade from 1952 until 1962, my dad had been in the UK, in Glasgow.
“So when in 1967, my dad decided that he wanted to do a postgraduate degree, I think the UK naturally came to the forefront as being the destination of choice. That was what led him to Birmingham to do his postgrad. And the interesting story is that when he was in Birmingham with my mum and myself as a kid, he said to her, let me take you on a little holiday up to Scotland. Let me show you where I spent my youth.
“And I’ve heard this story many times, so there’s a lot of truth in it. When my mum and my dad came to Edinburgh, my mum and my dad were stopped at the traffic lights at Salisbury Place, not far from where I am now. My mum said to my dad, Edinburgh is such a beautiful city. I would love to live here one day.
“And when they returned to Birmingham, there was a letter waiting for my dad from Napier, offering him the job. So instead of returning to Singapore where they were based and where I was born, they made the decision to resign from Singapore Polytechnic and to make their lives in Edinburgh and the rest is history.”
Vineet’s family was once five people as he had two siblings, but one he did not ever meet. He said: “I have a younger sister. I actually had an elder sister as well, but she sadly died before I was born. So she was born in 1963, but didn’t survive very long. And, you know, we’ve talked about that over the years. And in fact, I don’t know we’ll come on to this, but at my dad’s funeral, I made a point of talking about that elder sister whom I never saw. And I have one younger sibling and that’s a sister who lives here in Edinburgh.
Where do you come from?
Asking Vineet how he would answer that dinner party question “Where do you come from?” he was very careful and considered in his answer.
He said: “That’s an incredibly interesting question and it’s one that I’ve mused over quite a lot. Firstly, let me say that, you know, when people say to you, where do you come from? I think one of the challenges that all people of colour face is that sometimes there’s an expectation of what the answer should be. And if I say to them, Edinburgh, sometimes that… People say it’s never enough. And they kind of stare at me and what they really want to say, and sometimes people will formulate it, sometimes they won’t, yeah, but where do you really come from? And they want to know or get a more exotic answer.
“I often think, yeah, but say you were for the sake of argument talking to Michelle Obama, and you said to Michelle Obama, where are you from? And she said the US. Would you even dare to question that she wasn’t American? You know, although theoretically, I guess the answer that people are probing with me is the same as they would be with Michelle is tell me about your American roots, which she has and I have South Asian roots.
“So the answer to question is when people say, do you come from? My answer is Edinburgh, because that’s my home. And that’s my emotional home. it’s where it’s a bit like the language I think and I think in English. And when I think of home, I think of here. And even if in latter years I move away from here, I suppose this will always be the place that most resonates with that word home.”
This throwaway comment rang an alarm bell, highlighting that even though he had lived here all his life there might still be a new chapter lived elsewhere. We posed the question to him about why he might move – and it comes down to politics.
He replied: “So it’s an interesting question. I’m glad you asked it. The first thing to say is I have lived away from Scotland on a number of occasions. I did my undergrad degree at the University of Edinburgh, but after that I spent a year living in Japan, which was amazing. And then I did a post-grad degree in the US. So those were two extended spells when I wasn’t here in Scotland. And I remember yearning for home. And in fact, when I lived in the US in the mid 90s to the late 90s. That’s pre-internet, incredibly enough.
“And the connectivity and the ability to maintain your links with home was infinitely less than it is today. And I think that perhaps contributed to my homesickness and my feeling that I didn’t want to stay there permanently. Maybe I’d feel differently now, though maybe with the US, maybe not.
“But what would make me leave? I have to say that the recent political climate I have found quite depressing and quite divisive. We’re all aware of the elections from last month and the rise of I guess you would call it loosely nationalism and kind of a move to the right.
“In England, where so many councillors are now moving towards the right of the spectrum, but also in Scotland, where we have a cohort of MSPs now who are, I guess you would say, far right or nationalist. And I think that for the first time in my living memory, I’m starting to question the extent to which Scotland will remain that open, welcoming society that I have been so used to – and in fact is something I’ve championed as an individual throughout my adult life.
“That caught me off guard and I was surprised by it, I suppose, because even despite the racism I experienced growing up, know, and I have lived through the National Front, I’ve lived through the BNP, I have lived through all of the stuff, in the late 70s, the 80s, you know, very much the work that my mum was involved in – in those very early days of multiculturalism and anti-racism. I’ve experienced all of that.
“And yet there was never a sense that somehow the far right or extremism would gain a legitimate foothold. It would just never seem to be countenanced. And that’s what I find different now about the election is that it’s the legitimisation of that.
“I think if you look at history and other countries where extremism has progressed, it has often been through a legitimate political route. And that’s what I find worrying. I’m surprised myself that I feel that way because I suppose I’ve taken it for granted that in Scotland, we didn’t vote for Brexit, we voted to stay in Europe. We have always had this persona of a country that is not the same as the Anglo-Saxon world, yet for the first time there’s a dent in that.”
Experiences of racism
When asked about his personal experience when he was growing up in Edinburgh, Vineet said he had recently been addressing a gathering of the head teachers for Edinburgh schools where they had a really frank and open discussion about his lived experience of racism.
He said: “The short answer is that there was a lot of racism for me growing up – and I’m talking about, for me, that critical formative period would be from circa 1973/74 through to to leaving school in ’83. Britain was a different place.
“Edinburgh was a different place and it was incredibly tough. So there was huge racism, overt racism, know, racism in the playground, racism from people in authority, racism, I’m afraid to say, from educators. Some of it was overt, some of it covert, and some of it masked. It was a really difficult time.
“I’ll give you some examples. When I was growing up, there were adverts on TV for Cadbury’s Whole Nut I think, or Fruit and Nut. It was one of those chocolate bars. And the jingle went something like, Cadbury’s take them and they cover them in chocolate. And what, well, you know what’s coming next. So that jingle would then be shouted at brown children in the playground as a racial slur, right?
“And it’s funny, I remember the advert to this day. It was fronted by a well-known celebrity back in the day. He was a lovely chap called Frank Muir. He did those adverts, and I remember the jingle. That’s just one example.
“There were the Robertson’s jam jars and they had “golliwogs” on them… I suppose innocently growing up, you never thought much about it, but in retrospect, you know, it was all part of that same view. We had the Black and White Minstrel Show and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum on TV, which people do defend and I guess it is quite funny. But actually, if you think about it, it’s the same stereotypes and tropes that reinforced playground racism.”
The Black and White Minstrel show was prime time TV on Saturday evenings at this point which Vineet remembered. He said: “It was Saturday night. And you know what? I think people of colour watched it too and enjoyed it. So I think that’s the irony.
“I hold no truck with the defence of it as being something innocent or naive, absolutely not. And I guess I don’t have evidence to give to you, but you know, as the victim of it, I guess I’m just saying to you, take my word for it – it was vicious and cruel and horrible.
“I wouldn’t have had the courage to say that before, but now I know life’s too short. I’m telling you now it was horrible.
“I think also for my parents at that time, I think for them it was difficult, because we were newcomers in many ways. The irony is that I suppose my mum in particular was responsible for setting up a lot of the structures that nowadays exist in order to tackle this kind of stuff. But those structures she had to invent, they didn’t exist when I was at school. So I think that there wasn’t the support and the backing from people in authority to say this is wrong.
“I think it was a very marginalised and difficult society, and if you have a cultural landscape that includes things like It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and the Black and White Minstrel Show, and you have virtually no black and brown faces in positions of authority or indeed in the media, obviously you feel as if you’re a second class citizen. And that’s to me an accurate picture of what it was like in those days.”
But times have changed, and Vineet agreed that he would not expect that to happen now – and if it did then he “would be taken aback”.
And he added : “Also I would know what to do about it, I suppose, which is why I think my point about the elections is alarming, that I felt that we had moved so far. I don’t expect to be called names in the street. But I think some things haven’t been addressed as effectively over the decades. To give you one example, when I was being taught at primary school, we had this kind of very familiar mix of the Romans, the Vikings, the Victorians with a dash of Egyptians thrown in and that was it and that was that accounted for world civilisation.
“But there was nothing about India, Africa, continental Africa, China, Latin America.This was a whole Eurocentric view of world history and culture. At the time as a kid, you don’t realise it. I’m so grateful that I had such a fantastic education within the state and the private sector and I have such a great knowledge thankfully of Greek mythology and the Bible. I know the Bible probably better than any other religious text, but thank God I did that because it’s helped me with my degree, with English literature and English language.
“But there was something missing. I remember it was 1982. I’d just finished my Highers and my mum took me to London. And 1982 was the Festival of India in the UK, which was something dreamt up by at that time Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi to celebrate the relationship between these two great nations.
“And we went to an exhibition in London which was about Indian art and painting and sculpture. And for the first time, and I can remember this, the penny dropped – that my artistic and cultural heritage was equally worthy of being showcased in a museum context, of being studied and of being aesthetically important as anything that came out of Greece and Rome. But why did it take me to reach the age of 18 for that to happen? That I think is the problem.”
Vineet’s mother
Saroj Lal was a graduate in economics from Punjab University, and was introduced to Amit in late in 1952 when he went back to India. They were married just before Christmas 1962. They were married in Punjab, and went to Madras after marriage, followed by Singapore.
Vineet said of his mother: “When my mum arrived in Edinburgh, she quite bravely – because I was small and I think she just had my sister, so my sister was a baby – she embarked on a postgraduate teaching degree at Moray House. She was one of the very early women of colour to be doing a postgraduate teaching degree at Moray House and her first assignment was at South Morningside Primary School.
“Although there’s no data, we’re pretty much sure that she was the first South Asian woman to be teaching at South Morningside. So she taught there from 1970 to 1973. And then what happened was that in those days, you there wasn’t the support for childcare that there is nowadays. So was really challenging. My dad was a teacher. He was an educator at Napier and they were both full time teachers. And it was really difficult to look after two very young children. So she left teaching for a while just to kind of make sure that she was able to bring us up.
“And then through various chance encounters, she began volunteering with the YWCA, the Young Women’s Christian Association. And she began as a community worker with something called the Women’s International Centre based on Roxburgh Street. that was her first foray, if you like, into understanding the challenges that faced primarily women, of minority communities, women who didn’t have English as a first language, who perhaps didn’t have a strong education, who perhaps suffered from societal prejudice within their own community, let alone the racism from outside. And that was her journey, that was beginning her journey into fighting for the rights and equality for communities who’d come to settle in the city.
“They were from all over the world – predominantly from South Asia, and women of Indian and Pakistani origin, Bengali. But then there was also a very large Chinese community, Middle Eastern including women of Arabic descent. It was quite a mix. And I worked with all of them. But then what happened was that she was given a role specifically dedicated to the Indian community. And she had co-workers who worked with the Chinese and the Pakistani communities.
“And a lot of those early days she spent working in Leith, which traditionally has been the home of the Sikh community in Edinburgh. And this is a mark of the change that’s happened. So in those days, women within the Sikh community, predominantly based in Leith, were not as free to pursue careers, to be educated as they are nowadays. And it’s hard to explain the change that’s happened over the decades – but my mum was part of that change. My mum was part of the movement to make sure that women had equal rights, had choices. So, for example, she set up what she called a continuation course at what was then Telford College to enable women of Asian origin, young women, girls, to have a bridge between school and university.
“They might not have gone to university or further education, but she set up this course specifically to provide a gateway and a lot of women and young girls went through that and eventually ended up either going to university or going to Stevenson or Telford College as they were then. And then she went on to work for the Community Relations Council which became Lothian Racial Equality Council and that really was the next kind of stratospheric leap.
“She went from community work into very political, high level strategic work, combating racism at political level, both in Edinburgh, but also nationally in Scotland. And I know that in latter years, when I talked to her about her career, she was really proud of the work that she’d done with the police, know, really working hard to instigate mechanisms and structures to deal with racism and racist attacks.”
Vineet’s father
Vineet continued to explain what it was like for his father when he first arrived in Glasgow in 1952. He said: “My father told me that there were signs in those days in guest house windows that said, things like, no dogs and no blacks. That was the reality of it. People were not welcome, which is why his initial accommodation in Glasgow was with other Indian migrants all living in one house. In fact, he told me the address. It was 41 Kelvinside Gardens, which was the house where all these Indian young men lived and would go to work.
“And often it was the same bed that was still warm! One person would go to work and somebody else would sleep in the same bed. So the answer is yes, they did encounter racism. I can remember being with my parents when some of this happened. And yes, you’re right that it was actually through predominantly a lot of the work that my mum was involved in with other, you she was not alone.
“There were many, many people active in the field in those very difficult days from the 1970s through the late 80s who brought about change.
“I’ve been witness to that so I can see the change, which is why the political landscape now is all the more important to me because Britain today, Scotland today was hard won, hard fought for, and I’m not willing to let that go without a fight.”
