**Amidst Europe's current concern with the problems of immigration, which critics fear is leading to a "Fortress Europe" mentality, the positive contributions of past and present incomers is often overlooked. Gemini News Service looks at a book which helps rectify the imbalance.

WTiAT have pop stars Freddie Mercury andApache In ilian in common with crick rtcr Kanji-tsinhji and radar pioneer J ( Bose? They are ail .Asians who, like scores of others, have made their mark in Europe.

Tire also feature in a new book. The Alisa Pretence in iurope, by Zerbanoo Gifford. a woman born in India who lias made her own mark in Britain with three unsuccessful attempts to win a seat in Parliament for the Liberal Party.

Iler first book was about a man who succeeded where she failed: Dadabhai Naoroji. the first Indian to become a British MP who won the hearts of the suffragettes with his support for women s rights. In her second. The Golden Thread, she wrote about successful Asian women in Britain.

This time she casts her net wider, though she pays particular tribute to Asians active in the arts such as orchestra conductor Zubin Mehta, sculptor Dhruva Mistry and the pioneer of Indian theatre in Britain. Jatinder Verma, as well as to many Asians whose stories have been almost forgotten

There is Ranunohun Roy who was sent to Britain by a Mughal emperor in 1831 to represent him in a dispute with tlie East India < oinpany He ar rived with his adopted son. his cook, a gardener and two cows, and was invited to the coronation of the new King.Wiihan.lv

He advised Parliament on India and spoke against latl, the burning of widows on their husbands funeral py res. He had been shocked w hen he saw his sisterin taw jump on his brothers pyre

He spoke in favour of the electoral Reform Bill of 1832 and sup ported the struggle of the rural Irish against absentee landlords. He died of me : ungibs in Bristol in 1833-

Cornelia Sorabji became the first woman to studs taw al a British uni

versity when she went to Somerville College. Oxford. in 1889. She was not allowed to take her final exams w ith male students and had to sit them on far own

"Comrade Saks" (Shapurji Saklatvala) was related to the great Indian industrialist family, the Tatas, for whose steel mills he located coal and iron ore in central India

But he fell ill with malaria and went to Britain to recover. In 1909 he joined the Independent labour Party and tried to interest British trade unions in the conditions of Indian workers.

He was elected to Parliament in 1922. was defeated in 1923 and reelected in 1924 as the only communist in the House.

He was imprisoned for two months after a fiery speech in Hyde Park during the 1926 General Strike. He was. he said, fed in prison, while the striking miners had no money to feed their families.

Zerbanoo Gifford is especially fascinated by Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan. a radio operator in Germanoc cupied Paris during World War Two. who was slug in the Dachau concentration camp. She was awaided the George Cross.

Noor, great-great-great-grand-daughter of Tipu Sultan of Mysore, was so small and slight that no parachute would fit her so the aircraft flying her into France had to land there.

Before escaping to Britain when France surrendered, she had lived most of her life in Parr> bringing up four brothers and sisters when her American mother fell ill Her Indian father had already died.

In Britain she joined the Women s Auxiliary Air Force and was turned down for training as an officer be cause of her support tor Indian indr pendente.

However. her ftoency in French led to her becoming a radio operator in German-occupied Paris, a dangerous

job because the equipment was bulky and hard to hide. The British Broadcasting Corporation broadcast coded messages, and listening to the radio was an offence.

A month after her arrival in Paris, the Germans captured the only other radio operator in the city. She was told she could leave but chose to stay. A German soldier once found her hanging her transmission aerial from a tree: but she charmed him into helping her. She told another soldier who saw her with her radio that it was a film projector.

However, two Germans infiltrated the French resistance network with which she worked. Realising the network was broken, she reluctantly agreed to leave France but was betrayed before she left. .After four at tempts to escape, she was put in chains. She died in Dachau in September 1944, at the age of 30.

Gifford says her earlier book on Dadabhai Naoroji brought a huge response from schools and libraries. They wanted more personalities who could be role-models for children. They also wanted modern people with whom pupils could identify.

She says: They all love Zubin Mehta, but people were fascinated, too. by Jamsetji Jeejeebhoy who gave a fortune away, some of it to Ireland at the time of the famines and to flood victims in France. He was given the Freedom of the City of Lon don the same year as David livingstone

Her book, which is short and in simple language, is w ritten for British primary school children, but also, she says, for adults who do not read nuh

Her royalties will go to Anti Slavery International whkh supports efforts to help children who are bonded labourers in India. Pakistan and chew here

DAVID SPARK is a freelance British journalist.