There’s a very interesting website ‘Moving Here’ which documents the main groups of people who have migrated to England during the past 200 years. There’s an extensive section on South Asian communities and it begins to explain some of the features of the groups that came to Lancashire and other small milltowns in the period after the end of the Second World war. You can visit the South Asian pages by clicking on this link, http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/asian/asian.htm
The site includes some fascinating photographs. The one above is an early photograph – an on-board prayer time on SS Bengalen, taken in 1910 when south Asian seaman were know as lascars, a word I associate with Victorian novels. It also has a ‘trace your ancestors’ facility.