Amrit Lal obituary

My father, Amrit Lal, who has died aged 93, was a key figure in the creation of the Edinburgh Hindu Mandir. In partnership with his wife, Saroj Lal, a pioneering race relations campaigner, he helped transform a derelict church into a spiritual and cultural centre for the city’s Hindu community. Amrit was born in Jandali Kalan, near Ahmedgarh, in Punjab. His early years were marked by disruption, deprivation and loss. Two brothers and a sister died in infancy; his father, Lachman Dass Tangri, was a vet in the Remount Veterinary Corps of the British Indian army, and was frequently transferred from post to post, while his mother, Parvati Devi Dhand, had no formal education. The family had little means; Amrit frequently went to school barefoot. A measure of stability came in 1945 when a maternal uncle, Jagiri Mal Dhand, a teacher, enrolled him to board at Khalsa high school in Kila Raipur, north of Ahmedgarh. Despite the turmoil of partition in August 1947, Amrit passed his matriculation exam in August the following year. He then studied at DAV Post Graduate College, Dehradun, sitting his final exams in 1952. Soon afterwards, an introduction in Delhi led to an apprenticeship with Albion Motors in Glasgow. Arriving in Britain in November 1952 with little money and limited English, Amrit spent a challenging decade combining work and part-time study, gaining various qualifications in mechanical and production engineering at Stow College. In 1962 he returned to India and married Saroj Chanana, as she then was, an economics graduate. The couple initially lived in Madras (now Chennai); their first child, a daughter named Pansy, was born in 1963 but sadly died before she was three months old. Later in 1964, they moved to Singapore when Amrit became a lecturer in production engineering at Singapore Polytechnic, and where I was born in 1965. He returned to the UK in 1967 to study for an MSc at the University of Birmingham. In 1968 Amrit was offered a lectureship at Napier College of Science and Technology in Edinburgh. The family made their home in the city, where my sister Kavita was born in 1969. The pressures of juggling teaching with raising a young family, combined with some workplace prejudice, eventually led to both Amrit and Saroj leaving education. They opened a grocery business in 1973, Lal’s Store, which gave them financial security. Later, in the mid-1980s, they set up Fabina – a shop with an eclectic mix of Asian fabrics, Indian musical instruments and Bollywood films for rent – that turned into a cultural hub for south-Asian people. In 1981, an organisation to create a permanent Hindu temple in the city was formed and Amrit later became its president. After Saroj had secured a disused church in Leith, Amrit played a leading role in its early renovation. He also supported her in setting up Ganga Ghat on the River Almond, at Cramond, just outside Edinburgh – a multifaith site for the immersion of ashes where, fittingly, both his own ashes and those of Saroj were eventually placed. Saroj died in 2020. Amrit is survived by Kavita and me, and his granddaughter Isha.