Amrit Lal
Born: September 9, 1932
Died: January 13, 2026
On a November evening in 1993, oil lamps illuminated the Edinburgh Hindu Mandir on St Andrew Place in Leith as families gathered to celebrate Diwali. Only a few years earlier the building had stood empty, cold and abandoned, a derelict shell of its former self. Now it had been reborn – a temple, cultural centre and focal point for the community. Overseeing the event that night was the president at the time, Amrit Lal, whose patience and quiet determination had helped in turning aspiration into reality.
Amrit, who has died aged 93, lived a life defined by constant upheaval and perseverance in the face of obstacles. Brought up 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 lecturer, he later settled in Edinburgh. Together with his wife, the trailblazing race relations campaigner Saroj Lal, he played a key role in giving the city’s Hindu community a permanent spiritual and cultural home.
He was born into crippling poverty in Jandali Kalan, near Ahmedgarh, in the Sangrur district of Punjab. His mother, Parvati Devi Dhand, had returned to her parental village for the birth of her first child, as was customary. Amrit’s father, Lachman Dass Tangri, known respectfully as Baoji, came from nearby Maholi Kalan. Baoji was a veterinary surgeon in the Remount Veterinary Corps of the British Indian Army and was frequently posted across the north-west frontier of the country.
Amrit’s early years were marked by deprivation, instability and loss. Three siblings – a sister and two younger brothers, Satinder and Bhushan – died in infancy. His schooling began late and was erratic in nature. It was repeatedly interrupted as the family was forced to move whenever Baoji was transferred from one posting to another. His mother and paternal grandparents had had little formal education and were unable to assist with his lessons.
During the Second World War, Baoji was posted to Aden in Yemen with the Bikaner Camel Corps, known as the Ganga Risala. Amrit and his mother stayed with relatives in Khanna for more than two years. Baoji came home briefly on leave in 1942 and the family was visiting Maholi Kalan when Amrit’s paternal grandfather, Raja Ram, passed away. Baoji faithfully carried out the last rites before returning to military duty – a memory that left a deep impression on Amrit.
Greater stability came when Amrit’s maternal uncle, Jagiri Mal Dhand, himself a teacher, took responsibility for the boy’s education, enrolling him as a boarder at Khalsa High School in Kila Raipur in 1945. In the summer of 1947 Amrit was visiting Baoji, by then posted to Fort Sandeman (now the Pakistani city of Zhob), when tensions began to rise ahead of Partition and the family was moved to a Sikh regiment in Kohat for safety. In August 1947, as the violence and bloodshed began, they were evacuated in a military plane to Chaklala Cantonment near Rawalpindi and then transported in a special train across the newly drawn border. Despite the turmoil, Amrit reached Kila Raipur and passed his matriculation exam in August 1948.
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He then joined DAV Post Graduate College in Dehradun to study English, physics and chemistry. His first experience of being taught in English, however, proved challenging and he initially failed his final exams. Disheartened, he withdrew for a year, then went back and passed in the spring of 1952.
A turning point came the morning after his last exam. Through a series of contacts, Baoji introduced Amrit to a British automotive representative in Delhi who arranged an apprenticeship with Albion Motors in Scotstoun, Glasgow. Amrit sailed from Bombay on the MS Batory later that year, docking in Southampton on 11 November 1952. He arrived in a cold and unfamiliar city with little money, limited English and no contacts. He initially lived in shared accommodation with other Indians at 41 Kelvinside Gardens. For the next three years he combined his apprenticeship with day-release courses at Stow College of Engineering. Once it was over, he worked for a series of Glasgow-based firms – A. & W. Smith & Co. Ltd, North British Locomotive Co. Ltd and Mavor & Coulson Ltd – while continuing his studies through evening classes.
In 1962 he returned to India where he was introduced to Saroj Chanana, an economics graduate from Panjab University. They were married on 11 December that year and began life together in Madras (now Chennai) where Amrit worked for Binny Engineering. Their first child, a daughter named Pansy, was born in Ludhiana on 14 November 1963 but fell seriously ill and died on 25 January 1964 – a loss they bore quietly for the rest of their lives.
In August 1964 the couple moved to Singapore, where Amrit became a lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic and their son, Vineet, was born in June 1965. Still conscious of the gaps in his education, however, he and Saroj moved to the UK in 1967 where he become a postgraduate student at the University of Birmingham. The conferring of his MSc in quality and reliability engineering in December 1968 was an achievement of deep personal significance – proof that the little boy with fragmented schooling had finally prevailed.
Shortly afterwards, Amrit accepted a lectureship at Napier College of Science and Technology in Edinburgh. The family settled in the city in November 1968 and a second daughter, Kavita, was born there in May 1969.
They initially lived in a single cramped room on Smith’s Place before buying their first home on Oxford Street. Saroj also worked in education, but in the mid-1970s she and Amrit both left teaching in search of greater flexibility to raise their young family and respite from workplace prejudice. Their first small business, Lal’s Store on Balgreen Road, brought long-term financial security; later, in the mid-1980s, Fabina on Marchmont Crescent – offering Asian fabrics and Bollywood movies – became a popular meeting place for Edinburgh’s South Asian community.
In 1987 Baoji came to live with them for a year, allowing father and son to share a closeness largely absent during Amrit’s childhood. Baoji died on 13 September 1988, shortly after returning to India.
In the early 1980s Edinburgh’s Hindu families had no permanent place of worship. In 1981 a small group formed an organising committee and a few years later Amrit became president of the Edinburgh Hindu Mandir, gently steering the project through its formative years. His outlook was shaped by his Arya Samaj upbringing, grounded in the teachings of the Vedas and a belief in gender equality, education and seva (service).
In 1989, following negotiations with the city council led by Saroj, the organisation acquired a disused church in Leith for a peppercorn sum. Amrit was closely involved in strategic planning, funding applications and the renovation itself, working with committee members and volunteers to create a temple on a brand-new first floor and a cultural centre downstairs. On 13 November 1993 the Mandir celebrated its first Diwali in its impressive new home.
The Mandir was not the only gift from Amrit and Saroj to the city. Supported by Amrit, Saroj campaigned for and established Ganga Ghat on the River Almond – a first for the UK – where families of any faith could immerse the ashes of their loved ones. Amrit was present for the first official immersion – the ashes of Surendra Chandarana – on 17 July 1994.
Both Amrit and Saroj were active in building the city’s emerging inter-faith networks, while Amrit also served on the board of MECOPP, a charity for minority carers. After Saroj’s death on 12 March 2020 he lived more quietly, sustained by his memories and nostalgia for his childhood in Punjab.
Amrit will be remembered as a true gentleman: a noble, caring man of integrity and principles, who left behind a legacy that will long outlast him and his beloved Saroj. As the First Minister, John Swinney MSP, said: “Together, Amrit and Saroj embodied compassion, courage and community. Their impact endures in the lives they shaped, the institutions they strengthened, and the principles they championed. Their legacy remains an inspiration to us all.” And in the stones of the Edinburgh Hindu Mandir, and the sacred waters of Ganga Ghat where, fittingly, the ashes of both Amrit and Saroj were finally laid to rest, their shared vision for the city lives on.
He is survived by his daughter Kavita, granddaughter Isha and me.
VINEET LAL
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