The jacket may be a little crumpled but even in the heat and dust of a climate far removed from that of his native Dunbartonshire the tie is immaculate.
The respectable-looking gent with two smart but barefoot youngsters, is just one of the many thousands of Scots who left these shores to forge a new life in distant parts of the Empire.
Dr John Anderson Graham should, in many ways, be a forgotten figure — an unfashionable Victorian missionary who left Scotland in 1889 for a post in an obscure highland wedge of India with the aim of tackling the “contagion of heathendom”.
Instead, on the 70th anniversary of his death his legacy is flourishing. The homes he set up to educate and care for the “tea garden” children — abandoned youngsters who were the products of illicit relationships between the British and native women — and which were badly hit by an earthquake last year, will now be repaired, thanks to the success of a fundraising campaign.
His supporters say that it is proof of Dr Graham’s continuing ability to inspire, the lasting influence of a man who underwent a remarkable transformation during his years in India, from that rather narrow Victorian Kirk view on his arrival to someone who, towards to the end of his life, wrote a treatise in favour of a universal religion, who believed that “colour prejudice, even in a few, has much to answer for”, and who became a supporter of Indian self-rule and an adviser to the royal family in the closed Buddhist country of Bhutan.
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More than 60 years since Indian independence, the British branch of the charity insists that Dr Graham’s Homes in Kalimpong are needed as much as ever. Jim Simpson, the chairman and sponsorship secretary, says that the scars of the Raj have trickled down the generations and the stigma of mixed blood and illegitimacy means that many Anglo-Indians still live in poverty.
He has 18 children to find sponsors for this year, including two boys who live in a two-room shack with seven other family members.
“We are talking about fourth and fifth generation Anglo-Indians families who haven’t managed to improve their lives and can’t afford to send their children to school,” Mr Simpson says.
It was a by-product of the Raj kept quiet from those back in Britain and which Graham uncovered when he arrived in India. The son of a Dunbartonshire farmer, Dr Graham had been caught up in the late Victorian Scottish zeal for missionary work while he was studying in Edinburgh, inspired by Dr David Livingstone. Funded by the Kirk’s Young Men’s Guilds, he was sent out to Kalimpong, a sliver of India perched on a 4,000ft ridge close to the borders of Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet, then all closed Buddhist nations.
The mission had its eyes on converts should the borders ever open, but Dr Graham found his focus increasingly on a problem closer to hand.
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At the time, tea companies insisted that their planters should have the status of manager before they married and brought a wife out from Britain — but this meant 12 years’ service first.
Inevitably relationships with local women sprang up, but the children of such liaisons were in a no-man’s land. They couldn’t be sent to school as that would make the father’s indiscretion public, so they were left to roam the tea plantations, hence the name “tea garden children”. If a wife from Britain did come out or the father went home, the children were often abandoned.
As Sir Joseph Bampfylde Fuller, an early 20th century Lieutenant-Governor of Eastern Bengal and Assam, later explained: “This mixed community was condemned to adversity by its circumstances. Their fathers sailed home leaving them stranded. Their needs attracted little attention and they could command no political influence.”
Perhaps Dr Graham’s personal circumstances allowed him some sympathy — his grandson, Nigel Graham, now 84, of Nairn, explained: “He was not supposed to be married in his first term as a missionary in India.” Dr Graham set about providing homes and schooling for the children in the face of opposition from the Church of Scotland. The Kirk refused to fund his plans and Dr Graham was warned off continuing with the project.
Dr Graham’s answer was to make his homes interdenominational and accept help from wherever he could, including the Government, delighted that someone else was dealing with the problem, and from wealthy British individuals. The homes, based on the Quarrier’s Homes in Bridge of Weir, began in 1900 with six children from the Assam tea gardens.
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Now Dr Graham’s Homes have more than 1,400 pupils, mostly fee-paying, academically gifted children, whose parents are attracted by the school’s prestigious reputation — its former pupils include the Prime Minister of neighbouring Bhutan.
But 400 of the pupils provide a link to the school’s heritage. Supported by sponsors worldwide, they are chosen because of their desperately poor backgrounds. Their links with Scotland are obvious from a glance at the school roll, which is littered with surnames such as MacKenzie and Cameron.
For Dr Graham, the mixed race of the youngsters was something to be celebrated. And if it was, “how it would put to shame that narrow exclusive national and petty racial pride with which we are all at times afflicted”.
He became an admirer of Ghandi and a supporter of Indian self-rule, largely through his friendship with the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. He visited both Nepal and Bhutan while they were still closed countries.
His grandson said: “Bhutan was a very, very Buddhist country. I don’t know how he overcame that, but he did and there was no doubt he had a tremendous rapport with the royal family.”
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Five years before his death, he published Stray Thoughts Upon the Possibility of a Universal Religion and the Feasibility of Teaching it in Our Schools, musings on the idea of a world where there would be no “crabbing or jealous\ in any rival religion”.
He added: “He was a wonderful character. He was great fun, that was my particular memory of him. I think it’s incredible that 112 years later his work is continuing. Thousands of children have been saved from destitution and early death because of him. It’s a wonderful legacy.”
For more information, visit www.drgrahamshomes.co.uk