The actual name of Surat Alley was Banshidhar Mishra who was born on 18 May 1905 in the village of Khandasahi in Kendrapara district. From his childhood, he was influenced by the ideology and activities of Gopabandhu Das who was at the forefront of the non-cooperation movement and post-non-cooperation phase of activities in Odisha till his death in 1928. In the late twenties, there was youth unrest in Odisha in which Banshidhar Mishra took up the leadership along with Rajakrishna Bose. He formed the ‘Youth Committee’ in various places at his own expense for which he almost became penniless. To create awareness among them he was editing a journal ‘Yubak’ in which he published many inflammatory articles which invited the wrath of the British government. An arrest warrant was issued against him but he escaped by fleeing to Burma in disguise where he took part in the Burmese rebellion. There he changed his name to ‘Surat Alley’ and under this name, he made his own passport and fled to London where he continued to stay under this name from 1932 to 1952. He started his activities as a trade union leader and political activist who campaigned tirelessly for the rights of Indians, particularly Indian seamen. While Alley was involved in an extraordinary range of activities and organizations, his struggle for equality for Indian seamen was perhaps his greatest political contribution when in Britain. He held a number of posts in different organizations all of which aimed for the betterment of the pay and employment conditions of lascars. He was Secretary of the Colonial Seamen’s Association, formed in 1935 by black, South Asian, and Chinese seamen in reaction to the British Shipping (Assistance) Act. He was also the London representative of Aftab Ali’s All-India Seamen’s Federation. In this role, he gave much assistance to lascars striking against their unequal treatment at the beginning of the Second World War. He organized meetings and rallies, distributed leaflets, and listened to the seamen’s grievances. When Aftab Ali called off the strikes, having reached an agreement with the authorities, Alley cooperated with this decision but continued to campaign for the release of lascars from prison and their subsequent re-employment, lobbying the Home Secretary and calling on the TUC for support. Alley gained a reputation among government officials as an agitator and troublemaker, in spite of their partial reliance on him to negotiate with lascars. It is also said that during this time he developed friendships with a lot of illustrious Indians such as N.G. Ranga, Feroze Gandhi, Krishna Menon, and S.S. Ray with whom he discussed the strategy to be adopted for the independence of India. The fact that Surat Alley’s political interests extended beyond the concerns of lascars is evident when he became the Honorary Secretary of the Hindustan Social Club, an organization committed to the social welfare of working-class Indians in Britain as well as to raise their consciousness of the struggle for Indian independence. He was also general secretary of the Oriental Film Artistes’ Union, involved with Swaraj House, and in 1943 he helped to set up the Federation of Indian Associations in Great Britain which brought together the middle-class members of Swaraj House with the working-class members of the Indian Workers’ Association. Surveillance reports suggest he was an associate of the revolutionary Udham Singh. In the Udham Singh case, he established many contacts with the Sikh community in England. Shortly after Uddham’s arrest in 1940, his lodgings were searched. Not just confining himself to Indian organizations, Alley was also an active member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, helping them to gain access to the Indian working classes, and worked as an ARP warden in the Second World War. He came back to India in 1952. Though he was offered a lucrative post by the Congress government, he preferred to settle in his village Khandasahi where he made a primary school and taught the children. He died in August 1988.