the human race in general and the Indian people in particular... Whatever happen to the book or to the authors, we hope that others will not be discouraged. Our practical proposal is the formation immediately of a League of Progressive Authors, which should bring forth similar collections from time to time both in English and the various vernaculars of our country. We appeal to all those who are interested in this idea to get in touch with us. The idea of forming a League of Progressive Authors was presented for the first time in this statement which later expanded itself and became 'Indian Progressive Writers' Association'. Indian Progressive Writers' Association, London After the publication of Angarey and the furor that followed, Zaheer was sent to London by his father in March 1933 to study law. In London he came in contact with the members of the Indian student community including Muhammad Din Taseer, Mulk Raj Anand, Jyotirmoy Ghosh, Pramod Ranjan Sengupta and formed a literary circle of friends. The group also included progressive women like Hajra Begum. He also came into the contact of Communist revolutionary Ralph Winston Fox who encouraged him and Anand to form the Indian Progressive Writers’ Association in London. The association, composed mostly of Indian university students from Oxford, Cambridge and London, met for the first time on 24 November 1934 in a back room at the Nanking Restaurant, a Chinese restaurant in Denmark Street. Anand was elected as the president while Sengupta acted as the secretary of the association. In 1935, he and Mulk Raj Anand went to Paris to attend the International Congress for Defense of Culture organised by André Gide, Henri Barbusse and André Malraux. Influenced by the conference the group decided to solidify the association and draft a manifesto to formulate the aims and objectives of the association. The Manifesto of the Progressive Writers’ Association was finally drafted in 1935 in London by Zaheer, Taseer, Anand, Sengupta, and Jyoti Ghosh. Zaheer sent the approved version of the manifesto to writers and friends in India, including K.M. Ashraf, Abdul Alim, Mahmud-uz-Zafar, Rashid Jahan, Hiren Mukherjee and Premchand. Premchand translated the manifesto into Hindi and published it in the October edition of Hans in 1934 while the English version of the manifesto was published in the February 1936 issue of the Left Review. The manifesto was widely circulated among Indian students with literary interests