Thank you all for the entertaining replies.
A round of applause please for tonight's winner of the three-course meal for two plus drinks in an invisible curry house. Vintagemotif correctly deduced that both spent time in India.
My Grandad was shipped to Bombay as a soldier in 1896, and was in India (apart from a short spell in Burma) until 1902.
The machine was manufactured in Scotland and given the Indian star decal, which was put on the machines that were shipped to Bombay for sale in India.
And of course, both ended up back in England. Grandad came back in late 1902 via South Africa, where he had a quick run around in the tail end of the Boer War. Quite how the machine ended up back on these shores I don't know. The lady I bought it from said it had previously belonged to her mother, and her family had never been in India, but my guess is that it must have been a machine that was bought in India and had come back with a British family that returned from there.
imayo - funny you should come up with the date 1904! The photo was taken in 1902.
Covered in Threads - nice idea that he was a cavalry officer, but that's not the case. It's not a riding crop, but a swagger stick, which went with his rank, Lance Corporal, a non-commissioned officer.
Vintagemotif - he did get a medal, but not a star. He got a campaign medal for his service in South Africa. And as for the Rolls Royce - oh what a marvellous fantasy, he was not of that class.
I hope you all enjoyed that excursion into the history of the British Empire through a Singer sewing machine. Photos will be going onto the Vintage Sewing Machine Shop Photos thread later tonight...