He was educated at St. Andrews University, attending the sessions of 1802–3 (Register), and in 1804 obtained a Madras cadetship on the nomination of John Hudleston.

For the part taken by six of its companies in Vellore mutiny the regiment was disbanded in January 1807; Low became an officer in the reformed 24th Madras Infantry.

He was brigade-major in the ceded districts, and was Persian interpreter and head of the intelligence staff to Colonel Dowse in the South Mahratta country in 1812–13.

He was in commissariat charge of Brigadier William Tuyl's force sent against the Guntoor rebels in 1816; and was present at the defeat of the Mahrattas at the Battle of Mahidpur, 21 December 1817, as extra aide-de-camp to Sir John Malcolm.

In March following, as first political assistant to Malcolm, he was employed with a force of three thousand men and ten guns in pacifying the Chindwarra district.

In 1830 he was appointed by Lord William Bentinck to a similar post in Gwalior State, where he opposed the regent Baiza Bai.

Summoning a Bengal regiment to his aid, Low, after a parley, had the gates of the palace blown open and the pretender seized.

There he negotiated the treaty by which the Berar Division was assigned to the British government, in return for the maintenance of the Hyderabad subsidiary force.

They had four sons and five daughters:[4] The history of John Low and his family is told in Ferdinand Mount's book The Tears of the Rajas: Mutiny, Money and Marriage in India 1805–1905.