Results for Dadabhai Naoroji
On this page:
 
Biography:

Dadabhai Naoroji

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) was an Indian political leader and one of the founders of the Indian National Congress. A leading nationalist author and spokesman, he was the first Indian to be elected to membership in the British Parliament.

Dadabhai Naoroji was born into a leading Parsi family in Bombay. After an outstanding career at Elphinstone College, Naoroji served briefly as professor of mathematics at Elphinstone. In 1855 Naoroji became a partner in an important Parsi commercial firm in London, and in 1862 he set up his own commercial house there. In the same year he founded the influential East Indian Association to educate the English public on Indian affairs.

In 1873 Naoroji accepted the difficult post of Divan, or chief minister, of the prominent Indian princely state of Baroda but left it fairly soon for an elected seat in the Bombay Municipal Corporation. It was here that his public service career truly began. After several busy years in the public life of the province, Naoroji published his famous indictment of British exploitation of India, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. This book guaranteed his position in the very front rank of the Indian nationalist movement.

In 1885 Lord Reay, the governor of Bombay, appointed him to the Legislative Council, and in the same year Naoroji played a leading role in the creation of the Indian National Congress, the major organization promoting Indian nationalism. A year later he was elected president of the Indian National Congress at its second session. During the same year he was one of a very few prominent Indians chosen to testify before the Royal Commission on the Public Services in India.

In 1892 Naoroji was elected to the British Parliament on the Liberal ticket from Central Finsbury. He was the first Indian to win a seat in the House of Commons. A year later he was, for the second time, elected to the presidency of the Indian National Congress. In 1895 Naoroji lost his seat in Parliament, but in 1896 he was appointed to the influential Royal Commission on Indian Expenditures, to whose labors he made a significant contribution. The report of the commission was important in shaping Indian fiscal practices. In 1906 Naoroji's public service was given special mark when he was elected to a third term as president of the National Congress. Naoroji's probity, care in the use of evidence, painstaking research in Indian economic conditions, and persistent advocacy of the Indian cause were the hallmarks of his active and impressive career.

Further Reading

A convenient one-volume edition of Naoroji's writings and speeches is Essays, Speeches, Addresses and Writings, edited by C. L. Parekh (1887). The best study in English of Naoroji is Rustom P. Masani, Dadabhai Naoroji (1939). See also Vidya Dhor Mahajan, The Nationalist Movement in India and Its Leaders (1962).

Additional Sources

Rawal, Munni, Dadabhai Naoroji, a prophet of Indian nationalism, 1855-1900, New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1989.

 
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Naoroji, Dadabhai
(dä'dəbəhī närō'jē) , 1825–1917, Indian nationalist leader. The son of a Parsi priest, at 27 he became professor of mathematics at Elphinstone Institution, Bombay (now Mumbai). At 30 he left for England to start a career in business. He worked for an improvement in British policies toward India. He was particularly concerned about the economic consequences of British rule for India, and he wrote and lectured extensively on the “drain” of wealth, or unilateral transfer of resources from India to Britain, which he regarded as the principal cause of Indian poverty. His writings on this subject, especially his classic study, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901), played a major role in arousing and stimulating economic nationalism in India. Active for more than 60 years in Indian social and political causes, he served three times as president of the Indian National Congress (1886, 1893, 1906). He was the first Indian to be elected a member of the British Parliament—in 1892, as a Liberal. As a member of Parliament he was instrumental in securing the appointment of a royal commission on Indian expenditure, the Welby Commission, and served on it as its sole Indian member. The younger generation of nationalist leaders, including such men as Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Mohandas K. Gandhi, regarded him as their mentor, and he was affectionately hailed as the Grand Old Man of India.

Bibliography

See biography by R. P. Masani (1939).

 
Wikipedia: Dadabhai Naoroji
Statue of Naoroji in Mumbai
Enlarge
Statue of Naoroji in Mumbai

Dadabhai Naoroji (6 September 1825 – 30 June 1917) was a Parsi intellectual, educator, cotton trader, and an early Indian political leader. His book, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, brought into the limelight the drain of India's wealth into Britain. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) in the British House of Commons between 1892 and 1895, and the first Asian to be a British MP.[1]

Formative years

The son of Maneckbai and Naoroji Palanji Dordi, born into a poor family of Parsi-Zoroastrian priests in Navsari, Naoroji was educated at Elphinstone College. At the early age of 25, he was appointed Assistant Professor at the Elphinstone Institution in 1850, becoming the first Indian to hold such an academic position.[2] Being an Athornan (ordained priest), Naoroji founded the Rahnumae Mazdayasne Sabha (Guides on the Mazdayasne Path) on 1st August 1851 to restore the Zoroastrian religion to its original purity and simplicity. In 1854, he also founded a fortnightly, the Rast Goftar (or The Truth Teller), to clarify Zoroastrian concepts. By 1855 he was Professor of Mathematics and Natural philosophy in Bombay. He travelled to London in 1855 to become a partner in Cama & Co, opening a Liverpool location for the first Indian company to be established in Britain. Within 3 years, he had resigned on ethical grounds. In 1859 he established his own cotton trading company, Naoroji & Co.[3] Later he became professor of Gujarati at University College London.

In 1867 Naoroji helped establish the East India Association, one of the predecessor organizations of the Indian National Congress. In 1874 he became Prime Minister of Baroda and was a member of the Legislative Council of Bombay (1885-88). He also founded the Indian National Association from Calcutta a few years before the founding of the Indian National Congress in Bombay, with the same objectives and practices. The two groups later merged into the INC, and Naoroji was elected President of the Congress in 1886.

Naoroji moved to Britain once again and continued his political involvement. Elected for the Liberal Party in Finsbury Central at the 1892 general election, he was the first British Indian MP. He refused to take the oath on the Bible as he was not a Christian, but was allowed to take the oath of office in the name of God on his copy of Khordeh Avesta. In Parliament he spoke on Irish Home Rule and the condition of the Indian people. In his political campaign and duties as an MP, he was assisted by Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the future Muslim nationalist and founder of Pakistan. In 1906, Naoroji was again elected president of the Indian National Congress. Naoroji was a staunch moderate within the Congress, during the phase when opinion in the party was split between the moderates and extremists.

Naoroji was known as the 'Grand Old Man of India', a mentor to both Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Mahatma Gandhi. He was married to Gulbai from the age of eleven. He died in Bombay June 30, 1917, at age 92.

References

  1. ^ Sumita Mukherjee, “‘Narrow-majority’ and ‘Bow-and-agree’: Public Attitudes Towards the Elections of the First Asian MPs in Britain, Dadabhai Naoroji and Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree, 1885-1906”, Journal of the Oxford University History Society, 2 (Michaelmas 2004). He may have been the first Indian to publicly demand independence from Great Britain.
  2. ^ "Dr. Dadabhai Naoroji, 'The Grand Old Man of India'", Vohuman.org
  3. ^ "Dadabhai Naoroji, 1825-1917", Migration Histories. On line.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Works

  • The manners and customs of the Parsees (Bombay, 1864)
  • The European and Asiatic races (London, 1866
  • Admission of educated natives into the Indian Civil Service (London, 1868)
  • The wants and means of India (London, 1870)
  • Condition of India (Bombay, 1881)
  • Poverty of India: A Paper Read Before the Bombay Branche of the East India Association, Bombay, Ranima Union Press, (1876)
  • C. L. Parekh, ed., Essays, Speeches, Addresses and Writings of the Honourable Dadabhai Naoroji, Bombay, Caxton Printing Works (1887). An excerpt, "The Benefits of British Rule", in a modernized text by J. S. Arkenberg, ed., on line at Paul Halsall, ed., Internet Modern History Sourcebook.
  • Lord Salisbury’s Blackman (Lucknow, 1889)
  • Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, London, Swan Sonnenschein (1901) - on line, Google Books; Commonwealth Publishers, 1988. ISBN 8190006622

Literature

  • Rustom P. Masani, Dadabhai Naoroji (1939).
  • Munni Rawal, Dadabhai Naoroji, Prophet of Indian Nationalism, 1855-1900, New Delhi, Anmol Publications (1989).
  • S. R. Bakshi, Dadabhai Naoroji: The Grand Old Man, Anmol Publications (1991). ISBN 8170414261
  • Verinder Grover, ‘'Dadabhai Naoroji: A Biography of His Vision and Ideas’’ New Delhi, Deep & Deep Publishers (1998) ISBN 8176290114
  • Debendra Kumar Das, ed., ‘'Great Indian Economists : Their Creative Vision for Socio-Economic Development.’’ Vol. I: ‘Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) : Life Sketch and Contribution to Indian Economy.’’ New Delhi, Deep and Deep (2004). ISBN 8176293156
  • P. D. Hajela, ‘'Economic Thoughts of Dadabhai Naoroji,’’ New Delhi, Deep & Deep (2001). ISBN 8176293377

External links


Sources


Parliament of the United Kingdom (1801–present)
Preceded by
Frederick Thomas Penton		 Member of Parliament for Finsbury Central
1892–1895		 Succeeded by
William Frederick Barton Massey-Mainwaring

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

Join the WikiAnswers Q&A community. Post a question or answer questions about "Dadabhai Naoroji" at WikiAnswers.

 

Copyrights:

Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dadabhai Naoroji".  Read more

Search for answers directly from your browser with the FREE Answers.com Toolbar!  
Click here to download now. 

Get Answers your way! Check out all our free tools and products.

On this page:   E-mail   print Print  Link  

 

Keep Reading

Mentioned In:

 |  More >More >
 

Do you have the answers?