Dadabhai Naoroji

Indian nationalist leader

• Born: September 4, 1825
• Birthplace: Bombay, India (now Mumbai, India)
• Died: June 30, 1917
• Place of death: Bombay, India

A liberal political leader who became the second president of the Indian National Congress in Calcutta and the first Indian elected to the British parliament, Naoroji was a moderate spokesperson for India and is considered by many to have been a primary founder of the Indian nationalist movement.

Early Life

Although born in India, Dadabhai Naoroji (dah-dah-bay now-ROH-jee) was a Parsi—a descendant of Persian followers of Zoroaster who fled to India to avoid religious persecution. In 1831, when he six years of age, his father died. His mother was not a well-educated person, but she realized the importance of education, and as she raised him, she ensured that he focused on his studies. He did so and received academic prizes at school and college. He was eventually sent to Elphinstone College in Bombay and was part of its first graduating class.

On August 26, 1852, when the first political party in Bombay, the Bombay Association, was established, Naoroji became a member. Two years later he became the first Indian professor at Elphinstone College, which made him an assistant professor of mathematics and natural philosophy. The following year, however, he resigned and was one of a group of three Indians who traveled to London to start the Parsi trading business Cama & Company. In London, he dedicated himself to business and to serving as a spokesperson for India in England, but he left the company in 1858. He then spent two periods in India but by April, 1865, was back in England almost permanently after founding his own trading company.

Life’s Work

During the first dozen years of Naoroji’s residence in England, he dedicated his life to business and to being an informal representative of India, explaining the Indian viewpoint to British people who were interested in India or who were responsible for Indian policies, both in and outside Parliament. He traveled regularly between England and India and acted as a bridge between British interested in India and Indians active in politics in India. He believed that if British policy was to be reformed then British people needed to be informed about the Indian situation and the Indian perspective.

Naoroji was a moderate who worked for the improvement of British rule in India, not for its elimination. He argued that more government positions held by British employees should be given to Indians and that the amount of money spent on the military in India should be reduced. In 1866, he formalized his lobbying activities in England by founding the East India Association. One of the issues for which he fought was holding Indian civil service examinations in England and in India simultaneously so that Indian candidates not have the disadvantage of having to travel to England to sit for the examinations. He was successful, and in 1870 examinations began to be held both in London and in India.

In 1871, the East India Association was transformed into the India Lobby, and branches were set up in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. In 1871 and 1872, Naoroji testified before a parliamentary committee in the House of Commons on Indian objections to the drain on Indian resources. He was now a recognized spokesperson for India in both India and England.

In 1873, Naoroji returned to India to become the dewan, or prime minister, of the princely state of Baroda, a post he held for just over one year. He reformed the government of the state in order to demonstrate that an Indian administration could bring benefits to the people. During the 1880’s, he was a member of the Bombay Municipal Corporation. Maintaining the Parsi tradition of philanthropic activities, he endowed a number of schools that catered to girls and the poor and also formed literary societies, for which he became an honored figure in Bombay. In 1883, he established a newspaper, Voice of India , to express his views and to give greater publicity to the positions of the India Lobby. In 1885, he was nominated for a seat in the Bombay Legislative Council by the British.

In 1886, Naoroji failed in his attempt to be elected a member of Parliament for a district in London, but in 1892 he achieved the greatest extent of his fame when he won election in the London constituency of Finsbury. After winning by only three votes, he was given a nickname that, when spoken with an Indian accent, became a pun on his name: “Mr. Narrow Majority.” His election inspired many young Indians at this time, including the future nationalist leader and creator of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), who was then living in England. Naoroji’s criticism of the financial plight of India impelled the British to set up a royal commission of investigation, on which Naoroji served as the only Indian member.

A voluminous correspondent, Naoroji was also the author of numerous papers and books on Indian affairs. He wrote a paper, “Poverty in India,” which he first presented to the East India Association in 1870 and later expanded and published as a book, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India , in 1901. In a comparative analysis of fifteen countries, he looked at national and per capita incomes, agricultural and nonagricultural output, taxation, and a number of other indices and concluded that Great Britain drained wealth from India that benefited a small number of people in Britain and India, while increasing poverty for the majority of Indians. This, he argued, brought great dishonor to Britain because it was not only a material drain on India but also a moral drain on Britain. Naoroji’s “drain of wealth” thesis, while neither new nor Naoroji’s own invention, was used by all Indian politicians until independence in 1947 to argue that British rule impoverished India and therefore India should become free.

In 1907, a split occurred in the Indian National Congress between the moderates, led by Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915), and the extremists, led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920), over whether the party should fight for reform or independence. Naoroji was asked to be president of the party for the third time, to maintain party unity, even though he was considered by some to be too moderate and too Anglicized to have a faith in the British sense of justice that had been overtaken by history. At the end of Dadabhai Naoroji’s life, in 1917, he was affectionately known as the “Grand Old Man” of the Indian nationalist movement, and that term has remained his moniker in India today.

Significance

Naoroji was a close associate and intimate friend of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and he influenced Mohandas K. Gandhi, who regarded both Gokhale and Naoroji as his gurus, or mentors. Naoroji’s “drain of wealth” theory was adopted by many Indians and gave them the intellectual arguments to oppose colonial rule. As a member of the British parliament, his criticism of British rule in India helped to create a political climate that British rule should end. It put the British on the defensive. As a result, he is today regarded as a primary founder of the Indian nationalist movement.

Bibliography

Grover, Verinder, ed. Dadabhai Naoroji. Vol. 12 in Political Thinkers of Modern India. New Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1990. Part 1 of this volume contains twenty-four of Naoroji’s writings and speeches on a large number of topics, especially on economic and financial matters. The second part includes eight short appreciations of Naoroji, his relationships, and his influence.

Jones, Kenneth W. Socio-Religious Movements in British India. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989. One in the series “The New Cambridge History of India,” it places Naoroji’s thought in comparative perspective with the numerous other reform movements from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.

Nanda, B. R. The Moderate Era in Indian Politics: Dadabhai Naoroji Memorial Prize Fund Lecture. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983. This short lecture places Naoroji’s career in historical perspective when moderates dominated Indian politics between the 1880’s and 1920. With the ascendency of Gandhi and his technique of satyagraha and his noncooperation movement, Indian nationalist politics became strident.

Naoroji, Dadabhai. Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1962. This is a reprint of Dadabhai’s seminal work of 1901 that was influential among a generation of nationalists.

Zaidi, A. M., ed. The Grand Little Man of India: Dadabhai Naoroji—Speeches and Writings. Vols. 1-2. New Delhi: Indian Institute of Applied Political Research, 1984-1988. Thirty-three speeches in volume 1 are divided into Naoroji’s “Congress Speeches,” “Speeches in the House of Commons,” and “Miscellaneous Speeches and Addresses.” Volume 2 contains ten of his statements, speeches, and papers plus a four-page autobiographical extract, in which Naoroji offers an account of his early life and a character sketch of his mother.