India Mr Dadabhai Naoroji

Excerpt from India and Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji: An Account of the Demonstrations Held in His Honour as M. P. For Central Finsbury, During His Visit to India, for the Purpose of Presiding at the Ninth Indian National Congress, Lahore, December 1893-January 1894 Thus, Mr. Naoroji's advent to India in 1593 'was. An historical event. It has since been f'elt that the several inci dents of his brief stay of six weeks may.be preserved in some permanent formlor historical reference. This as: has now been accomplished. In the following pages will be found a massive collection of all the proceedings which occurred in relation to Mr. Naoi'ojl, from the hour of his landing. To that of his sailing 'back to the scenes pt his ptdio laboua in England. They are all reports and notices 'of contem porary. Chroniclers in all parts of India. 'npo attempt has been made to summarise these. It has been thought best that they should rather form the rich materials on which the 1m partial biographer of Mr. Nae-rep may in the fullngs of time give his own monograph on his public life. But'thaeader will notice that so far as the materials are dollected m the thidr volume they are of. A varied and interesting chafiacter, N 0 thing has been left or omitted 85 far as all public'functions are concerned in tonnection with his ovation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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The pioneering work of Dadabhai Naoroji has two major aspects- economic and political - and provides valuable material for the economic and constitutional history of India.

The definitive biography of Dadabhai Naoroji, the nineteenth-century activist who founded the Indian National Congress, was the first British MP of Indian origin, and inspired Gandhi and Nehru. Mahatma Gandhi called Dadabhai Naoroji the “father of the nation,” a title that today is reserved for Gandhi himself. Dinyar Patel examines the extraordinary life of this foundational figure in India’s modern political history, a devastating critic of British colonialism who served in Parliament as the first-ever Indian MP, forged ties with anti-imperialists around the world, and established self-rule or swaraj as India’s objective. Naoroji’s political career evolved in three distinct phases. He began as the activist who formulated the “drain of wealth” theory, which held the British Raj responsible for India’s crippling poverty and devastating famines. His ideas upended conventional wisdom holding that colonialism was beneficial for Indian subjects and put a generation of imperial officials on the defensive. Next, he attempted to influence the British Parliament to institute political reforms. He immersed himself in British politics, forging links with socialists, Irish home rulers, suffragists, and critics of empire. With these allies, Naoroji clinched his landmark election to the House of Commons in 1892, an event noticed by colonial subjects around the world. Finally, in his twilight years he grew disillusioned with parliamentary politics and became more radical. He strengthened his ties with British and European socialists, reached out to American anti-imperialists and Progressives, and fully enunciated his demand for swaraj. Only self-rule, he declared, could remedy the economic ills brought about by British control in India. Naoroji is the first comprehensive study of the most significant Indian nationalist leader before Gandhi.