Dadabhai Naoroji was born in 1825 in Khadak, near Bombay. Dadabhai Naoroji was the only son of Naoroji Palanji Dordi, a Parsi priest, and his wife, Manekbai.
Dadabhai Naoroji
In 1845, he graduated and went to London as a business partner in a firm.
Dadabhai Naoroji became a leading professor of natural philosophy and mathematics at the Elphinstone Institution in Bombay in 1850.
In the late 1860s, he established the East India Association to keep Britain well-informed of India’s needs and requirements, and to ensure fair treatment of the Indians.
He succeeded in persuading the princes to fund the Association. This association provided a forum for his campaign to allow Indians to enter the Indian Civil Service.
Naoroji expounded the idea of ‘Drain Theory’. He demonstrated the way in which British were exploiting the wealth and resources of India.
Dadabhai Naraoji
He published a book completed with facts and figures in a book titled Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. Historian believed this book to be the first economic critique of colonial India.
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
He also founded several magazines and journals such as Rast Goftar and Voice of India.
In 1892, Voter of Finsbury constituency elected Naoroji as Member of British Parliament for Central Finsbury, London.
Statue of Dadabhai
He took oath of office not on the Bible and took an oath in the name of God on his but in the copy of Khordeh Avesta, the Zoroastrian sacred text.
Muhammed Ali Jinnah assisted him in his political campaign and duties as an MP. Jinnah was the future Muslim nationalist and founder of Pakistan.
He was the president of the Indian National Congress in 1886, 1893 and 1906. In 1906, he publicly demanded ‘Swaraj’ for India from the Congress platform.
In the session of 1906, he tactfully postponed the unavoidable split between moderates and extremists faction in the Congress Party.
Naoroji became interested in English sports after he became member of British parliament. He was the president of the football club in his parliamentary constituency, Central Finsbury.
He died in Bombay on 30 June 1917, at the age of 91.
As Dadabhai Naoroji was the senior-most Indian resident in the United Kingdom, he was often called upon to preside over issues related to Indians residing in the UK.
Dadabhai Naoroji wrote newspaper Rast Gofter in Gujarati.
Naoroji was one of the founding member of the Indian National Congress, along with A.O. Hume and Dinshaw Edulji Wacha.
Naoroji was a mentor to Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
His parents married him to Gulbai at the age of eleven.
