• Dadabhai Naoroji was born on 4 September, 1825, in Bombay (now Mumbai), when India was gripped by colonialism.
• He is fondly remembered as the ‘Grand Old Man of India’.
• A man of many firsts, Dadabhai Naoroji co-founded the Indian National Congress as part of his quest for self-governance.
• He was the first Indian to be elected to the British Parliament. A big advocate of self-governance, he was deeply critical of British rule and was elected to Britain’s House of Commons in 1892.
• In 1885, his quest bore fruit as he co-founded the Indian National Congress along with British civil servant Allan Octavian Hume and politician Dinchaw Wacha, and its legacy lives on today.
• He was the first of many things:
1. In 1855, he was the first Indian Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Elphinston College, Mumbai.
2. Later that year, he moved to London to open India’s first company in Britain.
3. In 1866, he launched the East India Association, a platform for British and Indian nationals to discuss India. It was the first of its kind in giving Indians representation to the government.
• Each of Naroroji’s various avatars — as a teacher, a politician, and intellectual — were immersed in the freedom struggle.
• He was particularly concerned about the state of India’s poverty, describing British occupation as a “drain” on Indian resources.
• Termed ‘drain theory’, his understanding of India’s deprivation was nuanced and astute. He identified six main reasons for the drain to England, the most prominent of them being that India bore all the costs of the British administration.
• He died on 30 June, 1917, without seeing an independent India, but certainly having laid the foundation for it.
