Dadabhai Naoroji

Dadabhai Naoroji (1892)

Memorial to Naoroji in Mumbai

Dadabhai Naoroji (born September 4, 1825 in Bombay ; † June 30, 1917 ibid) was a Parish intellectual and scholar and an early Indian politician . He was the first MP of Asian descent to the House of Commons .

Life

He came from a poor Parish priestly family and was the son of Maneckbai and Naoroji Palanji Dordi. His father died when he was four years old. His mother, an illiterate woman , sought the best English education available to Indians. He trained and became a teacher at Elphinstone College in Bombay . He initiated courses to promote reading and writing for girls in Marathi and Gujarati . Later he founded the Dnyan Prasarak Mandali ( German Society for the Promotion of Knowledge ) for adult education . In 1855 Naoroji was appointed professor of mathematics and natural philosophy . In June of the same year he received the invitation, sacrificed his professorship and accompanied the wealthy Cama family on a business trip to England before he later became professor of Gujarati at University College London .  

On December 1, 1866, he helped found the East India Association , an association of high-ranking officers and personalities who had served in India and had access to members of parliament. Through his own initiative, he acquired the office of quasi-ambassador to India. He pushed through a resolution in parliament, according to which India and Great Britain should simultaneously hold entrance exams for the Indian Civil Service . His efforts were rewarded in 1866 when, for the first time, nine Indians were among the 60 nominees for the Indian Civil Service.

In 1874 he was, at the request of the Maharaja of Baroda Malharrao Gaekwad , Prime Minister of the Princely State of Baroda and also a member of the Imperial Legislative Council of Bombay (1885-1888). He resigned the post of prime minister two years later after disagreements over his intended reforms, after leaving behind orderly finances and a well-organized, efficient administration. Naoroji became increasingly disillusioned with British insight: after carefully studying statistics for the past 37 years, he was able to prove that India's exports exceeded its imports by about $ 135 million annually ( trade surplus ). From this he derived his run-off theory: "The inevitable consequence of foreign rule is the run-off of wealth from the dominated nation into the land of rulership."

He also founded the Indian National Association of Calcutta a few years before the founding of the Indian National Congress in Bombay, which had the same aims and procedures. Both groups merged to form the Indian National Congress and Naoroji was elected President of the Congress in 1866.

Naoroji returned to Great Britain, where he continued his political engagement. In July 1892 he was elected in the constituency of Finsbury Central for the Liberal Party as the first Indian member of the British Parliament , after he had run in vain in 1886. As a Parse, he refused to take his oath on the Bible . Instead, he was given the opportunity to take his oath on the Avesta , the sacred book of Zoroastrianism . In Parliament he spoke about Irish Home Rule and the living conditions of the Indian people. In his political campaigns and duties as a member of parliament he was supported by Ali Jinnah , the later Muslim nationalist and founder of Pakistan . In 1895 Naoroji was a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Expenditure, in which he denounced the excessive tax burden on the Indian taxpayer, who, in addition to the British colonial administration and the British-commanded Indian army, also had to pay for their imperial warfare in Asia and Africa . In 1901 he published a book entitled Poverty and Unbritish Rule in India , in which he measured the practice of British colonial rule against the standards of British liberalism .

In 1906 Naoroji was elected President of the Indian National Congress for the third time. He was considered a staunch moderate in the Congress Party and was therefore brought to Calcutta specifically for its congress when the split between moderates around Gopal Krishna Gokhale and extremists around Bal Gangadhar Tilak , Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo Ghose threatened to occur. While the moderates only demanded autonomy , the extremists called for self-government and therefore wanted to boycott British goods . Naoroji managed to stop the rift through the Congress Party once again by defining the goal of self-government, Swaraj , in his speech, which was to be achieved by constitutional means. But he only delayed the split in the Congress party by a year.

At his death in 1917 he was known as the "great old man of India" and was known as the mentor of Mohandas Gandhi . He was married to Gulbai since he was eleven. His mother and only son died while he was in England.

Fonts

Poverty and un-British rule in India , 1901

Web links

• Kurzbiographie (English)
• Indian Biography (English)