Guardians Of Faith - Dadabhai Naoroji #GuardianOfFaith

Question

Dadabhai Naoroji

- The son of a Parsi Priest, Dadabhai was born in Mumbai in 1825 and was an educator, cotton trader and politician. Dadabhai moved to England and established his own cotton trading company. In 1882 he became the frst Asian to be elected to the House of Commons where he represented Finsbury. 

Naoroji was also member of the Indian National Association, founded in 1876 by Surendranath Banerjee and Ananda Mohan Bose. The Indian National Congress, founded later on December 28, 1885, merged with Indian National Association and Naoroji was elected as the Congress President in 1886.

Naoroji was once again elected as the President of the Indian National Congress in 1906 and while the party was split between moderates and extremists for some time, Naoroji remained a staunch moderate. He mentored prominent leaders of the Indian independence movement against the British rule. These included Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, one of the first and staunch advocates of Swaraj (self-rule) who was honoured with the title of “Lokmanya” meaning “accepted by the people (as their leader)”.

Death & Legacy

Remembered as the ‘Grand Old Man of Indian Nationalism,’ Naoroji breathed his last on June 30, 1917. Other members of his family who took forward his legacy in the Indian independence movement included his granddaughters Perin and Khrushedben among whom the latter was arrested with other freedom fighters in 1930 in a Government College in Ahmedabad for trying to hoist the Indian flag.

Many places including the Dadabhai Naoroji Road, in Mumbai; the central government servants residential colony, Naoroji Nagar, in south of Delhi, in India; the Dadabhai Naoroji Road in Karachi, Pakistan; and the Naoroji Street in the Finsbury section of London are named in his honour. A plaque is placed outside the Finsbury Town Hall on Rosebery Avenue, London, in commemoration of Naoroji.

The Dadabhai Naoroji Award was inaugurated in 2014 by the then Deputy Prime Minister of UK, Nick Clegg.

A stamp dedicated to Naoroji was also issued by India Post in Ahmedabad on December 29, 2017, marking the centenary year of his death.