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Dadabhai Naoroji was remembered for a second time in his death centenary year by the Zoroastrian All Party Parliamentary Group (the initiative of Lord Karan Bilimoria) and the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe (ZTFE). Keynote speakers Dr Vikram Visana, Dr Kusoom Vadgama and Daniel Hunt paid touching tributes to the Grand Old Man of India at the Committee Room 4 in the House of Lords in Westminster on March 22, 2018, according to details provided by ZTFE president Malcolm Deboo. The prior function, co-hosted with the History of Parliament Trust, Cobra and Tatas was held at Attlee Suite, Portcullis House on October 18, 2017 (see "Naoroji’s nerve,” Zoroastrians Abroad, Parsiana, January 21, 2018).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When celebrating anniversaries, we should acknowledge the positive contributions and the service to society rendered by these stalwarts, beseeched Vadgama who believed that Naoroji’s legacy should be perpetuated by British Indians by "being patriotic to both India and Great Britain. In Britain, he was always an Indian, something we must all learn. But most importantly, we are all equal citizens of the country and owe loyalty to the monarch… Naoroji was an active figure in public life for more than half a century, but his values and his example have been active for a whole century, an inspiration to all those who fight against prejudice and for equality,” stated Vadgama, a doctor of optometry, an independent researcher and author of books on the much neglected history of India during the Raj. She had served as co-chair of the Dadabhai Naoroji Parliamentary Centenary Committee with Zerbanoo Gifford and Lady Maureen Thomas in 1992.
In his maiden speech in the House of Commons in the UK, Naoroji had declared: "I stand here in the name of India to thank the British people that they have made it all possible for an Indian to occupy this position and to speak freely in the English language of any grievance which India may be suffering…” recalled Vadgama. Besides campaigning for Indian independence, he also supported the idea of pensions for the elderly, Irish Home Rule and the suffragette movement in their campaign for votes for women. "He was true to his belief of equality for women and the struggle against gender barriers,” she added. He helped establish the East India Association to combat the prevailing view that Indians were inferior. This Association subsequently merged with the Indian National Association and eventually raised its head as the Indian National Congress.
"Naoroji had an antipathy to state ownership and nationalization which was precisely the cause of the land and labor problems in India as he saw it,” observed Visana who completed his PhD from the University of Cambridge. His thesis is titled, "Liberalism, Imperial Citizenship and Indian Self Government in the Political Thought of Dadabhai Naoroji” which he is now converting into a book. Currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Freie Universitat Berlin, Visana added, "As such Naoroji’s membership and contributions to numerous London cooperative societies — purchasing everything from shoes, coats, hats and rugs exclusively from these organizations — signaled his radical liberal credentials more than anything else. And to return to the perennial Parsi concern of this period, Naoroji’s efforts were not for the sake of social justice in and of itself but as part and parcel of the Zoroastrian belief that sound commerce and a well-functioning civil society went hand in hand.” Dismissing the view of some Indian nationalists that Naoroji and his Zoroastrian colleagues "gave the British too much credit and because of their commercial and social intimacy with the British establishment…all they ever aspired to was to become a class of ‘brown Englishmen,” Visana opined. "To call Naoroji’s thought ‘derivative’ (derived from elsewhere) is to do a gross injustice to a deeply complex and locally formulated example of Zoroastrian and Parsi political thought that sought to change British politics from within and not just to ape it uncritically.”
Reiterated Hunt, a historian of the British Empire and a political consultant, "Naoroji — unlike Gandhi — was a constitutionalist which meant he participated in the imperial system, seeking to undermine it from within.” Naoroji was convinced, "The evil of the foreign rule involved the triple loss of wealth, wisdom and work. No wonder at India’s material and moral poverty!” Naoroji had dared to remark to the British rulers, "British interests, British wants, British purposes were met by the Indian taxpayer, without any equivalent reciprocity.” And then again he had declared, "You state that England made India. I say that India has made England the most powerful, the richest and the greatest country in the world.” Hunt further recalled Gandhi’s statement that had not "the Grand Old Man of India prepared the soil, our young men could not have even spoken about Home Rule.”