Geometry

Book release: “DADABHAI NAOROJI Selected Private Papers”: A book which gives you deeper insight into the life of Great Nationalist

Rajani Kumar Patnaik V
Intern Content Writer
Sagar Media, Sagar News Post
5 August 2016

                     Dadabhai Naoroji who is popularly known as Grand Old Man of India put forward his theory “Drain of wealth” in his book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India in 1901 which brought attention to the draining of India's wealth into Britain. Through his work with economics, Naoroji sought to prove that Britain was draining money out of India. He estimated a 200–300 million pounds loss of revenue to Britain that is not returned. Naoroji described this as vampirism, with money being a metaphor for blood, which humanised India and attempted to show Britain's actions as monstrous in an attempt to garner sympathy for the nationalist movement. He argued that India is getting poorer every year due to British rule and so India must get self rule. 

                     This book titled “DADABHAI NAOROJI Selected Private Papers” is edited by S.R.Mehrotra and Dinyar Patel. The book is launched by Pankaj Rag, Director General of National Archives of India on Friday 5 august at National Archives of India, New Delhi. In the year 2010 National Archives of India started PPP model to study various prominent archives. This book is the first outcome of it and is presented by Oxford University Press in collaboration with National Archives of India

                       In his public life spanning over six decades, Naoroji amassed a voluminous correspondence. While, unfortunately, most of the letters that Naoroji wrote no longer survive, his archival collection contains thousands of letters from political leaders and intellectuals in India, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. This volume includes correspondence with, among others, Behramji M.Malabari, a prominent social reformer; Henry M.Hyndman, founder of the first British socialist party; and William Wedderburn, an early Indian Nationalist colleague. The editor tells that National Archives of India itself has more than twenty thousand documents on Dadabhai Naoroji. 

 

                       Editor of the book Sri. Dinyar Patel while speaking about the book described Dadabhai Naoroji as Renaissance individual. He acclaimed different roles played by Naoroji as a mathematics professor, economics thinker, political nationalist, religious, and industrialist. This correspondence contains letters from individuals in politics of Great Britan and letters from Indians like P.C.Roy, economic affairs, need for Indian self government, requests for loans, request to police in London to get an Indian out of jail and lots of different roles. Naoroji worked closely with people whom we have not known. This book reads along the set of new findings which are not directly found in contemporary books. 

                      This book is a great asset for those who would like to dig into the history of India. Progressive thinking of one of the earliest nationalist is elucidated in it. As Dadabhai Naoroji is involved in various fields’ right from mathematics to politics, it gives us a great insight of the Grand Old Man of India.