External Event - ZTFE Webinar: Dr Dinyar Patel on Dadabhai Naoroji
27 January 2022
Dr Dinyar Patel - Dadabhai Naoroji: Zoroastrian Leader, Indian Patriot, British MP, Global Anti-Imperialist
Second webinar in the ZTFE series 'The Zoroastrian Legacy'
Sunday 30th January, 2:30 pm GMT
Join via Zoom (Meeting ID: 882 4209 4191, Passcode: 575390)
The Zoroastrian Legacy is a global webinar series led by the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe in collaboration with Zoroastrians.net.
About the Speaker:
Dinyar Patel is Assistant Professor of History at the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai. Prior to this, he was Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of 'Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism' (Harvard University Press, 2020). Patel has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Overview of the Talk:
Dadabhai Naoroji: Zoroastrian Leader, Indian Patriot, British MP, Global Anti-Imperialist
Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) was a uniquely global pioneer. He was the first Indian nationalist, the first modern Indian leader of truly national standing, the first Asian to serve in the British Parliament, the first person to put Indian nationalism in contact with other emancipatory movements around the world, and probably the first colonial subject to popularly articulate the evils of imperialism. It is impossible to imagine what the Indian nationalist movement, or even global anticolonialism, would have looked like without him. How did one person, born into relative poverty in Bombay, so thoroughly change the direction of India and the British Empire?
This talk will examine Naoroji’s multiple avatars as an Indian proponent of swaraj, an MP for Central Finsbury in London, and an anti-imperialist in touch with political struggles across Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe. It will examine how the political and economic components of his thought were inextricably linked through a thoroughgoing concern for how British imperialism had reduced India to desperate poverty.
Additionally, this talk will explore Naoroji’s leadership within the global Zoroastrian community. His community-related activities spanned three different countries. In India, Naoroji played a pioneering role in Parsi social and religious reform, especially regarding women’s equality. In the United Kingdom, Naoroji helped lay the foundations of the British Zoroastrian community, giving it an institutional basis (the modern-day Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe), mentoring new arrivals from India, and educating the British public about Zoroastrianism. Finally, Dadabhai Naoroji maintained a lifelong interest in the affairs of the Iranian Zoroastrian community.
Join via Zoom (Meeting ID: 882 4209 4191, Passcode: 575390)