“History often rewards those who speak for the voiceless, even when their words are unwelcome.” Two hundred years after his birth, Dadabhai Naoroji continues to stand tall — not only as a nationalist icon but as a polymath, reformer, educator, and the moral compass of colonial India. Long before modern economists spoke of global inequality or colonial reparations, Naoroji had already articulated the moral and economic argument that British prosperity was being built upon India’s impoverishment. His famed Drain of Wealth Theory was not just a critique of imperial economics — it was a clarion call for national awakening, a political and intellectual spark that would later ignite India’s freedom movement. Born on September 4, 1825, into a modest Parsi family in Bombay, Naoroji’s life embodied the delicate balance between tradition and reform.

Married at the age of eleven, he still rose to become one of the first Indian professors at Elphinstone College, excelling in mathematics and defying the colonial bias that reserved academic chairs for Europeans.

His achievement was not merely a personal triumph; it was a symbolic challenge to the racial hierarchy of the Empire. But Naoroji’s brilliance was not confined to academia — he was a builder of institutions and a cultivator of public thought. In 1851, moved by social unrest and communal tension in Bombay, Naoroji founded the Gujarati fortnightly Rast Goftar (The Truth Teller). The publication became a voice for social reform, advocating for........

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