Dinyar Patel is Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. He has written for BBC News and the New York Times, among other publications
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;line-height:18.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";color:#212121;letter-spacing:-.15pt">The definitive biography of Dadabhai Naoroji, the nineteenth-century activist who founded the Indian National Congress, was the first British MP of Indian origin, and inspired Gandhi and Nehru. Mahatma Gandhi called Dadabhai Naoroji the father of the nation, a title that today is reserved for Gandhi himself. Dinyar Patel examines the extraordinary life of this foundational figure in Indias modern political history, a devastating critic of British colonialism who served in Parliament as the first-ever Indian MP, forged ties with anti-imperialists around the world, and established self-rule or swaraj as Indias objective. Naorojis political career evolved in three distinct phases. He began as the activist who formulated the drain of wealth theory, which held the British Raj responsible for Indias crippling poverty and devastating famines.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
