DADABHOY NAOROJI distinctive value of Naoroji's services to India arises from the fact of his membership of the Parsee community, which though commercially enter prising, has assumed, from time to time, an attitude of aloofness from Indian political demands. Nor is this greatly to be wondered at. Ever since their escape from Persia, owing to bitter religious perse cutions, the Parsees have discovered in the stability of the British Government and in its policy of religious neutrality, a guarantee of success in com merce and of tolerance in matters of religion. And throughout their domicile in India as British subjects their extreme religious conservatism, habits of social exclusiveness and the profession of an alien faith, that with all its beautiful teachings has not much surface kinship with either Hinduism or IslAm, has tended to drive them apart from the two great sister communities in India. It is quite probable, further, that intensive specialisation in business and commer cial activities has, in the community as such, atrophied the political fervour which springs from altruistic idealism.
But though the community as such has so far failed to evolve a political organisation, and to declare the harmony of its ideals with those of the more progres sive ones, yet it has contributed to the National cause in India, men of outstanding intellectual vigour and political enthusiasm. Names like those of the late Sir Pheroz Shah Mehta, of Sir Dinshaw Edulji Wacha and of B. P. Wadia, of the Home Rule for India League, are names to conjure with in political India. And we may in passing just casually mention that India's gratitude for Mr. B. P. Wadia's services has been greatly enhanced by his internment, some months ago, for his strenuous activities in connection with Mrs. Annie Besant's recently launched Home Rule propaganda.
Among the Nation-builders which this community has produced, Dadabhai Naoroji stands head and shoulders above the most enlightened and patriotic of his countrymen. It is to his lasting credit that during his Presidential Address at the Indian National Congress at Calcutta in 1907, he for the first time formulated and expressed the ideal of Home Rule, an ideal which till then was quite alien to the constitutional schemes adopted.
He tells us of his earlier experiences at school, when it was a matter of comparative indifference to his teachers what the boys did with their time or studies. In fact, the two English teachers of the School in Bombay which Naoroji attended had quite enough on hand by way of composing their own differences, to discourage their " haymaking " or playing truant. But in spite of this lax discipline, Naoroji
would always manage to come out " top " and with a naive, almost childish, simplicity, he tells us of how he would get the plaudits of the crowd, while repeating aloud the long multiplication tables, in those days a favourite exercise in mental gymnastics, or while marching in procession or attending social gatherings, in his brilliant, gold embroidered gala dress. Some of these school-time memories stood out so vividly in his mind that when in 1893, he formed one of the Deputation of the Imperial Institute that was to wait on Queen Victoria, he was at once reminded of the associations of early manhood in Bombay.
From very early years, Naoroji formed habits of temperance and sobriety and till the day of his death was a staunch supporter of the Anglo-Indian Temperance propaganda. A very trifling incident determined his conversion to teetotalism. It was the constant practice in his home that they should take some wine before the evening meal commenced. One evening, the supply of wine ran out and Dadabhoy's mother sent the boy round the corner, to fetch some from the nearest " pub." The boy felt so abashed and humiliated that he should enter a place which he regarded, in spite of his wine bibbing habits, as disreputable, that he solemnly resolved never to touch the " accursed drink ! " His mother's influence, likewise, helped him in acquiring habits of chaste and refined speech, when he was quite a little boy, and he had a horror of hearing profane language used by schoolfellows and others, always reminding them, whenever occasion arose, that their improper language " would return unto them." This in itself may sound rather prosaic, since the acquiring of this habit is encour aged in all decent homes, being considered an essential preliminary to good upbringing. But in Naoroji's case his habits of temperate speech left an imprimatur on all his political utterances, later in life, so that we shall look in vain, had we time enough to ransack his voluminous speeches, for a single outburst of uncontrolled emotion, or irrita bility in temper. The gentlemanly instincts early ingrained in his character, seldom forsook him during the fiery ordeals of later life ; and in Naoroji's case it has been a militant life throughout ; fighting now for the spread of education in his country ;* now for the brushing aside of racial and political discriminations ; and then again for the inauguration of a policy of conciliation and trust.