#DadabhaiNaoroji

Dādābhāi Naorojī · 1825–1917

In the books · 1 chapter

Who this is

Literature — the first great Indian novelist, founding editor of Baṅgadarśan, India's first serious literary critic, and author of the hymn Vande Mātaram.

“The British government's own officer wrote the song the British government would later jail Indians for singing — and the song's afterlife, adopted, truncated, contested, and argued over to this day, is the history of India arguing with itself about what the nation is.”

— The Great Indians, Ch. 178

The big idea, in the book's words:

“A magistrate in the empire's own service invented the modern Indian novel in Bengali — and buried inside one of those novels a hymn to the motherland that outgrew the book, the author, and eventually the empire itself.”

— The Great Indians, Ch. 178