Songs in honor of Naoroji

Dinyar Patel, PhD candidate from the Department of History, Harvard University, whose research work centers on pioneering patriot Dadabhai Naoroji has discovered the lyrics of the songs sung in his honor at a concert in 1894. Naoroji had just returned from presiding at the 1893 Lahore Congress and in January of the following year Kaikhusru N. Kabraji organized the concert. Kabraji indulged in poetry (everyone did at the time) but he was best known for promoting music, his journalistic activities (Rast Goftar), encouraging female education and social reform, and (less noteworthy) his staunchly pro-British views. He was also very fond of suing people for defamation, Patel elaborates.

Dadabhai Naoroji: musical tribute

Kabraji not being one of Naoroji’s favorite people, the latter "tried to get Kabraji to nix the concert, but Kabraji insisted, and it went off,” Patel writes. The songs include numbers like Dadabhai Vijay and Dadabhaina Naamni Shobha. The researcher strongly feels that such songs need to be brought back into the musical mainstream, and wonders who could bring that off.
Patel also shares some nuggets about Naoroji’s early life. His father had wanted Naoroji to become a priest, but as he died when the boy was just five, the plans came to naught. Though Naoroji underwent the navar and maratab ceremonies, "his mother availed of an opportunity to enroll him in a free government sponsored school where he took to mathematics and eventually political economy, and the rest is history.”
There is an erroneous belief that Naoroji remained aloof from community matters, mentions Patel. He was in fact very closely involved in community affairs and had even arbitrated a dispute between the Sanjanas and Bhagarias in the 1880s. He was president of the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe from 1863 until either 1907 or 1908. He left England in September 1907, but Patel thinks he only resigned after he returned to India, so either later that year or early 1908. Naoroji edited Raft Goftar, which also focused on community issues for several years.