Dadabhai, briefly

When Parsiana asked historian Dinyar Patel for photographs of his visit to the letter writing room of the National Liberal Club in London where Dr Dadabhai Naoroji was "a fixture,” he said he overlooked taking any. Patel, who is writing a biography of Naoroji, remarked that the liberal thinker and politician "probably wrote a few 1,000 pages” at that Club.
In an interview with journalist Khorshed Deboo in The Hindu of July 14, 2017 about his 2016 publication Dadabhai Naoroji — Selected Private Papers edited by him jointly with S. R. Mehrotra (see "Dadabhai’s dossier,” Parsiana, June 21, 2017), Patel said "I couldn’t resist writing off a few letters from the same room, using the same stationery with the same letterhead.”
Naoroji’s English handwriting (pictured, pg 16) "was not too bad, actually…it was relatively easy to pick up, though his Gujarati handwriting still eludes me in places. His Hindi writing was impeccable,” he told Deboo. Letters that Naoroji wrote were very succinct, and came across as rather formulaic, according to the historian. This, according to Patel, is perhaps a hint of how busy he was. "Naoroji kept to a standard format and wrote as briefly as possible. His letters were not meant to be eloquent, quotable documents, such as Nehru’s — he simply wanted to get his point across,” he told Deboo. Even (Sir) Dinshaw Wacha, one of Naoroji’s closest confidantes, "acknowledged that he could only expect one brief letter from Naoroji in response to several long outward letters,” he added.
"His letters to (journalist, poet and social reformer Behramji) Malabari are very personal (Malabari referred to Naoroji as ‘Dad’), since Malabari was not only a working colleague, but someone who was close to Naoroji’s children and helped look after their affairs while Naoroji was in London,” according to Patel.
The Grand Old Man of India, Naoroji wrote in the typical late 19th century-style of English, where some words would be capitalized, such as "Election,” or "Campaign,” according to Patel. "Frequent abbreviations of first names, such as ‘Wm’ for ‘William’” occurred in the correspondence that Patel waded through for his tome. "People were referred to very formally, so (English civil servant) George Birdwood was always ‘Sir George’ in spite of the fact that they were very close friends,” he added. Naoroji "always signed off as ‘Your’s truly,’” shares Patel.
The Hindu interview was brought to Parsiana’s attention by Trichur based reader Dr Hirji Adenwalla.