English Heritage, a charity society, will honour Dadabhai Naoroji’s home at 72, Anerley Park in London. He was the first Asian elected as an MP in Britain’s Parliament. Before this, Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi were honoured with the Blue Plaque
English Heritage, a charity society, will honour Dadabhai Naoroji’s home at 72, Anerley Park in London. Image courtesy: @DinyarPatel/ Twitter
Dadabhai Naoroji’s London home will get a ‘Blue Plaque’, an honour that is reserved for notable personalities who have lived and worked in London.
Naoroji was the first Asian who was elected as a Member of Parliament in Britain.
English Heritage, a charity society, will honour Dadabhai Naoroji’s home at 72, Anerley Park in London. He lived in this house from 1895 to 1904, according to The Print.
Apart from being the first Asian to be a part of the House of Commons, Naoroji was an important leader before Mahatma Gandhi’s rise in the freedom struggle.
Dinyar Patel, an author who wrote Dadabhai Naoroji’s biography, said that the plaque would go up later this month.
Let’s take a closer look at the history of the Blue Plaque and Naoroji’s contribution as an MP in Britain.
History behind the Blue Plaque
In 1863, MP William Ewart of the House of Commons introduced the idea of a commemorative plaque scheme. Three years later, the Society of Arts adopted the scheme.
In 1867, the organisation erected two plaques – one commemorated poet Lord Byron at his birthplace at 24 Holles Street at Cavendish Square and the other one honoured Napoleon III on King Street, Westminster.
The latter is the oldest plaque to survive.
Society of Arts looked after the scheme for 35 years. During this time, they erected 35 plaques including those put up for poet John Keats, novelist William Makepeace Thackeray and MP Edmund Burke.
In the beginning of the 20th Century, London County Council (LCC) took over the plaque scheme and introduced a more formal selection criterion. They named the scheme as the ‘Indication of House of Historical Interest in London’.
The LCC played around with the plaque’s design by trying different colours and decorative schemes and by 1921 blue ceramic plaques had become standard. In 1938, an unnamed student from the Central School of Arts and Crafts suggested a modern and simplified blue plaque.
By 1986, English Heritage assumed charge of the scheme. Since then, English Heritage has erected over 360 plaques in more than 900 buildings in London.
Dadabhai Naoroji’s contribution as an MP
Dadabhai Naoroji was the first Asian to be in the British Parliament as a Liberal Party candidate from 1892 to 1895.
Naoroji laid the foundation of India’s freedom movement by organising India’s first political association, the Bombay Association.
He was also one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress.
Naoroji established his own cotton trading company called Dadabhai Naoroji & Co in 1859 three years after travelling to the UK, according to a report by The Print.
Following this, he established the East India Association in 1867 to fight discrimination against Asians in England. The organisation was then merged with the Indian National Association which eventually became the Indian National Congress in 1885.
In 1886, Naoroji lost an election as a Liberal Party candidate after the then British prime minister Lord Salisbury said that the English constituency was not ready to elect a “black man”.
During his political career at the British Parliament, Naoroji raised issues pertaining to Indians and also campaigned for India’s independence in the House of Commons.
Other Indians who received the Blue Plaque
The Blue Plaque was erected at the homes of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, Jawaharlal Nehru, and BR Ambedkar among others.
Between 1830 to 1831, Raja Ram Mohan Roy was sent to England by Mughal Emperor Akbar Shah II as his ambassador. He lived in the Bloomsbury neighbourhood in the London Borough of Camden. The Blue Plaque at Roy’s residence was erected in 1985.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi arrived in London from Gujarat as an 18-year-old in 1891. He stayed at Number 20 Baron’s Court Road in the Metropolitan Borough of Hammersmith, as per Scroll.
Gandhi’s house was commemorated with the Blue Plaque in 1986.
India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s home at 60 Elgin Crescent, Notting Hill received the Blue Plaque in 1989.
With inputs from agencies
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