Dadabhai Naoroji

Naoroji made the economic case first. His "drain theory", set out in Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901), calculated how pensions, salaries, interest and profits flowed from India to Britain each year, arguing that colonial rule impoverished the country it claimed to improve. Elected MP for Finsbury Central in 1892, the first Asian in the Commons, he still sought self-government within the empire, a moderation later nationalists rejected.