No, really, 1892, for Central Finsbury
Passed across my radar this week the information that there is a recently published biography of Dadabhai Naoroji, first ever Indian MP in the British Parliament and founder of the Indian National Congress. (Harvard UP's site apprears to be a bit weird at the moment and returning error messages quite generally?)
Elected in 1892, for the London constituency of Central Finsbury. As a Zoroastrian from the Parsi minority, he was sworn in on the Khordeh Avesta (though I'd thought that since the affair of atheist Charles Bradlaugh affirming was a thing anyway?).
He seems to have been an all-round good guy: 'forging links with socialists, Irish home rulers, suffragists, and critics of empire.... strengthened his ties with British and European socialists, reached out to American anti-imperialists and Progressives'.
We may note, from his Wikipedia entry, in contradiction of 'men of their day' claims: In 1867 he also helped to establish the East India Association, one of the predecessor organisations of the Indian National Congress with the aim of putting across the Indian point of view before the British public. The Association was instrumental in counter-acting the propaganda by the Ethnological Society of London which, in its session in 1866, had tried to prove the inferiority of the Asians to the Europeans. This Association soon won the support of eminent Englishmen and was able to exercise considerable influence in the British Parliament.
The Open University Making Britain: discover how South Asians shaped the nation 1870-1950 database notes some very impressive and startling connections: Syed Ameer Ali, John Archer , Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree, W. C. Bonnerjee, Charles Bradlaugh, Josephine Butler, Madame Bhikaiji Cama, William Digby, Lalmohan Ghose, H. M. Hyndman, Mohammed Ali Jinnah (helped out in campaign), Frank Hugh O'Donnell, Elizabeth Adelaide Manning, Florence Nightingale, Badruddin Tyabji, Alfred Webb, William Wedderburn, Henry Sylvester Wiliams
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