What’s On at the AIIT

We hold regular public lectures at 5pm on Friday evenings during University term in addition to special events, conferences, workshops and occasional exhibitions. We also have an active Friends group. As part of the ‘family’, Friends are invited to special events, our traditional Summer Garden Party and other social functions, and are always welcome to visit the Trust.

Our next online lecture will be held via Zoom on Friday 4 December at 4pm (GMT):

Dinyar Patel, S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai

Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) was the first Indian nationalist, the first modern Indian leader of truly national standing, the first Asian elected to the British Parliament, the first person to put Indian nationalism in contact with other emancipatory movements around the world, and probably the first colonial subject to popularly articulate the evils of imperialism. It is impossible to imagine what the Indian nationalist movement, or even global anticolonialism, would have looked like without him. How did one person, born into relative poverty in Bombay, so thoroughly change the direction of India and the British Empire? This talk will examine how Naoroji came to articulate the concept of swaraj, which he established as the primary objective of the Indian National Congress in 1906. It will examine how the political and economic components of his thought were inextricably linked through a thoroughgoing concern for how British imperialism had reduced India to desperate poverty.

Dinyar Patel is a historian of modern India, focusing on Indian nationalism, the city of Bombay/Mumbai, and the Parsi Zoroastrian community. He is currently Assistant Professor of History at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) in Mumbai. Prior to joining SPJIMR, he was Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, where he received Fulbright and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. Patel earned his PhD in History from Harvard University in 2015 and his BA in International Relations from Stanford University in 2004. His first book, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, was published by Harvard University Press and HarperCollins India in May 2020.

Register for this lecture

Allchin Symposium on South Asian Archaeology

This year’s Allchin Symposium will be held online on Saturday 5 December. Further details and how to register.

You can watch our online lecture given by Joe Cribb on 30 October 2020 here.