1) Dadabhai Naoroji's major contribution to the Indian nationalist movement was his book Poverty and Un-Bntish Rule of the British in India (1901). In this book, he put forward the concept of 'drain of wealth'.
2) He stated that in any country the tax raised would have been spent for the wellbeing of the people of that country.
3) But in British India, taxes collected in India were spent for the welfare of England Naoroji argued that India had exported an average of 13 million pounds worth of goods to Britain each year from 1835 to 1872 with no corresponding return.
4) The goods were in lieu of payments for profits to Company shareholders living in Britain, guaranteed interest to investors in railways, pensions to retired officials and generals, interest for the money borrowed from England to meet war expenses for the British conquest of territories in India as well as outside India
5) All these, going in the name of Home Charges, Naoroji asserted, made up a loss of 30 million pounds a year.

1) In 1815, the Governor of Madras received a communication from the Governor of Ceylon asking for "coolies" to work on the coffee plantations.
2) The Madras Governor forwarded this letter to the collector of Thanjavur, who reported that the people were very much attached to the soil and unless some incentive was provided it was not easy to make them move out of their native soil.
3) But the outbreak of two famines (1833 and 1843) forced the people, without any prompting from the government, to leave for Ceylon to work as coolies in coffee and tea plantations under the indentured labour system.

G. Subramaniam, Viraraghavachari, Ananda Charlu, Rangiah, Balaji Rao and Salem Ramaswamy.

1) The introduction of plantation crops such as coffee, tea and sugar in Empire colonies such as Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Mauritius, Fiji, Malaya, the Caribbean islands, and South Africa required enormous labour.
2) The abolition of slavery in British India in 1843 also facilitated the processes of emigration to Empire colonies. In 1837 the number of immigrant Tamil labourers employed in Ceylon coffee estate was estimated at 10,000.
3) The industry developed rapidly and so did the demand for Tamil labour.
4) In 1846 its presence was estimated at 80,000 and in 1855 at 128,000 persons. In 1877, the famine year, there were nearly 380,000 Tamil labourers in Ceylon.

1) The introduction of printing press in India was an event of great significance. It helped people to spread, modem ideas of self-government, democracy, civil rights and industrialisation.
2) The press became the critic of politics. It addressed the people on several issues affecting the country.
3) Raja Rammohan Roy's Sam bad Kaumudi (1821) in Bengali and Mirat-Ul-Akbar (1822) in Persian played a progressive role in educating the people on issues of public importance.
4) Later on a number of nationalist and vernacular news papers came to be launched to build public opinion and they did yeomen service in fostering nationalist consciousness.
5) Among them Amrit Bazaar Patrika, The Bombay Chronicle, The Tribune, The Indian Mirror, The Hindu and Swadesamitran were prominent.

1) The MNA petition was discussed in the Parliament in March 1853. H.D. Seymour, Chairman of the Indian Reform Society, came to Madras in October 1853.
2) He visited places like Guntur, Cuddalore, Tiruchirappalli, Salem and Tirunelveli.
3) However, as the Charter Act of 1853 allowed British East India Company to continue its rule in India, the MNA organised an agitation for the transfer of British territories in India to the direct control of the Crown.
4) MNA sent its second petition to British Parliament, signed by fourteen thousand individuals, pleading the termination of Company rule in India.

1) The colonial government aided the spread of modem education in India for a different reason than educating and empowering the Indians.
2) With this aim, the English Education Act was passed by the Council of India in 1855. T.B. Macaulay drafted this system of education introduced in India,
3) Consequently, the colonial administration started schools, colleges and universities, imparting English and modem education, in India.
4) Universities were established in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta in 1857.
5) The colonial government expected this section of educated Indians to be loyal to the British and act as the pillars of the British Raj.
6) The British created an educated Indian middle class for their own ends but sneered at it as the Babu class.
7) That every class, however, became the progressive intelligentsia of India and played a leading role in mobilising the people for the liberation of the country.