More than 20 years earlier a small band of Hindu students and thoughtful gentlemen used to meet secretly to discuss the effects of British rule in India. The home charges and the transfer of capital from India to England in various shapes, and the exclusion of the children of the country from any share or voice in the administration of their own country, formed the chief burden of their complaint.

As the theoretician of the "Drain Theory", he explained in his lecture delivered at the East Indian Association, London on 2 May 1867 in. Forerunners of Dadabhai Naoroji's Drain Theory. Jstor Organization. Retrieved on 3 December 2013.

Forerunners of Dadabhai Naoroji's Drain Theory