Madhusudan_Das

104 Madhusudan Das :
APPENDIX : 5
UTKALGOURAB MADHUSUDAN
SWAMI BICHITRANDANDA DAS
Madhu Babu of Oriya people, known to the outside world as
Mr. MADHUSUDAN DAS, as the maker of modern Orissa. Rightly
he is called the Utkal Gaurab - the pride of Utkal. In those dark
days of Orissa, he kindled the spirit of national consciousness among
the youths of Orissa in the last decades of the 19th and the first quarter
of this 20th Century.
Orissa was conquered by the British Rulers from different
directions from the North, South, North and West ; and according
to the sweet will of the then Masters the East India Company, Orissa
was included in portions to the neighbouring provinces of Bengal,
Bihar and Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and former Madras (Andhra State).
The Oriyas were a fighting race and a cultured and religious people
and they stood aloof from the western contact. They warded off the
Mohammedan invaders till 1568. Orissa came under British Rule in
1803. They raised a rebellion in 1817 called the Paik Rebellion of
Orissa by the British historians. The class Hindus did not take the
western education. The country was looked upon as the pasture ground
by the Civil Servants recruited from Bengal who formed as it were
an intermediary Ruling race in Orissa. The British Masters did not
look to the well-being of the people and as a result the Zamindaries
of Orissa were sold away for pittances at Calcutta under the Sunset
law ( The revenue law of old Bengal ) and the upper middle classes
of Orissa thus became reduced to a class of landless wanderers. The
clerks and other officers of Bengal became the land-holders. There
was no attempt on the part of the rulers to redress the sufferings of
the people. They remained satisfied with collections of land rent and
taxes and unlike England and other western countries, land revenue
formed the main source of income to the Pathan rulers from 1568
to 1803 and to the Britishers there after. This cruel apathy of the
ruling classes brought the Oriyas to the lowest ebb of their existence.
In forced distress and poverty, the Oriyas remained proud like the