Madhusudan_Das

His Life and Achievements: 105
Scots or the Rajputs and never gave up their culture. Their economic
conditions became worse when their trades were gone and their salt
manufacture on the long coastal line abolished, to satisfy the greed
of Liverpool people. There was darkness and despair all around !
Madhusudan was born in 1848 and though Orissa was conquered
in 1803, there was not even a College established in Orissa and there
was only a High School at Cuttack under a Head Master who had
just passed the Entrance Examination. Madhusudan passed the
Entrance Examination in 1864 and had to leave for Calcutta to join
some College.
A scion of a noble family, then in straitened circumstances, but
which had endowed temples and monasteries, found in the town life
the cold neglect from all. He joined Calcutta College and completed
his MA. and Law. He was a brilliant scholar and an able speaker.
In fact in those days he ranked among the three great public men
of Calcutta : Sri Surendra Nath Bannerji, Sri Kalibhusan Chakravarty
and Sri Madhusudan Das.
The terrible famine of 1866 which decimated 10 lacs of Oriyas
afflicted his mind. Although rice was sold at 5 seers per rupee, for
want of facilities of roads and communications and the neglect of the
Bengal Government there was a heavy toll on the lives of the Oriyas
. The abolition of Salt manufacture on which the coastal people
depended worsened the position. Madhusudan joined the Calcutta High
Court Bar in 1877 but decided to come to Orissa to serve his country
and to work for his people. He was a highly intellectual and sensitive
mind which suffered poignancy of sorrow at the distressful condition
of Orissa. He remembered the greatness of the Oriyas in the past,
how heroically they fought and how they plied trade with Sumatra,
Java, Bali Dwipa ( at present forming parts of Indonesia ) and he
called them to arise and awake and reminded them of the ancient
glory of Utkal and roused them to their national consciousness. It is
he who kindled the first sense of the nationalism in the hearts of
the youths and people and rightly he is called the father of nationalism
among the Oriyas and thus dawned the consciousness of nationalism
among them in the modern sense of the term.
He was smarting under the policy of divide and rule of the
British Rulers and upon the selfish spirit of the class of civil servants