Madhusudan_Das

106 Madhusudan Das :
(Amladom) of Bengal. Thus his mind received a rude shock, when
his friends of Bengal stood against the recognition of Oriya language
in the Calcutta University in 1902. So he decided that the Oriyas must
keep alive their separate culture, language and must not lose their
identity. In 1903 when Sri Surendranath Banerji organised the Bengal
Provincial Conference, Madhusudan started the Utkal Union
Conference which was joined by all classes of people from the prince
to the peasant under the Presidentship of the enlightened Maharaja
Sri Ram Chandra Bhanja Deo of Mayurbhanj and declared solemnly
the object for which it stood. It is to reunite the Oriyas living under
different administrations and bring them under one administration to
develop the agriculture, trade and the industries of Utkal and to develop
the culture of the people by the spread of education and literature
and to unify them into one autonomous province of India. In the
Conference the great portrait of Bharat Mata was hung and the Bharat
Mata national Song was sung.
The great Madhusudan addressed these national gatherings and
adjured the youths to live for others, to live a life dedicated to the
benefit of others and for the wider nation. He saw that the revival
of Utkal lay in the people's imbibing their national consciousness and
reawakening and recalling the ancient glory of Utkal and of this
historic nation and in developing the economic conditions of the people
in following the old traditional arts and industries which were peculiar
to the genius of the Oriya people and he urged the people to persist
in their endeavours. He emphasised usefulness of the cottage industries,
the formation of the Joint Stock Companies and Co-Operative
Industries as early as 1903. He himself started the Orissa Art Wares
in 1898 to encourage the filigree workers to help thousands of
goldsmiths to live and he started the famous Utkal Tannery for the
landless untouchables and his tanned and finished lizard skins and
his boots were highly avlued abroad. The Industry fed hundreds of
people who were engaged in processing lizard skins, crocodile skins
and serpent skins. Really he lived much ahead of the time. He was
50 years ahead of his countrymen but the people did not take up the
spirit of industrial life and did not like to develop the particular
national genius of theirs but tried to seek service for making both
ends meet. Even so early in 1903 he introduced Arat (Charka) the