Madhusudan_Das

6 Madhusudan Das:
(2)
A BRIEF NOTE ON MADHUSUDAN
ACHARYA P. C. ROY
Mr. M. S. Das had many sided activities and there are many
competent authorities to speak about them; but I shall confine myself
to only one side of them viz. the one which has been the obsession of
my life.
The first time I came across him was some thirty years ago,
when I was invited by the then Director of Public Instruction
Mr. Archsdale Earle (afterwards Sir) to deliver a course of lectures
to Junior Teachers in Cuttack.
Mr. Das very kindly invited me to see his Art School and
I availed myself of the opportunity to see his well-known 'Orissa
Art Wares' which was then languishing for want of adequate
public support. He had organised a workshop where nearly 100
men were engaged in the craft, specially the delicate gold and
silver filigree works for which Cuttack was famous at one time.
Mr. Das seemed to wax eloquent over the possibilities of the
delicate arts which had been in vogue from time immemorial,
but for want of support was almost dead. He spent quite a
fortune out of his own purse for the resuscitation of the lost
glories.
The next time I met him was when I visited Cuttack in 1924,
as the President of the Utkal Provincial Congress Conference.
This time too Mr. Das invited me to visit his Utkal Tannery, which
he had established on about 40 acres of land near Cuttack Station,
and in which he had also invested a very considerable sum of
money of his own. Unfortunately he did not get much response
from local public. It is one of the drawbacks incidental to the
cause of Industry in this country that those who have been
foremost in starting industries have been as a rule (in Bengal and
Orissa) lawyers, doctors etc. The most essential thing requisite
in business affairs is previous training at an early age in them.
It has been found that in England as in America, some of the
foremost of businessmen and industrialists have risen from the ranks
who are innocent even of secondary education not to speak of