Madhusudan_Das

His Life and Achievements 149
or Brahmin Community. A few money-lenders may assemble in
their self-interest. Karans and Brahmins also meet together. There
is no limit or number of these assemblies. There are lists of
members of these other assemblies. But there is no fixity in number
or list of members of the Utkal Union Conference. The entire
Oriya people are its members. First it is necessary to forget that it
is a meeting of a company— it is a national assembly. It responds
to the national demand and it will satisfy the national needs. 6
In a message to the All-Orissa Students' Conference on September
28. 1927. he said:
The development of national consciousness should be the chief
object of these conferences. Our students should be taught to
distinguish between corporate bodies and a nation. When a
number of men form an organised body with a common object to
be accomplished, they form an association, a company, a
syndicate and even an unlawful assembly to commit an offence.
In such cases, they draw their inspiration from the common
object A nation cannot be organised. We do not know when a
nation was formed. A nation has its history which is a record of
the achievements of the ancestors of the present generation. You
cannot create a nation. The chief object of a national history is
the achievements of our ancestors. Each student must feel that
behind him stand his ancestors, before him are his progeny and
his object of life is to connect the past and the future so that the
result is a homogeneous whole. 7
This compares so well with Burke's ideal of the nation. In 1933, while
addressing a Leaders' Conference, he said. "Rouse the conciousness of
the nation. Lay your lives at the altar of my nation. Attain this position
and stand as one of my nation where it stood in the old days. Do not wish
ill of any nation. If you want to be leader of the nation, do not try to be at
the head". 8
In his presidential address to the Conference in 1913, he had
posed the question:
Have we a national life? National life is necessary for international
intercourse. We have individual lives. Individual life is shortlived,
it ends in the cremation ground. The soul inside the body
reaches God. My worldly cravings like my wife, my children, my
property always drag me downward. The attraction of divine life