Madhusudan_Das

X
THE REVIVAL OF ORIYA NATIONAL IDENTITY
AND UTKAL-GOURAB MADHUSUDAN
BIMALKRISHNA PAL
The mutual interdependence between culture and liberation had
assumed great national and international importance in the nineteenth
and first decades of the twentieth century due to the resistance of
militarily weaker nations against the aggressions of colonial powers.
Just in the modern warfare, the marching army is supported by an
umbrella of air force, foreign aggression wave their cultural counterpart
in the form of foreign missionaries, foreign literature, language,
art, culture, dress, food and manners; calculated to denationalise and
demoralise the would-be conquered people, so that in the process of
subjugation, the agony of subjugation would loose its teeth under the
cover of consolation of greater identity, with the conqueror and his
mode of life. In India, great Indian leaders of the nineteenth and
twentieth century, therefore, utilised the revival of ancient Indian
Culture, Philosophy, Mythology, Traditions, Costumes, Rituals, Manners
and even the traditional dress of the people as a preparation for the
continued political struggle against the foreign domination. Such a
strategy has now received international recognition and has been
reduced to fixed strategic principles.
The great South African native leader Alexia Guma in his thesis
Culture and Liberation (1976) describes the theory of resistance
against foreign colonial powers in these words :
Essential feature of colonisation is the destruction of a
people's identity On a subject people, colonial domination
may be imposed by way of suppressing traditional ways of
living and the riding together with introduction of alien ideas
and values.
Another great South African international leader Axilcan Cabral
in his thesis submitted to the UNESCO in 1976 amplifies the subject as
follows :