Madhusudan_Das

His Life and Achievements 205
volume and intensity. In their attempt to smoother this national
consciousness, the authorities are discarding the teachings
of history and are ignoring the spirits of human nature. A
nation may be annihilated and with it will die its national
consciousness. The Oriya sees the present linked with the
past. He sees a descendant of the Hindu Kings of Orissa a
Supervisor over the management of the temple built and
maintained by the ancient kings of Orissa. He knows that
this temple is a sacred attraction to the immense population
of Hindu India. Every horoscope of Orissa, every almanac
in the Oriya language, uses the era of the Hindu Kings. As
soon as a child is born, his nativity is cast and his horoscope
is written out. In after years when the child grows up to be a
man he refers to that horoscope to know the events of his
future life, to know when to expect death and to know whom
he ought to marry. The life of each individual in this nation
is linked as it were to the life of descendant of a Hindu King
of Orissa. In this fact alone the thoughtful observer will see
a perennial spring of national consciousness.
It was an unfortunate circumstance for Orissa that during the
time the Odonnel Committee held its enquiry in 1931-32 for fixation
of boundary of Orissa, the Congress Organisation in Orissa did not
take part, for its alleged All-India involvement. Utkal-Gourab was
too old, though he consented to be a member of the Administrative
Committee. But this void was miraculously filled up by the farsighted
Pandit Godabaris Misra, who though remaining always a nationalist
revolutionary as far as the struggle with the foreign imperialism is
concerned, did not shirk his impending duty to see through the process
of Orissa being declared as Province in 1936 and to formally achieve
cultural identity of the Ex-States of Orissa with Orissa by establishing
the Utkal University as early as in 1943 long before the question of
merger of States and redistribution of boundaries was mooted in All-
India basis in 1949 and 1955. He could not ignore the Jharkhand
movement in the North and the Kosala movement in the North-East.
What would have been the fate of Oriya unification movement
in me cauldron of official merger move of Native State in 1948-49 or