Madhusudan_Das

His Life and Achievements 209
where flood and famine ruled, where industry did not grow, where the
lamp of education did not burn.
Such was the dismal state of affairs staring the youngman who
later on came to be known as Utkal-Gourab Madhusudan. Coming from
a family of ruined aristocracy he had in him the pride of cultural heritage
and determination to resurrect Utkal from her grave. Right from his
school days he keenly felt the indignity he had to share as one belonging
to me tribe called the Ude. In Calcutta where he went to pursue higher
education, things were no better for himself or for his tribe. This perhaps
drove him to put on the robbes of Christianity as a shield against the
onslaught of malignity he faced wherever he moved. To prove that the
Oriyas were culturally as developed as their Bengali landlords, he took
to teachership. The Bengali youth aspiring for an Entrance certificate
had to go in for 'Madhu Uder grammar'. He established his intellectual
superiority amongst the very people who wanted to spit on his tribe so
much so that he was sought for to train the Royal Bengal Tiger :
'Ashutosh'. He found it impossible to serve his great end without an
independent profession. He took to law and joined the bar of High
Court at Fort William. In spite of brilliant prospects for building a
career, he left it and came to Cuttack to revitalise Orissa from its nerve
centre.
The struggle before him was identically the same as decades
after Mahatma Gandhi carried on in South Africa — to win human
rights and dignity from people who deny them to others. Both the leaders
had to face similar situations. Madhusudan was denied a seat in the
Bar Associations of Cuttack by his colleagues as he came of people
who had been condemned as "cooks ad coolies"; his briefs were thrown,
cut, just as bag and baggages of Mahatma Gandhi were thrown out of
the railway compartment which a European occupied. In no time he far
excelled, in legal acumen, the people who scoffed at him. Yet his
preoccupation was not law but Resurrection and Renaissance of Utkal.
He had taken to the legal profession to sustain him in his work in fields
of activity that lay beyond the narrow precincts.
He organised Utkal Sammelan and brought the Oriya speaking
tracts under a platform to demand a separate province for the people
and recognition of Orissa as a linguistic and cultural unit. The authorities