Madhusudan_Das

24 Madhusudan Das :
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MADHUSUDAN: CREATOR OF
MODERN ORISSA
BISWANATH DAS.
The late lamented Madhusudan Das will always go to history
as the renovator of Orissa. Orissa of the present day is far different
from Orissa when Madhusudan entered the arena of politics. It was
a time when she was in the deepest depth of miseries and was about
to lose her identity and her language. A school of thought sprang
in Bengal under the leadership of Kantichandra Bhattacharyya
propagating the theory that Oriya is the daughter language of Bengalee
and as such Bengalee be substituted for Oriya as the language of the
people in all schools and Courts and public documents. It was a time
when Madhusudan with a set of young men like Fakeermohan and
Pyarimohan appeared in the political horizon to save the identity of
Oriyas who were the last in India to lose their independence and were
the first to be crushed under the heels of British rule. Madhusudan
thus began his life as the saviour of Oriya language and culture and
devoted himself for the uplift of his people. His God and country were
the sole object of his thought till he breathed his last breath.
Like Surendranath, Tilak, Ranade, Ajodhyanath, he was the
•creator of Modern Orissa and has to his credit a number of youthful
self-sacrificing disciples pledged to devote to the service of the
motherland like the late lamented Gopabandhu Das and Abhiram
Bhunj of sacred memory. A politician and a patriot, he realised the
necessity of greater Orissa as a distinct unit in the Indian firmament
and inaugurated the Utkal Union Conference and thereafter the
movement for a separate Orissa Province. It was given to him to see
the fruition of his labours of past 40 years, before his death. The name
of Madhusudan, his help, sympathy and cooperation, active or passive,
will be found in the pages of the history of every institution that has
sprung up in Orissa during the past 50 years calculated to increase
the wealth or enhance the prestige of Orissa. He was a pioneer in
the field of industry and was the first to call for Praja Sabha (peasant's