Madhusudan_Das

His Life and Achievements: 33
life, from the Rajas and the Maharajas down to the street beggar, and
this very busy man never had a refusal for any one. A brilliant
conversationist it was a treat and a lesson to hear him talk. Probably
he was an encyclopaedia in himself he could talk and talk sensibly
and capture the imagination and sentiments for the people thatclustered
round him. On his table you could have seen the latest
publication about the political tangle of some country in a corner of
the World, the latest research on mental deficiency and also the effusion
of some obscure poet from a corner of Orissa. Hours and hours he
would pass in his study poring over books, pamphlets and magazines,
not to speak of his briefs.
The influence and power that he held in Orissa was tremendous,
and the following story will testify to it. When the Great War broke
out and the prices of things went up which affected the villagers along
with the townsmen, one day two rustics found their way to the house
of their beloved Madhu Babu and sought his audience. They were
brought to him and with folded hands these two men implored Madhu
Babu, their idol, to stop the war as they were feeling the pinch of
it. This was his influence over the mass twenty years before. He was
the people's Uncrowned King.
His many sided activities were a marvel and one wondered as to
how he could combine so many in him. He was the pioneer of the neoindustrial
move and gave an impetus to the tanning and silver filigree
work in Orissa. Scores of years he eulogised and exhorted the people to
take to the handloom and obtained same success. He was punctilious to
the degree as to the industrial output and would insist on the efficiency
and worth of the finished product. The writer has known of a case when
he destroyed finished leather worth more than Rs 500, simply because
it fell a little short of his test. He organised the tanning industry and his
Utkal Tannery was the byword for excellent goods twenty years back.
He knew the vast economic resources of Orissa, her forest wealth, and
he also knew the latent capacity of the people. The practical politician
that he was, he brought the two factors together and he should always
be regarded as the man who organised the industry on a scientific basis
in the recent times in Utkal. Nemesis was hard on him, but he invited
crash in his industrial activities because of his too high a standard, and
his punctilious honesty and probably a little lack of recognising some
practical factors of business. His Orissa Art Wares was more a museum