Madhusudan_Das

His Life and Achievements: 51
Mr. Das ready to listen with sympathy and attention to the views which
I or other officers, with whom he was brought in contact, put forward,
and if we were successful in solving his doubts and removing his
difficulties he would be ready to reconsider his opinion and support
proposals which he had previously condemned. Work in such an
atmosphere of friendly cooperation cannot but be pleasant. Mr. Das
has often been good enough to express his appreciation of such services
as I was able to render him when he held the office of Minister. I
am glad to have this opportunity of reciprocating that appreciation
and of paying a tribute to one whom I always regarded as a personal
friend— and of giving some indication, inadequate though it may be,
of the services which he rendered to his country and his province
during the period for which he held the office of Minister. I have
not referred to other periods of his long life or to his other numerous
activities. During the whole of that long life, he devoted himself to
raising the status of his native land of Orissa and to improving the
position of his fellow countrymen. Though he did not live to see the
actual inauguration of the new province of Orissa, yet it must have
been a great satisfaction to him before he died to know that the ideal,
for which he had striven so long and so earnestly, was about to be
realised and that Orissa was to become one of the units of the great
Indian Federation.
• • •
(2)
MY OLDEST INDIAN FRIEND
HUGH MACPHERSON
With the exception of Mr. Jnanendra Nath Gupta, I.C.S., Bengal,
whom I knew in my Oxford days, the late Mr. Madhusudan Das was
my oldest Indian friend. I made his acquaintance soon after I joined
my first appointment as Assistant Magistrate of Cuttack in December,
1891. It was characteristic of, his sturdy independence of mind that
early in his life he had embraced Christianity in the face of much
opposition and persecution from his Hindu relations and friends. As
an Indian Christian lawyer with a large practice at the local Bar, he