Overview
This chapter studies the growth of Odia nationalism in the nineteenth century, the movement by which the Odia-speaking people, scattered under three provincial governments and threatened with the loss of their own language, came to think of themselves as one people entitled to one province. It begins with the British conquest of 1803 and the dismemberment that followed, when Cuttack, Puri and Balasore went to Bengal, Ganjam to Madras and Sambalpur to the Central Provinces. It then examines the forces that awakened the Odia people: the Paika Rebellion of 1817, the terrible famine of 1866 that killed a third of the population, the coming of English education through Ravenshaw College and the printing press, and above all the Odia language movement, in which the claim of some Bengali officials and teachers that Odia was not a separate language but a dialect of Bengali was answered by Fakir Mohan Senapati, Gourishankar Ray, Radhanath Ray, Madhusudan Rao and the newspaper Utkal Dipika. The chapter follows the language struggle in Sambalpur, where Hindi was imposed in 1895 and Odia restored in 1903, and in Ganjam, where Telugu pressed on Odia; the rise of the Odia press and modern literature; the early associations such as the Utkal Sabha and the Ganjam Utkal Sammilani; and the leadership of Madhusudan Das, whose work culminated in the Utkal Sammilani of 1903, the subject of the next chapter.
Learning Objectives
- Describe how the Odia-speaking areas came to be divided among the Bengal, Madras and Central Provinces administrations after 1803.
- Explain the significance of the Paika Rebellion of 1817 as an early expression of Odia resistance.
- Analyse the causes and effects of the Na Anka famine of 1866 on Odia consciousness.
- Explain the role of English education, Ravenshaw College and the printing press in awakening the Odia people.
- Narrate the Odia language controversy of the 1860s and 1870s and the defence of the language by Odia writers.
- Describe the language movements in Sambalpur and Ganjam and their outcome.
- Assess the contribution of the Odia press and of the writers of the Odia renaissance to Odia nationalism.
- Explain the role of the early associations and of Madhusudan Das in uniting the Odia people before 1903.
Topics in this chapter
12 topics · tap a topic title to jump straight to it.
The British conquest and the dismemberment of Odisha
Odisha lost its independence in 1568, when the last Hindu king Mukunda Deva was defeated by the Afghans of Bengal, and thereafter it passed to the Mughals in 1592 and to the Marathas of Nagpur in 1751. The British conquered it in 1803, during the Second Anglo-Maratha War: an army under Colonel Harcourt marched from Ganjam, took Puri on 18 September and Cuttack on 14 October 1803, and the Treaty of Deogaon in December 1803 made the Raja of Nagpur cede the province. But the British did not conquer Odisha as one unit, and they did not govern it as one.
Ganjam, the southern district, had been taken from the Nizam of Hyderabad as part of the Northern Circars in 1766 and was attached to the Madras Presidency, together with the Odia-speaking hill tracts of Jeypore and the Vizagapatam agency (the later Koraput). The coastal districts of Cuttack, Puri and Balasore, conquered in 1803 and called the Orissa Division, were attached to the Bengal Presidency, with the Garhjat or feudatory states of the interior placed under the Superintendent of the Tributary Mahals. Sambalpur and the western states, taken from the Marathas in 1804 and finally annexed in 1849 under the Doctrine of Lapse, were administered first from Bengal, then from 1862 as part of the Central Provinces at Nagpur. The Odia-speaking parganas of Midnapore and the Singhbhum area in the north remained with Bengal and Chota Nagpur. Thus by the middle of the nineteenth century the Odia people were governed from Calcutta, Madras and Nagpur, and nowhere did they form a majority in the eyes of the administration.
The consequences were serious. In each province the Odias were a small minority whose language was not the language of the courts, the schools or the offices; Bengali dominated in the Orissa Division, Telugu in Ganjam and Hindi in Sambalpur. The clerks, teachers and lawyers who came with the new administration were mainly Bengalis in the coastal districts and Telugus in the south, and Odias were shut out of employment in their own land. The revenue settlements of Cuttack were made in haste and on Bengali models, and the salt monopoly imposed in 1804 destroyed the coastal salt industry. Roads, canals and schools came late, because the Orissa Division was the remote end of a great presidency whose capital, Calcutta, cared little for it.
The feeling of being a divided and neglected people is the root of Odia nationalism. Its first goal, long before the demand for Swaraj, was the union of the Odia-speaking tracts under one administration and the recognition of the Odia language. This chapter traces the growth of that feeling; the next chapters follow it to the Utkal Sammilani of 1903 and the province of 1936.
- Ganjam to Madras (1766), Cuttack-Puri-Balasore to Bengal (1803), Sambalpur to the Central Provinces (1862): three governments for one people.
- In the Cuttack collectorate in the 1850s the great majority of clerks and amlas were Bengalis; an Odia petitioner had to deal with his own government in a foreign tongue.
- The salt monopoly of 1804 ruined the malangis of the Balasore and Cuttack coast, a grievance remembered in the Paika Rebellion of 1817 and the Salt Satyagraha of 1930.
- Dismemberment of Odisha: Ganjam 1766 (Madras); Cuttack, Puri, Balasore 1803 (Bengal); Sambalpur 1849 annexed, 1862 to Central Provinces.
The Paika Rebellion of 1817
The first great expression of Odia resistance to British rule was the Paika Rebellion (Paika Bidroha) of 1817, which Odisha remembers as its first war of independence, forty years before 1857.
The Paikas were the hereditary militia of Odisha, peasant-soldiers who held rent-free land (jagirs) from the Raja of Khurda and the other chiefs in return for military service, and who also served as the police of the countryside. They were organised in three classes according to their weapons, the Paharis with sword and shield, the Banuas with matchlocks and the Dhenkiyas with bows and arrows, and they were led by their hereditary commander, the Buxi. Under the Gajapati kings of Khurda they had been the backbone of the state.
British rule struck at them from several directions. After the Raja of Khurda, Mukunda Deva II, rebelled in 1804 and was deposed, the Khurda estate was taken over and the Paikas lost their military function. The revenue settlements resumed their rent-free lands or subjected them to rent, and the settlement officers, ignorant of the country, treated the jagirs as ordinary holdings. The new currency of silver rupees, demanded for revenue, ruined peasants who had dealt in cowries; prices of salt rose under the monopoly; Bengali revenue farmers and amlas oppressed the villages; and the extortion of the police, in which the Paikas had been replaced, added to the misery. The Buxi of Khurda, Jagabandhu Bidyadhar Mohapatra Bhramarabar Ray, known as Buxi Jagabandhu, was himself deprived of his family estate of Killa Rorang by fraud in 1814 and reduced to begging, which turned him into the leader of the discontented.
In March 1817 a body of about four hundred Kondhs from Ghumsar entered Khurda, and the Paikas under Buxi Jagabandhu rose with them. They attacked the police station and government buildings at Banpur, killed officials, burnt records, marched on Khurda town, seized the treasury and drove out the British. The rising spread to Puri, where the rebels proclaimed the young Raja of Khurda as king, to Pipli, Kanika, Kujang and the Cuttack countryside, and even to Pattamundai and Ghumsar. The British were caught unprepared; the collectors fled and several detachments were defeated.
By the end of 1817 the government had regained control by force: martial law was proclaimed, villages were burnt, rebels were hanged or transported, and the Raja of Khurda was imprisoned in Cuttack. Buxi Jagabandhu carried on a guerrilla war from the jungles for years and surrendered on terms only in 1825; he died in Cuttack in 1829. The rebellion failed, but the government learnt from it: the settlement was revised, the salt price reduced, the police reorganised and the Paikas' lands partly restored. For Odia nationalism it became a founding memory, the proof that the Odia people had fought the British first, and a source of pride revived in 2017 on its bicentenary.
- Three classes of Paikas: Paharis (sword and shield), Banuas (matchlock), Dhenkiyas (bow and arrow).
- Banpur, March 1817: the first attack, in which the police station was burnt and the officials killed; Khurda fell within days.
- Buxi Jagabandhu lost his estate of Killa Rorang in 1814 through fraud by a Bengali agent, surrendered in 1825 and died in 1829.
- Paika Rebellion: began March 1817 at Banpur and Khurda under Buxi Jagabandhu; suppressed by end of 1817; Buxi surrendered 1825.
The Na Anka famine of 1866
The famine of 1866, called Na Anka Durbhikshya because it fell in the ninth anka (regnal year) of the Gajapati king of Puri, Divyasingha Deva, was the greatest catastrophe of modern Odia history and, paradoxically, one of the causes of the Odia awakening.
The monsoon of 1865 failed, and the rice crop of the coastal districts, which had no irrigation, was lost. Prices rose sharply in the winter, and by the spring of 1866 the poor were starving. The Board of Revenue at Calcutta, misled by the Commissioner of Orissa, T. E. Ravenshaw, who reported that the situation was not alarming, refused to import rice; when the government at last decided to send grain, the monsoon had broken, the coast was closed to shipping, and Odisha had no railway and no all-weather road to Bengal. The rice that arrived in the autumn came too late. The people ate leaves, roots and grass, sold their children, and died on the roads and in the streets of Cuttack and Puri; cholera and then floods in the autumn of 1866 completed the destruction. About ten lakh people, one-third of the population of the coastal districts, died, and Puri district lost nearly half its people.
The Famine Commission of 1867 under Sir George Campbell exposed the failures: the isolation of Odisha, the absence of communications, the neglect of irrigation, the ignorance and complacency of officials who did not know the language or the country, and the folly of a laissez-faire policy that refused to interfere with the grain trade while people died. Its report led to the Orissa canal system, begun in 1866 and extended in the 1870s, to the construction of embankments and roads, and to the principle, later embodied in the Famine Code, that the state must feed the starving. A railway from Calcutta reached Cuttack only in 1899.
For the Odia people the famine had deeper effects. It showed them that the government at Calcutta neither knew nor cared about them, and that an administration in which no senior officer spoke Odia could let a third of the province die. It brought into public life the first generation of Odia leaders, who organised relief and then began to ask why Odisha was so neglected. It gave rise to the first Odia newspaper, Utkal Dipika, founded by Gourishankar Ray in August 1866 to voice the people's distress, and to the Cuttack Printing Company that published it. And it convinced thoughtful Odias that only the union of the Odia-speaking tracts under a government of their own could prevent such a disaster again. The famine and the language controversy that followed it within three years are the twin beginnings of Odia nationalism.
- Deaths in 1866: about ten lakh, roughly a third of the population of Cuttack, Puri and Balasore; in Puri district nearly half.
- Ravenshaw's report of early 1866 that the situation was not alarming delayed relief until the monsoon closed the coast to shipping.
- Results: the Orissa canals and embankments, the Famine Commission of 1867, the Utkal Dipika (1866), and a railway to Cuttack only in 1899.
- Na Anka famine 1866: monsoon failure 1865 → starvation spring 1866 → relief too late → about 10 lakh dead → Campbell Commission 1867.
English education and the printing press
Nationalism in India grew wherever English education created a class that could read, compare and organise, and Odisha was no exception, though it came late.
The first English schools in the coastal districts were opened by the Baptist missionaries of Serampore, who arrived at Cuttack in 1822: the Cuttack Mission School and the Orissa Mission Press, which printed the first Odia books, a Bible translation and school primers. The government opened the Cuttack Zilla School in 1841, and similar schools at Puri and Balasore. Higher education arrived only after the famine: in 1868 collegiate classes were opened at the Cuttack Zilla School, and in 1876 they became Ravenshaw College, named after the Commissioner T. E. Ravenshaw, affiliated to Calcutta University, the first college of Odisha. A training school for teachers, a medical school (1875) and a survey school followed. In Ganjam the Berhampur Zilla School and later the Khallikote College (1878) served the south; in Sambalpur a Zilla School was opened in 1868.
The graduates of Ravenshaw College were the first Odia intelligentsia. They became lawyers, teachers, deputy collectors and journalists, and it was they who founded the associations, edited the newspapers and led the language movement. The first Odia to graduate from Calcutta University was Madhusudan Das in 1870, the first Odia M.A. and the first Odia barrister; Gourishankar Ray, Radhanath Ray, Madhusudan Rao, Fakir Mohan Senapati, Biswanath Kar and Gopabandhu Das were all products of this new education, though Fakir Mohan was largely self-taught.
The printing press was the other engine of awakening. Before 1866 Odia books were printed only at the Mission Press, and Odia manuscripts on palm leaf were the only literature of the villages; some Bengali officials argued that a language without a press and a printed literature could not be a real language. The Cuttack Printing Company, founded in 1866 by Gourishankar Ray and others with the help of the Rajas of Paralakhemundi, Athagarh and Kanika, ended this dependence. It printed the Utkal Dipika, textbooks, the works of the new writers and the classics of Odia literature, such as the Mahabharata of Sarala Das and the poems of Upendra Bhanja. Printing made the Odia language visible, standardised its spelling, created a reading public and gave the language movement its weapon.
Education and the press thus produced the two things without which no nationalism can exist: leaders who could argue, and a public that could read what they wrote.
- Cuttack Mission School 1822; Cuttack Zilla School 1841; Ravenshaw College 1876 (collegiate classes from 1868); Cuttack Medical School 1875.
- Madhusudan Das: B.A. 1870, M.A. 1873 and B.L. from Calcutta, the first Odia graduate, the first Odia barrister (1878 in Calcutta), returned to Cuttack in 1881.
- Cuttack Printing Company, 1866: financed with the help of the feudatory rajas, it printed Utkal Dipika from August 1866 and the first modern Odia books.
The Odia language controversy: 'Odia is not a language'
The most dangerous attack on the Odia people in the nineteenth century was not military but linguistic: the claim that Odia was not a separate language but a dialect of Bengali, and that Bengali should therefore be the medium of instruction and administration in the Orissa Division.
The claim arose from the position of the Bengali clerks, teachers and officials who dominated the offices and schools of Cuttack, Puri and Balasore. Since the Orissa Division was part of Bengal, the government at Calcutta naturally used Bengali, and the Bengali teachers in the vernacular schools taught in Bengali; Odia was a burden they wished to remove. In 1867-68 a schools inspector proposed to replace Odia by Bengali in the schools, and in 1870 Kantichandra Bhattacharya, a Bengali teacher at the Balasore Zilla School, published a pamphlet titled Udiya Ekta Swatantra Bhasha Nay (Odia is not an independent language), arguing that Odia was a corrupt form of Bengali, that its literature was worthless and that its script was a mere variant, and that the education of the Odias would be served by teaching them Bengali. Some Bengali scholars, including Rajendralal Mitra, who visited Cuttack in 1868, took a similar view, and the Bengali press supported the demand.
Had the proposal succeeded, Odia would have disappeared from the schools and offices within a generation, and with it the Odia identity. The Odia intelligentsia, tiny as it was, fought back. Fakir Mohan Senapati (1843-1918), then a teacher at Balasore, wrote and spoke against Bhattacharya, organised the Odia teachers and later recorded in his autobiography how the whole community had rallied. Gourishankar Ray made the Utkal Dipika the voice of the language, publishing article after article on the antiquity and richness of Odia and appealing to the government. Radhanath Ray, Madhusudan Rao and Bhudev Mukherjee, a Bengali inspector of schools who honestly held that Odia was a distinct language, supported the cause. The Odia pleaders of Cuttack and the rajas of the feudatory states petitioned. European scholars settled the question: John Beames, the Collector of Balasore and a philologist, showed in his Comparative Grammar (1872) that Odia was an independent language with a literature older than Bengali's, and Sir George Grierson later confirmed it in the Linguistic Survey of India.
The government decided in favour of Odia. In 1869-70 the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Sir William Grey, ordered that Odia be the medium of instruction and the language of the courts in the Orissa Division, and that Bengali teachers who could not teach in Odia be replaced. The victory was partial, since Bengali influence in the offices remained strong for decades and the demand had to be fought again in Sambalpur and Ganjam, but it saved the language. The controversy also had a lasting effect on the Odia mind: it taught the Odias that their identity rested on their language, and that the language could be defended only by an organised people with a literature, a press and a province of their own. Odia nationalism was born as a linguistic nationalism.
- Kantichandra Bhattacharya's pamphlet of 1870, Udiya Ekta Swatantra Bhasha Nay, argued that Odia was a dialect of Bengali; Fakir Mohan Senapati led the reply from Balasore.
- John Beames, Collector of Balasore, in his Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages (1872) placed Odia as an independent language with its own ancient literature.
- The Bengal government's orders of 1869-70 made Odia the medium of instruction and the court language of the Orissa Division.
- Language controversy: proposal to replace Odia by Bengali 1867-70 → Bhattacharya's pamphlet 1870 → defence by Fakir Mohan, Gourishankar Ray, Beames → Odia confirmed as medium 1869-70.
The Sambalpur language agitation, 1895-1903
The battle for the language had to be fought a second time in the west. Sambalpur, annexed in 1849, had been attached in 1862 to the Central Provinces, whose capital was Nagpur and whose official language was Hindi. For thirty years the Chief Commissioners had allowed Odia to remain the language of the courts and schools of Sambalpur, since nearly the whole population spoke it. But in January 1895 the Chief Commissioner, Sir Anthony MacDonnell, on the advice of officials who found two court languages inconvenient, ordered that Hindi replace Odia as the official language of the district, and that Hindi be taught in the schools.
The order threatened to do in Sambalpur what Bhattacharya had failed to do in Cuttack: to erase Odia from public life. The people of Sambalpur, who had few graduates and no newspaper, organised themselves with remarkable speed. A committee was formed under the leadership of Dharanidhar Mishra, a teacher and writer, with Madan Mohan Mishra, Balabhadra Suar, Sripati Mishra, Braja Mohan Patnaik, Nilamani Vidyaratna and the pleaders of the town; the zamindars of Sambalpur, including the Rajas of Bamanda (Sudhal Dev) and Sonepur, gave their support, and Sudhal Dev's newspaper Sambalpur Hitaishini, published from Bamanda since 1889, became the organ of the agitation. Public meetings were held, memorials were sent to the Chief Commissioner, the Government of India and the Secretary of State, and the Odia leaders of Cuttack, especially Madhusudan Das and the Utkal Dipika, took up the cause as a matter for all Odias. Dharanidhar Mishra wrote pamphlets showing that the language of Sambalpur was Odia and that the imposition of Hindi would ruin the education of its children.
The government resisted. The Chief Commissioner in 1901 rejected the memorials, and a deputation led by Madan Mohan Mishra and Sripati Mishra travelled to Simla to petition the Viceroy. Lord Curzon, who was reconsidering the whole map of eastern India, was persuaded that the transfer of Sambalpur to a province that used Odia was the sensible solution. In 1903 the order of 1895 was withdrawn: Odia was restored as the official language of Sambalpur, and in 1905, as part of the Partition of Bengal, Sambalpur and the western feudatory states were transferred from the Central Provinces to the Orissa Division of Bengal, uniting them at last with the coastal districts. The people of Sambalpur observed the day of restoration as a festival.
The Sambalpur agitation was the first successful political movement of the Odia people, and it taught several lessons: that the language question was a question for the whole Odia community, west and east; that memorials backed by public meetings and the press could move the government; and that the real remedy was the union of the Odia tracts, which the agitation partly achieved in 1905. It also produced the leaders and the sense of solidarity that made the Utkal Sammilani possible in 1903.
- MacDonnell's order of January 1895 replaced Odia with Hindi in the courts and schools of Sambalpur; it was withdrawn in 1903.
- Sambalpur Hitaishini, founded by Raja Sudhal Dev of Bamanda in 1889, was the newspaper of the agitation and the first Odia paper of western Odisha.
- Deputation to Simla, 1901-02: Madan Mohan Mishra and Sripati Mishra petitioned the Viceroy; Curzon's settlement transferred Sambalpur to Bengal's Orissa Division in 1905.
- Sambalpur language agitation: Hindi imposed January 1895 → memorials and meetings under Dharanidhar Mishra → Odia restored 1903 → Sambalpur transferred to Orissa Division 1905.
Ganjam and the Odias of the Madras Presidency
The Odias of the south faced a third front. Ganjam, together with the Jeypore estate and the agency tracts of Vizagapatam, had been part of the Madras Presidency since 1766. Its northern taluks, Berhampur, Chhatrapur, Aska, Purushottampur, Ghumsar, Surada and Chikiti, were overwhelmingly Odia-speaking, but the district was administered in Telugu and English from Madras, the district headquarters was at Chicacole (Srikakulam) in the Telugu south until 1936, and the schools taught in Telugu. Odia boys who wished to go beyond the primary school had to learn Telugu; Odia petitioners had to plead in Telugu; and the Telugu officials of the district regarded the Odia language as a rustic dialect.
The awakening of Ganjam came through its zamindars and its educated men. The Raja of Paralakhemundi, whose family claimed descent from the Gajapati kings, patronised Odia learning; the Raja of Khallikote founded Khallikote College at Berhampur in 1878, the first college of the south, which produced a generation of Odia graduates in the Madras Presidency. Berhampur became the centre of Odia public life in the south. In the 1890s the Odias of Ganjam formed the Ganjam Jatiya Samiti (national association) and the Utkal Hitabadini Sabha to demand the teaching of Odia in the schools, the appointment of Odia-speaking officials and, in the end, the transfer of the Odia taluks to a united Odisha. They petitioned the Madras government to allow Odia as a medium in the Ganjam schools and to recruit Odia teachers, and they obtained partial concessions.
The Asha newspaper, founded at Berhampur in 1913 by Sashi Bhusan Rath, became the voice of the Odias of Madras and later a leading nationalist paper. Sashi Bhusan Rath, Niranjan Patnaik, Biswanath Das, Krupasindhu Hota and Harihar Mardaraj Deo of Khallikote were the Ganjam leaders who carried the demand for union into the twentieth century; the Raja of Paralakhemundi, Krushna Chandra Gajapati Narayan Deo, took it to the Round Table Conference and became the first Prime Minister of the province of Orissa in 1937.
The Ganjam question showed that the Odia identity crossed provincial boundaries. When the Utkal Sammilani was formed in 1903, Ganjam sent large delegations, and its annual sessions were sometimes held at Berhampur. The transfer of the Odia taluks of Ganjam and of Koraput to Orissa in 1936 was the fulfilment of the movement that began in the Berhampur associations of the 1890s. Even after 1936 some Odia-speaking villages remained in Madras, a grievance that continued into the era of states reorganisation.
- Khallikote College, Berhampur, founded 1878 by the Raja of Khallikote: the first college in the Odia areas of Madras.
- Ganjam Jatiya Samiti (1890s) and Utkal Hitabadini Sabha petitioned Madras for Odia teaching and Odia officials in Ganjam.
- Asha, Berhampur, 1913, edited by Sashi Bhusan Rath, became the leading Odia nationalist paper of the south.
The Odia press: Utkal Dipika and its successors
Newspapers made Odia nationalism possible by giving a scattered people a common voice, and the examiner expects the student to know the principal papers.
The first Odia periodical was Kujibar Patra, a monthly of the Baptist mission (1837), followed by Prabodha Chandrika (1856) and Arunodaya (1849), all missionary or short-lived. The real beginning was the Utkal Dipika, founded on 4 August 1866 at Cuttack by Gourishankar Ray (1838-1917), with the help of Bichitrananda Das and the Cuttack Printing Company. Born in the famine year, it reported the suffering of the people and criticised the government's neglect; it then fought the language controversy of 1868-70, demanded Odia officials and Odia schools, campaigned for the union of the Odia tracts, supported the Sambalpur agitation and reported the meetings of the associations. For fifty years Gourishankar Ray, who edited it till his death, was the conscience of Odisha, and the Utkal Dipika was the school in which every Odia leader learnt his politics. Gourishankar was also secretary of the Utkal Sabha and one of the founders of the Utkal Sammilani.
Other papers followed. Utkal Hitaishini (1869) and Sambad Bahika (1872, Balasore, edited by Fakir Mohan Senapati at its press) spread the same message in Balasore; Sambalpur Hitaishini (1889, Bamanda) served the west; Utkal Prabha (1891, Mayurbhanj); Prajabandhu; Utkal Sahitya (1897), the literary monthly of Biswanath Kar, which published the new prose and poetry; Asha (1913, Berhampur) for Ganjam; and in the next generation Samaj (1919, Satyabadi) under Gopabandhu Das, and later Prajatantra (1923) under Harekrushna Mahtab, which carried the Odia cause into the age of the national movement. The English-language Oriya and the Utkal Star spoke to the government and to the rest of India.
The press served Odia nationalism in several ways. It reported the grievances of every district to all the others, so that the Odias of Ganjam, Sambalpur and Cuttack learnt that they suffered the same neglect. It defended the language by using it well; the prose of the Utkal Dipika and of Utkal Sahitya set the standard of modern Odia. It carried memorials, resolutions and the speeches of Madhusudan Das to the villages. It attacked the discrimination against Odias in employment and the dominance of outsiders. And it educated a public that had never before been asked to think about politics. The government watched it, demanded securities and occasionally prosecuted, but the Odia press remained the principal weapon of a people that had no army, no province and no vote.
- Utkal Dipika, 4 August 1866, Cuttack, editor Gourishankar Ray: the first Odia newspaper of lasting importance, born in the famine and the voice of the language movement.
- Sambad Bahika, Balasore, 1872: the press with which Fakir Mohan Senapati was associated; Utkal Sahitya, 1897, the literary monthly of Biswanath Kar.
- Asha (Berhampur, 1913), Samaj (Satyabadi, 1919) and Prajatantra (Balasore, 1923) carried the Odia cause into the twentieth century.
The Odia literary renaissance
A language that is to be defended must be worth defending, and the answer to those who called Odia a dialect without a literature was given not only in petitions but in poems, novels and histories. The last third of the nineteenth century saw an Odia renaissance whose writers were also the leaders of the nationalist movement.
Fakir Mohan Senapati (1843-1918) of Balasore, self-taught, teacher, printer, administrator of feudatory states and finally writer, is the father of modern Odia prose and the Odia novel. His novels Chha Mana Atha Guntha (Six acres and a third, 1897-99), the story of a village zamindar's ruin of a weaver couple, Mamu, Prayaschitta and Lachhama, and his short stories, especially Rebati (1898), described the life of the Odia village in the living language of the people, and his translations of the Ramayana and Mahabharata into simple Odia verse made the epics available to the villagers. His autobiography, Atma Jibana Charita, is a history of the age. Fakir Mohan was the fighter of the language controversy of 1870, and his whole work was a demonstration that Odia could do anything that Bengali could.
Radhanath Ray (1848-1908), the Kabibara, inspector of schools, is the father of modern Odia poetry. His long poems, Chilika, Mahayatra, Kedar Gauri, Nandikeshwari, Chandrabhaga and Usha, drew on Western forms and Sanskrit myths and, above all, on the landscape of Odisha: the Chilika lake, the hills, the rivers and the temples. He gave the Odias a poetry of their own land and taught them to love it. Madhusudan Rao (1853-1912), the Bhaktakabi, teacher and Brahmo reformer, wrote devotional and patriotic lyrics, school textbooks and the first Odia children's literature, and his poems on Utkal were sung at the meetings of the Sammilani. These three, Fakir Mohan, Radhanath and Madhusudan Rao, are called the trinity of modern Odia literature.
Gangadhar Meher (1862-1924) of Barpali in Sambalpur, a weaver by birth who wrote by lamplight after his day's work, gave western Odisha its greatest poet; his Tapaswini, the story of Sita's exile, and Pranaya Ballari and Utkal Lakshmi combined classical form with love of the Odia land, and he was the poet of the Sambalpur agitation. Gopal Chandra Praharaj compiled the great Odia dictionary, the Purnachandra Bhashakosha (1931-40, seven volumes), the final answer to those who had denied that Odia was a language. Nanda Kishore Bal, the poet of the village, Chintamani Mohanty, Biswanath Kar, the editor of Utkal Sahitya, and the historians Pyari Mohan Acharya, whose Odisara Itihasa (1879) was the first Odia history of Odisha, and later Jagabandhu Singh, gave the people a knowledge of their past. The rediscovery of the ancient monuments, Konark, Khandagiri, Udayagiri and the Ashokan edicts of Dhauli, by scholars such as Rajendralal Mitra and later Krupasindhu Mishra, added pride in the glory of ancient Kalinga.
The renaissance thus created the cultural content of Odia nationalism: a standard prose, a modern poetry, a written history and a sense of a common heritage from Kharavela and the Gajapatis to the present. When Madhusudan Das said that Odia was the soul of the Odia people, this literature was what he meant.
- Fakir Mohan Senapati's Chha Mana Atha Guntha (1897-99), the first realistic novel of village life in an Indian language, and Rebati (1898), the first modern Odia short story.
- Radhanath Ray's Chilika (1892), a poem on the lake that made the Odia landscape a subject of patriotic poetry.
- Gopal Chandra Praharaj's Purnachandra Bhashakosha (1931-40), seven volumes and about 1.85 lakh words, the standard dictionary of Odia.
The early associations: Utkal Sabha and its companions
Newspapers and books spread ideas; associations turned them into demands. The Odia associations of the nineteenth century were small, but they were the ancestors of the Utkal Sammilani and, through it, of the province.
The first was the Cuttack Debating Club, later the Utkal Bhasha Unnati Bidhayini Sabha (society for the advancement of the Odia language), formed in 1869 in the heat of the language controversy by the students and young men of Cuttack to defend and improve Odia; it published books, held meetings and petitioned the government. The Utkal Ullasini Sabha and the Cuttack Young Men's Association were similar bodies. In Balasore the Balasore National Society and in Puri the Puri Association discussed public questions.
The most important was the Utkal Sabha, founded at Cuttack on 16 August 1882 with Gourishankar Ray as its secretary and the leading pleaders, zamindars and teachers of the town as members. It was the first political association of Odisha, modelled on the Indian Association of Calcutta, and its objects were to represent the grievances of the Odia people to the government, to demand the union of the Odia-speaking tracts, to press for the employment of Odias, for Odia as the language of education and administration, and for the development of the province. It sent memorials on the famine relief, the tenancy law, the salt tax and the revenue settlement, and it took up the Sambalpur question. Madhusudan Das, who returned to Cuttack in 1881 as the first Odia barrister, joined it and became its leading spirit; the Sabha sent him as its delegate to the second session of the Indian National Congress at Calcutta in 1886, where he raised the question of the Odia-speaking areas, and to later sessions.
Outside Cuttack, the Ganjam Jatiya Samiti and the Utkal Hitabadini Sabha at Berhampur in the 1890s, the Sambalpur committee of Dharanidhar Mishra in 1895 and the associations of Balasore and Puri pursued the same aims in their own districts. The problem was that they worked separately, each within its own province, and had no common platform. The Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, was itself organised by presidencies, so that the Odias of Bengal, Madras and the Central Provinces met in three different provincial bodies; and the Congress, concerned with all-India issues, gave little attention to the union of a small linguistic group. Madhusudan Das concluded that the Odias needed an all-Odia organisation that would speak for the whole people regardless of provincial boundaries.
The Utkal Union Conference or Utkal Sammilani, founded at Cuttack on 30-31 December 1903 under the presidency of the Raja of Mayurbhanj, Sriram Chandra Bhanja Deo, with Madhusudan Das as its organiser, was the result. It brought together delegates from the Orissa Division, Sambalpur, Ganjam and the feudatory states, the first time the Odia people had met as one body, and its history belongs to the next chapter.
- Utkal Bhasha Unnati Bidhayini Sabha, Cuttack, 1869: the first Odia society, formed to defend the language during the controversy of 1868-70.
- Utkal Sabha, 16 August 1882, secretary Gourishankar Ray: the first political association of Odisha, which sent Madhusudan Das to the Calcutta Congress of 1886.
- Utkal Sammilani, 30-31 December 1903, Cuttack, president the Raja of Mayurbhanj, organiser Madhusudan Das: the first all-Odia platform.
Madhusudan Das, the Utkal Gaurab
No account of Odia nationalism is complete without Madhusudan Das (1848-1934), whom the Odias call Utkal Gaurab, the pride of Utkal, and Madhu Babu, and whose life spans the whole movement from the famine of 1866 to the eve of the separate province.
He was born on 28 April 1848 at Satyabhamapur in Cuttack district, the son of a village Karan family, studied at the Cuttack Zilla School and then, since Odisha had no college, at Calcutta, where he took his B.A. in 1870, the first Odia graduate, his M.A. in 1873 and his law degree, and practised in the Calcutta High Court. In Calcutta he became a Christian in 1868, a step that cut him off from his family but never from his people. In 1881 he returned to Cuttack to practise as the first Odia barrister of the town, and for the next fifty years his house was the headquarters of the Odia cause.
His work had several sides. As a lawyer he defended the rajas of the feudatory states and the tenants of the zamindaris and used his earnings to finance the movement. As a politician he joined the Utkal Sabha, attended the Congress sessions of 1886 and after, was elected to the Bengal Legislative Council in 1896 and to the Imperial Legislative Council in 1913, and in 1921 became a Minister of the Bihar and Orissa government under the Reforms, the first Odia to hold such office, resigning in 1923 rather than accept a salary cut that he thought insulting. In every council he pleaded for the union of the Odia tracts, for Odia employment and for the development of Odisha. As an industrialist he founded the Utkal Tannery at Cuttack in 1905 and the Orissa Art Wares to revive the filigree work of Cuttack, believing that the Odias must learn to work with their hands and that a people that produced nothing could claim nothing; he ruined himself financially in the attempt. As a social reformer he championed the education of girls and the uplift of the untouchables, adopted a daughter, Sailabala, who founded the first girls' college of Odisha, and himself ran a school for cobblers' children.
His greatest achievement was the Utkal Sammilani of 1903. He saw that the Odia people, divided among three provinces, needed a single organisation that would keep the demand for union before the government year after year; he kept the Sammilani apart from the Congress so that the rajas and the loyalists could join it, and he presided over or dominated its sessions for twenty years. He took the Odia case to the Simon Commission in 1928 and lived to see the Orissa Committee of 1932 recommend the province, though he died on 4 February 1934, two years before it was created.
His famous saying, that a nation is not made of its territory but of its people, and his call to the Odias to be proud of being Odia and to unite, made him the father of Odia nationalism. The chapter that follows traces the Sammilani that was his monument.
- Madhusudan Das: born 28 April 1848, Satyabhamapur; first Odia graduate 1870; barrister at Cuttack 1881; Utkal Sammilani 1903; Minister of Bihar and Orissa 1921-23; died 4 February 1934.
- The Utkal Tannery (1905) and Orissa Art Wares: his experiments in industry, which impoverished him but trained Odia craftsmen and revived Cuttack filigree.
- His daughter Sailabala Das founded the Sailabala Women's College at Cuttack (1913), the first women's college in Odisha.
The nature and significance of Odia nationalism
Having traced its growth, the student should be able to say what kind of nationalism the Odia movement was, and what it achieved by 1903.
A linguistic nationalism. The Odia movement was built on language. Its enemies were those who denied that Odia was a language or who imposed Bengali, Hindi or Telugu on Odia children; its heroes were writers, editors and teachers; its first victories were the retention of Odia in the schools of Cuttack in 1870 and its restoration in Sambalpur in 1903. In this it resembled the linguistic movements of the Telugus, Marathis and others, and it anticipated the principle of linguistic provinces that the Congress adopted at Nagpur in 1920 and that the states reorganisation of 1956 applied to all India.
A nationalism of union. Its political demand was the amalgamation of the Odia-speaking tracts under one administration, which it saw as the only guarantee of the language, of Odia employment and of development. This demand, first heard in the memorials of the Utkal Sabha in the 1880s, was carried by the Sammilani for thirty years and satisfied in 1936.
A loyal and constitutional nationalism. Because the Odias were a minority in each province and depended on the government to protect them from the majority, their leaders were loyalists who used petitions, memorials, deputations and council speeches, and who kept the movement apart from the Congress and its agitations until the 1920s. The rajas of the feudatory states and the zamindars were its patrons. This loyalism has been criticised, but it suited a people without numbers or arms, and it worked.
A nationalism of the whole people. Although led by the educated few, the movement reached beyond them: the Sambalpur agitation mobilised the townspeople and villagers of the west, the Ganjam associations the traders and teachers of the south, and the literature of Fakir Mohan and Radhanath spoke of and to the village. It included Hindus, Christians such as Madhusudan Das and Muslims, and it was never communal.
Its achievements by 1903. The language had been saved in Cuttack, Balasore and Sambalpur; a press, a literature and a college existed; the Odias had leaders and associations; the Sambalpur question had shown that agitation could succeed; and the Utkal Sammilani had given the divided people a single voice. What remained, the transfer of Sambalpur in 1905, the creation of the Bihar and Orissa province in 1912, the Orissa Committee of 1932 and the province of 1936, and the meeting of the Odia movement with the national movement under Gopabandhu Das after 1920, are the subjects of the chapters that follow.
The larger significance is this: the Odia movement showed that in India the sense of nationhood could grow from below, from a language and a land, and that the freedom of the country would have to be a freedom in which every people could speak its own tongue.
- Linguistic principle: the Nagpur Congress of 1920 gave Utkal its own Provincial Committee; the States Reorganisation Act of 1956 applied the same principle to all India.
- Constitutional method: memorials of the Utkal Sabha (1880s), the Sambalpur deputation to Simla (1901-02), Madhusudan Das's council speeches (1896-1923), the Sammilani's annual resolutions (1903-36).
- Inclusiveness: Madhusudan Das, a Christian, led a movement whose patrons were Hindu rajas and whose newspapers were edited by Brahmins and Karans, without communal division.
- Odia nationalism = linguistic identity + demand for union of Odia tracts + constitutional method + inclusive of all communities.
Key Concepts
- Dismemberment of Odisha
- The division of the Odia-speaking areas after the British conquest among the Bengal Presidency, the Madras Presidency and the Central Provinces.
- Orissa Division
- The coastal districts of Cuttack, Puri and Balasore, conquered in 1803 and administered as a division of the Bengal Presidency.
- Paika
- The hereditary peasant-militia of Odisha who held rent-free land in return for military service under the Raja of Khurda.
- Buxi Jagabandhu
- The hereditary commander of the Khurda Paikas who led the Paika Rebellion of 1817 after being deprived of his estate.
- Paika Rebellion
- The rising of 1817 in Khurda and Puri against British revenue, salt and police policies, regarded as Odisha's first war of independence.
- Na Anka famine
- The famine of 1866, named after the ninth regnal year of the Gajapati king, that killed about one-third of the population of coastal Odisha.
- Ravenshaw College
- The first college of Odisha, established at Cuttack in 1876 out of the collegiate classes of 1868 and named after Commissioner T. E. Ravenshaw.
- Cuttack Printing Company
- The press founded in 1866 by Gourishankar Ray and others that printed the Utkal Dipika and the first modern Odia books.
- Odia language controversy
- The dispute of 1868-70 in which Bengali officials and Kantichandra Bhattacharya claimed that Odia was a dialect of Bengali and should be replaced in schools.
- Udiya Ekta Swatantra Bhasha Nay
- Kantichandra Bhattacharya's pamphlet of 1870 asserting that Odia was not an independent language.
- John Beames
- The Collector of Balasore and philologist whose Comparative Grammar of 1872 established Odia as an independent language.
- Sambalpur language agitation
- The movement of 1895-1903 led by Dharanidhar Mishra against the imposition of Hindi in Sambalpur, which ended with the restoration of Odia.
- Utkal Dipika
- The first important Odia newspaper, founded at Cuttack in August 1866 by Gourishankar Ray, the voice of the language movement and the demand for union.
- Sambalpur Hitaishini
- The Odia newspaper started in 1889 at Bamanda by Raja Sudhal Dev, the organ of the Sambalpur agitation.
- Fakir Mohan Senapati
- The father of modern Odia prose and the novel, author of Chha Mana Atha Guntha, and a leader of the defence of Odia in 1870.
- Radhanath Ray
- The father of modern Odia poetry, whose poems such as Chilika celebrated the landscape of Odisha.
- Utkal Sabha
- The first political association of Odisha, founded at Cuttack in 1882 with Gourishankar Ray as secretary, to represent Odia grievances and demand union.
- Ganjam Jatiya Samiti
- The association of the Odias of Ganjam formed in the 1890s at Berhampur to demand Odia education and officials in the Madras Presidency.
- Madhusudan Das
- The first Odia graduate and barrister, founder of the Utkal Sammilani and Minister of Bihar and Orissa, called Utkal Gaurab, the father of Odia nationalism.
- Utkal Sammilani
- The Utkal Union Conference founded at Cuttack in December 1903 by Madhusudan Das as the first all-Odia organisation demanding the union of the Odia-speaking tracts.
End-of-Chapter Trial Paper & Test Questions
Topic-wise questions to test your understanding of every concept in this chapter.
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How were the Odia-speaking areas divided among different provinces under British rule? What were the consequences? / ब्रिटिश शासन में ओड़िया-भाषी क्षेत्र विभिन्न प्रांतों में कैसे बँटे थे? इसके क्या परिणाम हुए?
Show answer
The British did not conquer or govern Odisha as one unit. Ganjam and the agency tracts of Vizagapatam, taken from the Nizam as part of the Northern Circars in 1766, were attached to the Madras Presidency. The coastal districts of Cuttack, Puri and Balasore, conquered from the Marathas in 1803, formed the Orissa Division of the Bengal Presidency, with the feudatory states under a Superintendent. Sambalpur and the western states, annexed in 1849, were placed under the Central Provinces from 1862. The Odia parganas of Midnapore and Singhbhum stayed in Bengal and Chota Nagpur. In each province the Odias were a small minority whose language was not that of the courts, offices or schools: Bengali dominated the coast, Telugu Ganjam and Hindi Sambalpur. Bengali and Telugu clerks and teachers filled the jobs, Odias were shut out of employment in their own land, revenue settlements were made on foreign models, the salt monopoly of 1804 ruined the coastal industry, and roads, canals and schools came late because Odisha was the neglected corner of three distant governments. The feeling of being a divided and neglected people became the root of Odia nationalism, whose first demand was the union of the Odia tracts under one administration. / अंग्रेज़ों ने ओडिशा को न एक इकाई के रूप में जीता, न वैसे शासन किया। 1766 में उत्तरी सरकारों के भाग के रूप में निज़ाम से लिए गए गंजाम और विशाखापत्तनम के एजेंसी क्षेत्र मद्रास प्रेसीडेंसी से जोड़े गए। 1803 में मराठों से जीते गए तटीय जिले कटक, पुरी और बालासोर बंगाल प्रेसीडेंसी के उड़ीसा डिवीज़न बने, जिसमें करद रियासतें एक अधीक्षक के अधीन थीं। 1849 में विलय किए गए संबलपुर और पश्चिमी रियासतें 1862 से मध्य प्रांत के अधीन रखी गईं। मिदनापुर और सिंहभूम के ओड़िया परगने बंगाल और छोटानागपुर में रहे। हर प्रांत में ओड़िया एक छोटा अल्पसंख्यक समुदाय थे जिनकी भाषा अदालतों, दफ़्तरों या विद्यालयों की भाषा नहीं थी: तट पर बंगला, गंजाम में तेलुगु और संबलपुर में हिंदी हावी थी। बंगाली और तेलुगु क्लर्क तथा शिक्षक नौकरियों पर काबिज़ थे, ओड़िया अपनी ही भूमि में रोज़गार से वंचित थे, राजस्व बंदोबस्त विदेशी ढाँचों पर बने, 1804 के नमक एकाधिकार ने तटीय उद्योग नष्ट किया, और सड़कें, नहरें और विद्यालय देर से आए क्योंकि ओडिशा तीन दूरस्थ सरकारों का उपेक्षित कोना था। विभाजित और उपेक्षित जनता होने की भावना ओड़िया राष्ट्रवाद की जड़ बनी, जिसकी पहली माँग ओड़िया क्षेत्रों का एक प्रशासन के अधीन एकीकरण थी।
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What were the causes of the Paika Rebellion of 1817? / 1817 के पाइक विद्रोह के कारण क्या थे?
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The Paikas were the hereditary militia of Odisha who held rent-free jagir lands from the Raja of Khurda in return for military and police service. British rule undermined them in several ways. After the Raja of Khurda rebelled in 1804 and was deposed, the Khurda estate was taken over and the Paikas lost their military role. The revenue settlements resumed or taxed their jagir lands, since the settlement officers, ignorant of the country, treated them as ordinary holdings. Revenue was demanded in silver rupees, ruining peasants who had dealt in cowries, and the salt monopoly raised the price of salt. Bengali revenue farmers and amlas oppressed the villages, and the new police, which had replaced the Paikas, extorted from the people. The Buxi of Khurda, Jagabandhu Bidyadhar Mohapatra, was himself deprived of his estate of Killa Rorang by fraud in 1814 and reduced to poverty, which made him the natural leader of the discontented. When four hundred Kondhs from Ghumsar entered Khurda in March 1817, the Paikas rose under Buxi Jagabandhu, attacked Banpur and Khurda, and the rising spread across Puri and Cuttack before it was crushed by the end of the year. / पाइक ओडिशा की वंशानुगत सेना थे जो सैन्य और पुलिस सेवा के बदले खुर्दा के राजा से लगान-मुक्त जागीर भूमि रखते थे। ब्रिटिश शासन ने उन्हें कई प्रकार से कमज़ोर किया। 1804 में खुर्दा के राजा के विद्रोह और पदच्युति के बाद खुर्दा की ज़मींदारी अधिग्रहीत कर ली गई और पाइकों की सैन्य भूमिका समाप्त हो गई। राजस्व बंदोबस्तों ने उनकी जागीर भूमि छीनी या उस पर कर लगाया, क्योंकि देश से अनभिज्ञ बंदोबस्त अधिकारियों ने उन्हें साधारण जोत माना। राजस्व चाँदी के रुपयों में माँगा गया, जिसने कौड़ियों में लेन-देन करने वाले किसानों को बर्बाद किया, और नमक एकाधिकार ने नमक का मूल्य बढ़ाया। बंगाली राजस्व ठेकेदारों और अमलों ने गाँवों पर अत्याचार किया, और पाइकों की जगह लेने वाली नई पुलिस ने जनता से वसूली की। खुर्दा के बख्शी जगबंधु विद्याधर महापात्र स्वयं 1814 में धोखे से अपनी किल्ला रोरंग जागीर से वंचित होकर दरिद्र हो गए, जिसने उन्हें असंतुष्टों का स्वाभाविक नेता बनाया। जब मार्च 1817 में घुमसर से चार सौ कोंध खुर्दा में घुसे, तो पाइक बख्शी जगबंधु के नेतृत्व में उठ खड़े हुए, बानपुर और खुर्दा पर हमला किया, और विद्रोह वर्ष के अंत तक कुचले जाने से पहले पुरी और कटक में फैल गया।
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Describe the famine of 1866 and its effects on Odisha. / 1866 के अकाल और ओडिशा पर उसके प्रभावों का वर्णन कीजिए।
Show answer
The Na Anka famine, named after the ninth regnal year of the Gajapati king of Puri, followed the failure of the monsoon of 1865, which destroyed the rice crop of the unirrigated coastal districts. Prices rose through the winter and by spring 1866 the poor were starving, but the Board of Revenue at Calcutta, misled by Commissioner Ravenshaw's report that the situation was not alarming, refused to import rice; when it finally acted the monsoon had closed the coast to ships, and Odisha had no railway or road to Bengal, so relief arrived only in the autumn. People ate leaves and roots, sold children and died in the streets; cholera and floods completed the disaster. About ten lakh people, a third of the population of Cuttack, Puri and Balasore, died, and Puri lost nearly half its people. The Campbell Famine Commission of 1867 exposed the isolation of Odisha, the lack of communications and irrigation, the ignorance of officials who did not know the language, and the folly of refusing to interfere with the grain trade; it led to the Orissa canals and embankments, roads, the Famine Code and eventually a railway in 1899. For the Odia people the famine proved that a distant government neither knew nor cared for them, produced the first generation of leaders through relief work, gave birth to the Utkal Dipika and the Cuttack Printing Company in 1866, and convinced them that only union under their own administration could prevent such neglect. / पुरी के गजपति राजा के नौवें राज्यवर्ष के नाम पर 'न अंक' कहलाने वाला यह अकाल 1865 के मानसून की विफलता के बाद आया, जिसने असिंचित तटीय जिलों की धान की फसल नष्ट कर दी। सर्दियों में मूल्य बढ़े और 1866 के वसंत तक गरीब भूखे मरने लगे, परन्तु कलकत्ता के राजस्व बोर्ड ने, कमिश्नर रेवेनशॉ की इस रिपोर्ट से भ्रमित होकर कि स्थिति चिंताजनक नहीं है, चावल आयात करने से इनकार किया; जब उसने अंततः कार्रवाई की तो मानसून ने तट को जहाज़ों के लिए बंद कर दिया था, और ओडिशा के पास बंगाल तक कोई रेल या सड़क नहीं थी, इसलिए राहत शरद ऋतु में ही पहुँची। लोगों ने पत्ते और जड़ें खाईं, बच्चे बेचे और सड़कों पर मरे; हैजे और बाढ़ ने विनाश पूरा किया। लगभग दस लाख लोग, कटक, पुरी और बालासोर की आबादी का एक-तिहाई, मरे, और पुरी ने अपने लगभग आधे लोग खोए। 1867 के कैम्पबेल अकाल आयोग ने ओडिशा के अलगाव, संचार और सिंचाई के अभाव, भाषा न जानने वाले अधिकारियों की अज्ञानता, और अनाज व्यापार में हस्तक्षेप से इनकार की मूर्खता को उजागर किया; इससे उड़ीसा की नहरें और तटबंध, सड़कें, अकाल संहिता और अंततः 1899 में रेलवे आई। ओड़िया जनता के लिए अकाल ने सिद्ध किया कि दूरस्थ सरकार न उन्हें जानती है न उनकी परवाह करती है, राहत कार्य से नेताओं की पहली पीढ़ी दी, 1866 में उत्कल दीपिका और कटक प्रिंटिंग कंपनी को जन्म दिया, और उन्हें विश्वास दिलाया कि केवल अपने प्रशासन के अधीन एकीकरण ही ऐसी उपेक्षा रोक सकता है।
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What was the Odia language controversy? How was it settled? / ओड़िया भाषा विवाद क्या था? इसका निपटारा कैसे हुआ?
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In the 1860s the Bengali clerks, teachers and officials who dominated the offices and schools of the Orissa Division found Odia an inconvenience and proposed that Bengali replace it as the medium of instruction and the language of the courts. In 1870 Kantichandra Bhattacharya, a Bengali teacher at the Balasore Zilla School, published a pamphlet, Udiya Ekta Swatantra Bhasha Nay, arguing that Odia was only a corrupt dialect of Bengali with a worthless literature and a variant script, and the scholar Rajendralal Mitra and parts of the Bengali press supported the demand. Had it succeeded, Odia would have vanished from public life within a generation. The small Odia intelligentsia resisted: Fakir Mohan Senapati organised the Odia teachers of Balasore and wrote against the pamphlet, Gourishankar Ray's Utkal Dipika argued the antiquity and richness of Odia in article after article, Radhanath Ray and Madhusudan Rao joined in, the pleaders and rajas petitioned, and the honest Bengali inspector Bhudev Mukherjee supported Odia. European scholarship settled the question when John Beames, the Collector of Balasore, showed in his Comparative Grammar of 1872 that Odia was an independent language with a literature older than Bengali's, a view later confirmed by Grierson's Linguistic Survey. The Bengal government under Sir William Grey ordered in 1869-70 that Odia remain the medium of instruction and the court language of the Orissa Division. The controversy taught the Odias that their identity rested on their language and made their nationalism a linguistic one. / 1860 के दशक में उड़ीसा डिवीज़न के दफ़्तरों और विद्यालयों पर हावी बंगाली क्लर्कों, शिक्षकों और अधिकारियों को ओड़िया असुविधाजनक लगी और उन्होंने प्रस्ताव रखा कि शिक्षा के माध्यम और अदालतों की भाषा के रूप में बंगला ओड़िया की जगह ले। 1870 में बालासोर ज़िला स्कूल के बंगाली शिक्षक कांतिचंद्र भट्टाचार्य ने 'उड़िया एकटा स्वतंत्र भाषा नय' नामक पुस्तिका प्रकाशित की, जिसमें तर्क दिया कि ओड़िया बंगला की भ्रष्ट बोली मात्र है जिसका साहित्य निरर्थक और लिपि एक भिन्न रूप है, और विद्वान राजेन्द्रलाल मित्र तथा बंगाली प्रेस के कुछ भागों ने इस माँग का समर्थन किया। यदि यह सफल होती तो ओड़िया एक पीढ़ी में सार्वजनिक जीवन से लुप्त हो जाती। छोटे ओड़िया बुद्धिजीवी वर्ग ने प्रतिरोध किया: फकीर मोहन सेनापति ने बालासोर के ओड़िया शिक्षकों को संगठित किया और पुस्तिका के विरुद्ध लिखा, गौरीशंकर राय की उत्कल दीपिका ने लेख-दर-लेख ओड़िया की प्राचीनता और समृद्धि का तर्क दिया, राधानाथ राय और मधुसूदन राव जुड़े, वकीलों और राजाओं ने याचिकाएँ दीं, और ईमानदार बंगाली निरीक्षक भूदेव मुखर्जी ने ओड़िया का समर्थन किया। यूरोपीय विद्वता ने प्रश्न का निपटारा किया जब बालासोर के कलेक्टर जॉन बीम्स ने 1872 के अपने तुलनात्मक व्याकरण में दिखाया कि ओड़िया एक स्वतंत्र भाषा है जिसका साहित्य बंगला से पुराना है, जिसकी पुष्टि बाद में ग्रियर्सन के भाषाई सर्वेक्षण ने की। सर विलियम ग्रे की बंगाल सरकार ने 1869-70 में आदेश दिया कि ओड़िया ही उड़ीसा डिवीज़न में शिक्षा का माध्यम और अदालत की भाषा रहे। इस विवाद ने ओड़िया लोगों को सिखाया कि उनकी पहचान उनकी भाषा पर टिकी है और उनके राष्ट्रवाद को भाषाई राष्ट्रवाद बनाया।
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Give an account of the Sambalpur language agitation. / संबलपुर भाषा आंदोलन का विवरण दीजिए।
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Sambalpur, annexed in 1849 and attached to the Central Provinces in 1862, had kept Odia as the language of its courts and schools although the province used Hindi. In January 1895 the Chief Commissioner, Sir Anthony MacDonnell, ordered that Hindi replace Odia as the official language of the district and be taught in its schools, which threatened to erase Odia from public life in the west. The people of Sambalpur, with few graduates and no newspaper of their own, organised quickly: a committee under the teacher and writer Dharanidhar Mishra, with Madan Mohan Mishra, Balabhadra Suar, Sripati Mishra, Braja Mohan Patnaik and the pleaders, held public meetings and sent memorials to the Chief Commissioner, the Government of India and the Secretary of State; the zamindars and the Rajas of Bamanda and Sonepur supported them, and Raja Sudhal Dev's Sambalpur Hitaishini, published from Bamanda since 1889, became the organ of the agitation. Madhusudan Das and the Utkal Dipika at Cuttack took up the cause for all Odias, and Dharanidhar Mishra wrote pamphlets proving that the language of Sambalpur was Odia. When the Chief Commissioner rejected the memorials in 1901, a deputation of Madan Mohan Mishra and Sripati Mishra went to Simla to petition the Viceroy. Lord Curzon, redrawing the map of eastern India, accepted their case: in 1903 the order of 1895 was withdrawn and Odia restored, and in 1905 Sambalpur and the western states were transferred to the Orissa Division of Bengal. It was the first successful political movement of the Odia people and prepared the ground for the Utkal Sammilani. / 1849 में विलय और 1862 में मध्य प्रांत से जुड़े संबलपुर ने अपनी अदालतों और विद्यालयों की भाषा ओड़िया रखी थी यद्यपि प्रांत हिंदी का प्रयोग करता था। जनवरी 1895 में चीफ़ कमिश्नर सर एंथनी मैकडोनेल ने आदेश दिया कि जिले की सरकारी भाषा के रूप में हिंदी ओड़िया की जगह ले और विद्यालयों में पढ़ाई जाए, जिससे पश्चिम के सार्वजनिक जीवन से ओड़िया के मिट जाने का खतरा था। कम स्नातकों और बिना अपने समाचारपत्र वाले संबलपुर के लोगों ने शीघ्रता से संगठन किया: शिक्षक और लेखक धरणीधर मिश्र के नेतृत्व में मदन मोहन मिश्र, बलभद्र सुआर, श्रीपति मिश्र, ब्रज मोहन पटनायक और वकीलों की समिति ने सार्वजनिक सभाएँ कीं और चीफ़ कमिश्नर, भारत सरकार और भारत-सचिव को स्मारपत्र भेजे; ज़मींदारों और बामंडा तथा सोनपुर के राजाओं ने समर्थन किया, और 1889 से बामंडा से प्रकाशित राजा सुधल देव की 'संबलपुर हितैषिणी' आंदोलन का मुखपत्र बनी। कटक में मधुसूदन दास और उत्कल दीपिका ने इसे सभी ओड़िया लोगों का मुद्दा बनाया, और धरणीधर मिश्र ने पुस्तिकाएँ लिखकर सिद्ध किया कि संबलपुर की भाषा ओड़िया है। जब 1901 में चीफ़ कमिश्नर ने स्मारपत्र अस्वीकार किए, तो मदन मोहन मिश्र और श्रीपति मिश्र का शिष्टमंडल वायसराय को याचिका देने शिमला गया। पूर्वी भारत का मानचित्र पुनः खींच रहे लॉर्ड कर्ज़न ने उनकी बात मानी: 1903 में 1895 का आदेश वापस लिया गया और ओड़िया बहाल हुई, और 1905 में संबलपुर और पश्चिमी रियासतें बंगाल के उड़ीसा डिवीज़न में स्थानांतरित हुईं। यह ओड़िया जनता का पहला सफल राजनीतिक आंदोलन था और इसने उत्कल सम्मिलनी की भूमि तैयार की।
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What was the contribution of the Odia press to the growth of Odia nationalism? / ओड़िया राष्ट्रवाद के विकास में ओड़िया प्रेस का क्या योगदान था?
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The press gave a people scattered across three provinces a common voice. The first lasting Odia newspaper, the Utkal Dipika, was founded at Cuttack on 4 August 1866 by Gourishankar Ray in the famine year; it reported the people's suffering and the government's neglect, fought the language controversy of 1868-70, demanded Odia officials and Odia schools, campaigned for the union of the Odia tracts, supported the Sambalpur agitation and reported the associations, and for fifty years under Gourishankar it was the school of every Odia leader. Other papers followed: Utkal Hitaishini and the Sambad Bahika of Balasore, associated with Fakir Mohan Senapati, in the 1870s; Sambalpur Hitaishini from Bamanda in 1889, the organ of the western agitation; Utkal Prabha of Mayurbhanj; Biswanath Kar's literary monthly Utkal Sahitya in 1897; Asha of Berhampur in 1913 for Ganjam; and later Samaj of Gopabandhu Das in 1919 and Prajatantra of Harekrushna Mahtab in 1923. The press told the Odias of Cuttack, Sambalpur and Ganjam that they suffered the same neglect; it defended the language by using it well and set the standard of modern Odia prose; it carried memorials, resolutions and the speeches of Madhusudan Das to the villages; it attacked discrimination in employment; and it educated a public in politics. For a people without a province, an army or a vote, the newspaper was the principal weapon. / प्रेस ने तीन प्रांतों में बिखरी जनता को एक साझा आवाज़ दी। पहला स्थायी ओड़िया समाचारपत्र, उत्कल दीपिका, अकाल के वर्ष में 4 अगस्त 1866 को कटक में गौरीशंकर राय ने स्थापित किया; इसने जनता की पीड़ा और सरकार की उपेक्षा की रिपोर्ट दी, 1868-70 का भाषा विवाद लड़ा, ओड़िया अधिकारियों और ओड़िया विद्यालयों की माँग की, ओड़िया क्षेत्रों के एकीकरण का अभियान चलाया, संबलपुर आंदोलन का समर्थन किया और संस्थाओं की रिपोर्ट दी, और गौरीशंकर के अधीन पचास वर्ष तक यह हर ओड़िया नेता की पाठशाला रहा। अन्य पत्र आए: 1870 के दशक में बालासोर के उत्कल हितैषिणी और फकीर मोहन सेनापति से जुड़ा संबाद बाहिका; 1889 में बामंडा से संबलपुर हितैषिणी, पश्चिमी आंदोलन का मुखपत्र; मयूरभंज का उत्कल प्रभा; 1897 में विश्वनाथ कर का साहित्यिक मासिक उत्कल साहित्य; 1913 में गंजाम के लिए बरहमपुर का आशा; और बाद में 1919 में गोपबंधु दास का समाज तथा 1923 में हरेकृष्ण महताब का प्रजातंत्र। प्रेस ने कटक, संबलपुर और गंजाम के ओड़िया लोगों को बताया कि वे एक ही उपेक्षा झेलते हैं; इसने भाषा का अच्छा प्रयोग करके उसकी रक्षा की और आधुनिक ओड़िया गद्य का मानक बनाया; इसने स्मारपत्र, प्रस्ताव और मधुसूदन दास के भाषण गाँवों तक पहुँचाए; इसने रोज़गार में भेदभाव पर प्रहार किया; और इसने जनता को राजनीति में शिक्षित किया। बिना प्रांत, सेना या मत वाली जनता के लिए समाचारपत्र ही प्रमुख हथियार था।
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Discuss the role of Fakir Mohan Senapati and Radhanath Ray in the Odia renaissance. / ओड़िया पुनर्जागरण में फकीर मोहन सेनापति और राधानाथ राय की भूमिका की चर्चा कीजिए।
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Fakir Mohan Senapati (1843-1918) of Balasore, largely self-taught, worked as a teacher, printer and administrator of feudatory states before turning to literature, and is the father of modern Odia prose and the Odia novel. His novels Chha Mana Atha Guntha, the story of a zamindar's ruin of a weaver couple, Mamu, Prayaschitta and Lachhama, and his short stories such as Rebati, described village life in the living speech of the people and made Odia prose a vehicle for realism; his verse translations of the Ramayana and Mahabharata carried the epics to the villages; and his autobiography recorded the age. He was the leader of the Odia teachers of Balasore in the language controversy of 1870, and his whole work was a demonstration that Odia could do whatever Bengali could. Radhanath Ray (1848-1908), the Kabibara, an inspector of schools, is the father of modern Odia poetry. His long poems Chilika, Mahayatra, Kedar Gauri, Nandikeshwari, Chandrabhaga and Usha used Western forms and Sanskrit myths but drew above all on the landscape of Odisha, its lake, hills, rivers and temples, giving the Odias a poetry of their own land and teaching them to love it. With Madhusudan Rao they form the trinity of modern Odia literature, and their writings provided the cultural content of Odia nationalism, proving that the language had a literature worth defending. / बालासोर के फकीर मोहन सेनापति (1843-1918), जो अधिकतर स्वयं-शिक्षित थे, साहित्य की ओर मुड़ने से पहले शिक्षक, मुद्रक और करद रियासतों के प्रशासक रहे, और वे आधुनिक ओड़िया गद्य और ओड़िया उपन्यास के जनक हैं। उनके उपन्यास छ माण आठ गुंठ, एक ज़मींदार द्वारा एक बुनकर दंपति की बर्बादी की कहानी, मामू, प्रायश्चित्त और लछमा, तथा रेवती जैसी कहानियों ने जनता की जीवंत बोली में ग्रामीण जीवन का चित्रण किया और ओड़िया गद्य को यथार्थवाद का माध्यम बनाया; रामायण और महाभारत के उनके पद्यानुवादों ने महाकाव्यों को गाँवों तक पहुँचाया; और उनकी आत्मकथा ने उस युग का लेखा रखा। वे 1870 के भाषा विवाद में बालासोर के ओड़िया शिक्षकों के नेता थे, और उनका समस्त कार्य यह प्रमाण था कि ओड़िया वह सब कर सकती है जो बंगला कर सकती है। राधानाथ राय (1848-1908), कविवर, विद्यालय निरीक्षक, आधुनिक ओड़िया कविता के जनक हैं। उनकी लंबी कविताओं चिलिका, महायात्रा, केदार गौरी, नंदिकेश्वरी, चंद्रभागा और उषा ने पश्चिमी रूपों और संस्कृत मिथकों का प्रयोग किया परन्तु सबसे बढ़कर ओडिशा के भूदृश्य, उसकी झील, पहाड़ियों, नदियों और मंदिरों से प्रेरणा ली, जिसने ओड़िया लोगों को अपनी भूमि की कविता दी और उन्हें उससे प्रेम करना सिखाया। मधुसूदन राव के साथ वे आधुनिक ओड़िया साहित्य की त्रयी बनाते हैं, और उनके लेखन ने ओड़िया राष्ट्रवाद को सांस्कृतिक सामग्री दी, यह सिद्ध करते हुए कि इस भाषा का साहित्य रक्षा के योग्य है।
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Write a note on the Utkal Sabha. / उत्कल सभा पर टिप्पणी लिखिए।
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The Utkal Sabha, founded at Cuttack on 16 August 1882 with Gourishankar Ray of the Utkal Dipika as secretary and the leading pleaders, zamindars and teachers of the town as members, was the first political association of Odisha, modelled on the Indian Association of Calcutta. Its objects were to represent the grievances of the Odia people to the government, to demand the union of the Odia-speaking tracts under one administration, to press for the employment of Odias in their own province, for Odia as the language of education and administration, and for the development of Odisha through communications, irrigation and schools. It sent memorials on famine relief, the tenancy law, the salt tax and the revenue settlement, and took up the Sambalpur language question. Madhusudan Das, who had returned to Cuttack in 1881 as the first Odia barrister, joined it and became its leading spirit, and the Sabha sent him as its delegate to the second session of the Indian National Congress at Calcutta in 1886, where he raised the question of the Odia-speaking areas, and to later sessions. Its limitation was that it spoke only for the Orissa Division of Bengal while the Odias of Ganjam and Sambalpur had their own separate bodies, and it was this weakness that led Madhusudan Das to found the all-Odia Utkal Sammilani in 1903, of which the Utkal Sabha was the direct ancestor. / 16 अगस्त 1882 को कटक में उत्कल दीपिका के गौरीशंकर राय को सचिव और नगर के अग्रणी वकीलों, ज़मींदारों और शिक्षकों को सदस्य बनाकर स्थापित उत्कल सभा ओडिशा की पहली राजनीतिक संस्था थी, जो कलकत्ता की इंडियन एसोसिएशन के ढाँचे पर बनी थी। इसके उद्देश्य थे ओड़िया जनता की शिकायतें सरकार के सामने रखना, ओड़िया-भाषी क्षेत्रों के एक प्रशासन के अधीन एकीकरण की माँग करना, अपने प्रांत में ओड़िया लोगों के रोज़गार, शिक्षा और प्रशासन की भाषा के रूप में ओड़िया, और संचार, सिंचाई तथा विद्यालयों द्वारा ओडिशा के विकास के लिए दबाव डालना। इसने अकाल राहत, काश्तकारी कानून, नमक कर और राजस्व बंदोबस्त पर स्मारपत्र भेजे, और संबलपुर भाषा प्रश्न उठाया। 1881 में पहले ओड़िया बैरिस्टर के रूप में कटक लौटे मधुसूदन दास इसमें जुड़े और इसके प्रमुख प्रेरक बने, और सभा ने उन्हें 1886 में कलकत्ता के भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस के दूसरे अधिवेशन में अपना प्रतिनिधि बनाकर भेजा, जहाँ उन्होंने ओड़िया-भाषी क्षेत्रों का प्रश्न उठाया, और बाद के अधिवेशनों में भी। इसकी सीमा यह थी कि यह केवल बंगाल के उड़ीसा डिवीज़न के लिए बोलती थी जबकि गंजाम और संबलपुर के ओड़िया लोगों की अपनी अलग संस्थाएँ थीं, और इसी कमज़ोरी ने मधुसूदन दास को 1903 में अखिल-ओड़िया उत्कल सम्मिलनी की स्थापना के लिए प्रेरित किया, जिसकी उत्कल सभा प्रत्यक्ष पूर्वज थी।
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Why is Madhusudan Das called the father of Odia nationalism? / मधुसूदन दास को ओड़िया राष्ट्रवाद का जनक क्यों कहा जाता है?
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Madhusudan Das (1848-1934), the Utkal Gaurab, was born at Satyabhamapur in Cuttack district, became in 1870 the first Odia graduate and then the first Odia M.A. and barrister, and in 1881 returned to Cuttack, where for fifty years his house was the headquarters of the Odia cause. He earned the title by combining every kind of service. As a politician he led the Utkal Sabha, attended the Congress from 1886 to raise the Odia question, sat in the Bengal Legislative Council from 1896 and the Imperial Council from 1913, and in 1921 became the first Odia Minister in the Bihar and Orissa government, resigning in 1923 over a salary cut he found insulting; in every council he pleaded for the union of the Odia tracts, Odia employment and development. As an organiser he founded the Utkal Sammilani in December 1903, the first all-Odia platform uniting the Orissa Division, Sambalpur, Ganjam and the feudatory states, kept it apart from the Congress so that rajas and loyalists could join, and guided it for twenty years, taking the Odia case to the Simon Commission in 1928. As an industrialist he founded the Utkal Tannery in 1905 and Orissa Art Wares to revive Cuttack filigree, ruining himself to teach Odias self-reliance. As a social reformer he championed girls' education, through his adopted daughter Sailabala who founded the first women's college, and the uplift of untouchables. His teaching that a nation is its people, not its territory, and his call to Odias to be proud and united, made him the father of the movement, though he died on 4 February 1934, two years before the province he had sought was created. / मधुसूदन दास (1848-1934), उत्कल गौरव, कटक जिले के सत्यभामापुर में जन्मे, 1870 में पहले ओड़िया स्नातक और फिर पहले ओड़िया एम.ए. तथा बैरिस्टर बने, और 1881 में कटक लौटे, जहाँ पचास वर्ष तक उनका घर ओड़िया आंदोलन का मुख्यालय रहा। उन्होंने हर प्रकार की सेवा को मिलाकर यह उपाधि अर्जित की। राजनेता के रूप में उन्होंने उत्कल सभा का नेतृत्व किया, ओड़िया प्रश्न उठाने के लिए 1886 से कांग्रेस में गए, 1896 से बंगाल विधान परिषद और 1913 से इम्पीरियल परिषद में रहे, और 1921 में बिहार और उड़ीसा सरकार में पहले ओड़िया मंत्री बने, 1923 में वेतन-कटौती को अपमानजनक मानकर त्यागपत्र दिया; हर परिषद में उन्होंने ओड़िया क्षेत्रों के एकीकरण, ओड़िया रोज़गार और विकास की वकालत की। संगठक के रूप में उन्होंने दिसंबर 1903 में उत्कल सम्मिलनी की स्थापना की, जो उड़ीसा डिवीज़न, संबलपुर, गंजाम और करद रियासतों को जोड़ने वाला पहला अखिल-ओड़िया मंच था, इसे कांग्रेस से अलग रखा ताकि राजा और राजभक्त जुड़ सकें, और बीस वर्ष तक इसका मार्गदर्शन किया, 1928 में ओड़िया पक्ष साइमन कमीशन तक ले गए। उद्योगपति के रूप में उन्होंने 1905 में उत्कल टैनरी और कटक की तारकशी को पुनर्जीवित करने के लिए उड़ीसा आर्ट वेयर्स की स्थापना की, ओड़िया लोगों को आत्मनिर्भरता सिखाने में स्वयं को बर्बाद कर लिया। समाज सुधारक के रूप में उन्होंने अपनी दत्तक पुत्री शैलबाला के माध्यम से, जिन्होंने पहला महिला महाविद्यालय स्थापित किया, बालिका शिक्षा और अस्पृश्यों के उत्थान का समर्थन किया। उनकी यह शिक्षा कि राष्ट्र उसकी जनता है, उसका भूभाग नहीं, और ओड़िया लोगों से गर्व और एकता का उनका आह्वान, ने उन्हें आंदोलन का जनक बनाया, यद्यपि उनका निधन 4 फ़रवरी 1934 को हुआ, उस प्रांत के बनने से दो वर्ष पहले जिसे उन्होंने चाहा था।
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What were the main features of Odia nationalism in the nineteenth century? / उन्नीसवीं शताब्दी में ओड़िया राष्ट्रवाद की मुख्य विशेषताएँ क्या थीं?
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Odia nationalism in the nineteenth century had four main features. It was a linguistic nationalism: it was built on the Odia language, its enemies were those who called Odia a dialect or imposed Bengali, Hindi or Telugu on Odia children, its heroes were writers, editors and teachers such as Fakir Mohan Senapati, Gourishankar Ray and Radhanath Ray, and its first victories were the retention of Odia in the Cuttack schools in 1870 and its restoration in Sambalpur in 1903. It was a nationalism of union: its political demand, first made by the Utkal Sabha in the 1880s and carried by the Utkal Sammilani after 1903, was the amalgamation of the Odia-speaking tracts of Bengal, Madras and the Central Provinces under one administration, achieved in 1936. It was loyal and constitutional: since Odias were a minority in each province and depended on the government against the majority, their leaders used petitions, memorials, deputations and council speeches, were patronised by the rajas and zamindars, and kept apart from the Congress and its agitations until the 1920s. And it was inclusive of the whole people: it mobilised the townspeople of Sambalpur and the traders of Ganjam, spoke to the village through literature, and included Hindus, the Christian Madhusudan Das and Muslims without communal division. It anticipated the principle of linguistic provinces later adopted by the Congress in 1920 and applied to all India in 1956. / उन्नीसवीं शताब्दी के ओड़िया राष्ट्रवाद की चार मुख्य विशेषताएँ थीं। यह भाषाई राष्ट्रवाद था: यह ओड़िया भाषा पर निर्मित था, इसके शत्रु वे थे जो ओड़िया को बोली कहते या ओड़िया बच्चों पर बंगला, हिंदी या तेलुगु थोपते थे, इसके नायक फकीर मोहन सेनापति, गौरीशंकर राय और राधानाथ राय जैसे लेखक, संपादक और शिक्षक थे, और इसकी पहली विजयें 1870 में कटक के विद्यालयों में ओड़िया का बने रहना और 1903 में संबलपुर में उसकी बहाली थीं। यह एकीकरण का राष्ट्रवाद था: इसकी राजनीतिक माँग, जो पहले 1880 के दशक में उत्कल सभा ने की और 1903 के बाद उत्कल सम्मिलनी ने आगे बढ़ाई, बंगाल, मद्रास और मध्य प्रांत के ओड़िया-भाषी क्षेत्रों का एक प्रशासन के अधीन एकीकरण थी, जो 1936 में प्राप्त हुई। यह राजभक्त और संवैधानिक था: चूँकि ओड़िया हर प्रांत में अल्पसंख्यक थे और बहुसंख्यकों के विरुद्ध सरकार पर निर्भर थे, उनके नेताओं ने याचिकाओं, स्मारपत्रों, शिष्टमंडलों और परिषद-भाषणों का प्रयोग किया, राजाओं और ज़मींदारों का संरक्षण पाया, और 1920 के दशक तक कांग्रेस और उसके आंदोलनों से अलग रहे। और यह पूरी जनता को समाहित करने वाला था: इसने संबलपुर के नगरवासियों और गंजाम के व्यापारियों को संगठित किया, साहित्य के माध्यम से गाँव से बात की, और बिना सांप्रदायिक विभाजन के हिंदुओं, ईसाई मधुसूदन दास और मुसलमानों को शामिल किया। इसने भाषाई प्रांतों के उस सिद्धांत की पूर्वकल्पना की जिसे बाद में 1920 में कांग्रेस ने अपनाया और 1956 में पूरे भारत पर लागू किया गया।
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