SBI forces Bengali Language on Oriya speaking people

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

In whole of India, Orissa has a very unique place in history as not only the land of Kalinga war, but also as the land where British had not dared to set their ugly feet till the rest of the sub-continent had come to their control. The last soil to have been annexed to British India through treachery, Orissa was the first to have raised her sword to oust the British from her soil. In acknowledging this, he British historian G. Toynbee has said in his book A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF ORISSA , t“It was not long, however, before we had to encounter a storm which burst with so sudden fury as to threaten our expulsion, if not from the whole of Orissa, at least from the territory of Khurda”.

This heroic land, however, due to conspiracies of non-Oriya neighbors, had to succumb to British subjugation. The matter is elaborately discussed in orissamatters.com. Yet, for ready reference it may be recalled that, afraid of Oriya “disposition” (Magistrate W. Forrester to Commissioner Robert Ker on 9 September 1818) the British had divided the Oriya speaking tracks to four parts and merged the divided parts with Bengali, Hindi and Telugu speaking provinces to demoralize the Oriyas by reducing them to linguistic minorities in those rival areas. Exploiting this situations, some low-breed fellows managing their livelihood by working as pimps in red-light districts in those neighboring states had arbitrarily taken over Oriya lands and emerged first generation Zamidars. Those non-Oriya native servants and allies of the British were so savagely looting Orissa the thenBritish Collector of Cuttack Mr. W. Trower had described them as “scourge” in his report dated 23 May 1817(Revenue Administration in Orissa).

When people of Orissa raised a movement for amalgamation of all the Oriya speaking tracks so that they can collectively obstruct the loot of their land and assets by the non-Oriya servants and helpers of the British, the Bengalis started vomiting mad and maddening avowals that is a part of their own and hence Oriya speaking tracks annexed to their province were their own. Hindi and Telugu speaking provinces followed suit.

This claim of non-Oriyas had been taken up in Linguistic Survey of India the finding of which was given the words by G.A.Grierson. “The Oriya language can boast of a rich vocabulary in which respect neither the Bengali nor Hindi nor Telugu can vie with it”, it declared. The Bengalis got a great slap when their jewel linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterjee said, “It may be said without travesty of linguistic truth” that Oriya is much senior to Bengali and is Bengali’s elder sister”.

So, in language issue, the Bengalis know where they stand. Yet, they have been trying to inject their nuisance in villages of Orissa near to their provincial boarder. The language issue has remained the sensitive issue between the two linguistic rivals.

What was the necessity of telling this? This is because, the State Bank of India, running its LCPC Branch in Kolkata, has played a new mischief of forcing Bengali language on Oriya speaking customers of SBI in Orissa under guise of a RBI guidelines.

This is criminally offending to the people of Orissa. I would like the SBI and RBI national authorities to explain their positions to people of Orissa and beg unconditional apology publicly for the mischief the LCPC branch of SBI, Kolkata has played. Here below is the corpus delicti:

SBI forces Bengali on Oriya people

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