Factotums of Narendra and Naveen insult the founding father of Oriya Nation

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

It is sad that the protégés of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in their shameless competition to project their respective bosses as real rulers have shown blatant disrespect to the founding father of the motherland of the Oriya Nation, the great late Madhusudan Das – most revered Madhu babu – whom the Oriya people call Kula Gourav (the pride of their race) and the Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi had called his Guru, as revered to him as Leo Tolstoy.

From Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. LXVI, page 260, we can get what Gandhiji had told of Madhu babu.

Gandhiji had convened a national conference of educationists and who’s who of India’s freedom fighters subscribing to his ideals at Seagaon on 22nd October 1937. While elaborating his ideas in this conference, styled All India Educational Conference, Gandhiji had paid richest tributes to Madhu babu in the following words:

“The late Madhusudan Das was a lawyer, but he was convinced that without the use of hands and legs our brain would be atrophied and even if it worked, it would be a home of Satan. Tolstoy had taught the same lesson through many of his tales”, he had said.

Today the whole of Orissa is observing Madhu babu’s 81st death anniversary and paying glowing tributes to the greatest ever Oriya after Gurudev Buddha, Emperor Kharabela, and Emperor Kapilendra Dev. But the political factotums of BJP and BJD are indulged so shamelessly in projecting their de facto owners that, they have marred the sanctity of the greatest Oriya icon by covering the entire podium of Madhu babu’s statue in front of the Governor’s House with posterbpards.

The picture above speaks of this.

The picture bellow shows how the sacred place has been outraged by the factotums of Narendra and Naveen as they have made a compromise in their poster war.

We remember a line of a verse of Madhu babu that had pointed out to the people that they must oust their class enemies from their socio-political set-ups as otherwise their country shall be ruined. He had branded them as vultures and jackals and asked, “Dear brethren, can a patient survive, if vultures and jackals are allowed to treat him?

It is time for the Oriyas to wake up and answer.