Orissa Matters

Narasinghpur: BJD Chief Minister notified on BJD hooliganism perpetrated through Police

Thousands of peace loving people of Narasinghpur, the Constituency of Minister Debi Prasad Mishra, have notified BJD Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on BJD hooliganism perpetrated through the Police as per the ruling party scheme to keep the public terrorized so that nobody would dare to raise any more voice against ongoing oppressions.

They have alleged, entirely innocent persons are entangled by the Police in a murder case, simply because, their principled campaigns against liquor mafia was irritating the local BJD leadership.

True, a known face of BJD, Sushant Bhol by name, was shut down to death for yet not known reason by yet undetermined gun person on May 10. He was allegedly involved in many criminal cases, and quite controversial in the locality.

The local inhabitants suspect that internecine rivalry in the BJD for ruling the roost is responsible for his death. But, the wife of the deceased, instigated by BJD local leadership, has raised allegations against two such persons who were disadvantageous to Minister Mishra whose close supporters were being affected by their social activism.
The two social activists are Jnanaranjan Nayak and Sushant Kumar Mohanty.

Sri. Nayak, a lawyer by profession, is the Secretary of Gandhi Smaraka Nidhi, Narasinghpur; and Sri Mohanty is the President of Mukti, a local organization social activists. Both of them have been leading the marginal farmers and agricultural labors against exploitation by big land owners. But, their leadership in Nishamukti Andolan (people’s movement for freeing Narasinghpur from intoxicants) is spectacular. The government liqueur shops established at Jilinda were working as masks of hooch trade. The duo has forced their closure by mass movement. This and much other mass action they were leading had been irritating the BJD in Narasinghpur. So, people say, the BJD leadership was in search of opportunity to teach them a lesion. And now, death of Bhol has given them that opportunity.

Condemning the false implication of Nayak and Mohanty, under whose selfless leadership they were able to enforce closure of the liqueur hub at Jilinda, the women demonstrated before the Tahsil office in large numbers, demanding withdrawal of prosecution against the two and institution of prosecution against the police officer who has falsely implicated them.

When people of Narasinghpur have demonstrated against this ruling party mischief, leadership of Orissa Lawyers Association have condemned the wrongful conduct of the Police and demanded for action against the officer in charge of Narasinghpur P.S. in a press conference held at Bhubaneswar, on May 25.

(N.B. The pictures of demonstration are from Ajaya Panda of narasinghpur)

Happy News to Share: CBSE Topper prefers to be Engineer than hankering after Indian Administrative Service

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

When a corrupt, incompetent, shortsighted government run by self-centric politicians and IAS officers is pushing the State into ruin, a few brilliant students are re-kindling her hopes for a better future by fetching landmark success in their studies. One such student is Ms. Namrata Mohanty who has topped science stream of CBSE 12th in the zone comprising Orissa, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal . She has bagged 98.6% to have the top position in +2 from where ways are laid into all directions of higher education. Namrata’s preference is engineering like her father.

Her father Er. Priyadarshi Mohanty is an electrical engineer of eminence. He presently holds the position of DGM in NTPC in its Eastern Zone –II at Bhubaneswar. She is the granddaughter of scientist Jitendriyanath Mohany, former Professor in Physics in the paternal side and of Malay Kumar Pattanayak, a former top marketing executive. She owes her educational upbringing to her mother Swapna Pattanayak, who had her Masters from the State’s premier institute of higher education – The Utkal University.

A Delhi Public School student from Kolkata Deep Battacharya is bracketed with her in the top position with equal percentage. Namrata’s school is DAV Public School, Unit-8, Bhubaneswar.

For me personally it is a matter of utmost happiness, as she is my granddaughter from my Bhaniji (niece) Lara (Swapna Pattanayak).

Navakalevara: Legends and reality

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Legends are the most misguiding mischief aimed at superimposing lies on reality so that indigenous people of an occupied land are kept too dazzled to see the dark face of the rulers and the class of exploiters can keep its victims subjugated to its authority, while forcing them to forget the heroic history of evolution of their own philosophy of life, their own splendid spiritual realizations, their own socio-economic uniqueness, their own ancient culture, their own valorous past, their own way of social integration and their own civilization.

We see this mischief galore in the context of Navakalevara of SriJagannatha.

So, here, we are to rip apart the legends and bring the reality of the Navakalevara to light, as thereby alone we can reach the lost uniqueness of the people of Orissa.

We will use Puri Sankaracharya’s self-proclaimed authority over Navakalevara to proceed with our purpose.

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:

Irresponsible Journalism: Prameya makes mountain out of molehill

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

The daily newspaper Prameya, published from Bhubaneswar, has made a mountain out of a molehill in eagerness to do which, it has contravened journalistic ethics that prohibit innuendoes against any woman.

The victim of its innuendoes is a lady member of Orissa Legislative Assembly Ms. Rajashree Mallick of the ruling BJD from Jagatsinghpur.

A Neem tree (Azadirachta Indica) selected as Daru (wooden log) for Nava Kalevar of SriJagannatha in the constituency of Ms. Mallick had attracted thousands of believers to the spot. Excise Minister of Orissa, Dr. Damodar Raut hailing from the same district was one of the visitors. Coincidentally Ms. Mallick had been to the spot at the same time. Both of them together in company of many visitors proceeded to the spot and Prameya had photographed them.

The information was not of any public importance, and, who were visiting the spot was not engaging media or mass mind. The issue of public importance was the Daru and the deliberate rituals going on there in contravention of norms that controls the choice of the Daru. Settled norms stipulate that if any bird would be having its nest in any of the branches of the tree, that tree must not be selected for building the new idol of Jagannatha. On this particular tree, an owl family was having its nest. The false and concocted legend of the so-called Daru was identified on the basis of dreams was certainly not matching the norms. The media had a responsibility to explain the phenomenon to the people keeping in mind the emphasis of the Constitution of India on ‘scientific tenor’ in matter of such religious activities.

When Prameya has shown no interest to handle the Daru issue, it has preferred to highlight the picture of the Minister and the lady MLA moving towards the Daru with a hand of the Minister put on the shoulder of the MLA captioning the same as “moment of intimacy”. The body of the story emphasizes that there was discernible deep intimacy between them both and they were engaged in “very secret discussion” on the spot of the Daru. Innuendoes are innuendoes. They cause damage, might be inadvertently, and always make mountains out of molehills. Therefore, Ethics of Journalism never countenances any presentation that is pregnant with elements to generate any innuendo against any woman or against whosoever has no sharpness to instantly grasp the tricks detractors play through pet media houses.

Journalism is the only profession that needs to cleanse itself from within, but there is no mechanism for that. The Prameya picture with the report dated May 14 is put here for records.

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik seems to have developed a wrong notion that governance of Orissa in Oriya depends upon his mercy. His press-note of December 17 and full page display advertisement in major broadsheets of today force us to arrive at this apprehension.

In his December 17 press note it was declared that he had held a meeting with the five members of the ministerial committee on that day for the purpose of “strictly implementing the Orissa Official Language Act, 1954 in official and non-official level” to facilitate which a website has been floated by the government. In the full page multi-color advertisement in broadsheet dailies today, this is intriguingly missing.

The advertisement is designed to tell the people that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has taken historical steps to save and develop Oriya language, and has enumerated the steps he has taken. This is blatant lie. Neither he nor his government has executed any single item claimed to be “historical” in the official advertisement. The entire advertisement is nothing but false propaganda. What a shame it is, that, the people of Orissa are taken for granted by their Chief Minister! Read more →