Like every place on earth, Odisha too is enriched with literature and culture native to its soil. One can very well feel the warmth of it looking at the architectural splendour of Konark or leafing through the pages of medieval literatures produced by Sarala Das, Jagannath Das and many others. The poets, sculptors and craftsmen have graced both mental and territorial landscapes which can be evaluated by any art or literary enthusiast in a single view. Dr Subhendu Mund, an established poet and critic and the author of this book is one of them. His perceptions on Odia identity are clear and profound so as to arouse questing spirits among non-Odias to know more and more about Odisha through this book. Odisha, as such has become the veritable ideal of his mind and this literary-cum-research output is a solid document to bear witness for the same. While analyzing two translations of Phakir Mohan Senapati's autobiography, the book provides valuable study in the context of time and society peering through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
I believe, people outside always have considerable appetite to know about literary and cultural happenings in Odisha. In such an eventuality, this book may come in the significant rank of requirement to suit their purpose. This may also prove to be an admirable guide for students and teachers because of its illuminating gloss. Odisha Sahitya Akademi values this publication as its prime credit to sparkle more and more with the aesthetic, literary light.
Since my early youth I have been fascinated with the idea of Odianess and have been interrogating several issues which seem to be perpetually entwined with its very subsistence. I have been striving to get the answers to the myriad questions which hunt us even today. Thus, since the beginning of my career, my personal and scholastic fascinations have been engaged by Odisha, Odia language, Odia culture and Odia literature. I have always sought to situate them in the perspective of Odisha's history, especially pertaining to the colonial era, to comprehend the collective anxieties of the Odia people. The research papers anthologised in this volume seek to explore the essence of Odia identity through personalities, events and texts in the context of Odishan history.
We all know that Odisha as a geocultural and a geopolitical province has what most other states/regions do not have. It is a region rich in natural resources: endowed with rivers, lakes, fountains, forests, a long coastline, ranges of mountains, terrains, a wide variety of flora and fauna what not. It is rich in minerals and other resources as well. It also enjoys rich human resources. It has the recorded history of thousands of years. Its language is one of the oldest in the world and Odisha was accorded the provincial status on the basis of language, the first of its kind in India. Besides, Odia has been officially acknowledged as an ancient language with a respectable literary tradition by its being granted the classical status. Odisha has had a well-defined social life basking in the glory of a rich heritage: literary, cultural, architectural and archaeological. Both archaeological and textual evidences confirm a glorious maritime past which still lives in our collective memory. Odisha also enjoys a special position owing to its long history of creativity in literature, aesthetics/poetics, plastic arts, performing arts, sartorial innovations, etc.. It has developed its own metaphysical traditions in the face of the influx of several cults and beliefs down the ages.
Yet Odias have always been in a state of anxiety over their identity, over the sustained survival of their culture and language. We in Odisha keep talking about our glorious past and our unique heritage, but, unfortunately, to the world without, Odisha still remains an unknown geographical location somewhere in eastern India.
It is my learned conviction that this state of affairs is more or less the consequence of the distorted and insecure circumstances in which history has placed us. It appears to me that the collapse of the indigenous monarchy in the mid sixteenth century, most importantly after the death of Gajapati Prataparudra Deva that Odias started losing their self-confidence and their position in their homeland itself. The Maratha rule took the Odias' self-esteem downhill and the situation became even more deplorable after the advent of the British imperialist power in the early nineteenth century which resorted to a policy of 'divide-and-rule'. In some of the essays included in this volume I have tried to show how the colonial administrative policy perpetuated the demoralisation of the Odia people.
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