| Pandit Gopabandhu
Das, hailed as ‘Utkalmani’ by Acharya
Sir P. C. Roy after his release from prison in
1924, was born in a small hamlet named Suando
in Sakhigopal P .S. in Puri district on 9 October
1877, in a poor Brahmin family. Gopabandhu’s
parents were Daityari Das and Swarnamayee Devi.
Daityari had married thrice, and Gopabandhu was
the son of his third wife. Swarnamayee died at
child-birth, and Gopabandhu was brought up by
his paternal aunt, Kamala Devi.
Gopanbandhu’s family belonged to a predominately
conservative Brahmin area, steeped in superstition.
In spite of this discouraging background, Gopabandhu’s
could free himself at quite an early age from
superstitions and prejudices and came to acquiire
a most liberal progressive outlook on life.
After his primary and middle vernacular education
in the village, Gopabandhu joined the Zilla
School at Puri and passed the Matriculation
examination in 1899. Later, graduating from
the Ravenshaw College, Calcutta, in 1904, he
went to Calcutta for M. S. and law studies.
He left the M. A. classes later and took the
B.L. degree from the Calcutta University in
1906. On his return from the Calcutta, Gopabandhu
served for a short while as Headmaster in a
school in the Princely State of Nilgiri, and
then set up practice as a lawyer in his home
town, Puri. In the meanwhile his wife died,
leaving one son and two to dedicate himself
to social and political work.
His first great constructive work was the establishment
of a High English School at Sakhigopal in August
1909, with a view to dispel the darkness of
superstition and conservatism in that Brahmin-dominated
from some of his venture he got financial assistance
from some of his classmates who were well placed
in life. The new school, known as Satyabadi
or Sakhigopal Vana school, known as Satyabadi
or Sakhigopal Vana Vidyalaya (Grove School),
had on its teaching staff some of the best educated
and talented young men of the period, Nilakantha
Das, Pandit Godavaris Mishra, Pandit Krupasindhu
Mishra and Acdharya Hrihar Das.
These four with Pandit Gopabandhu Das were known
as the ‘Five Friends’ or the ‘Pancha
Sakhas’ of the Satyabadi era. Gopabandhu
repeatedly spurned offers of financial assistance
from the Government in order to avoid rigidities
of the Education Department. The school served
for more than a decade as a radiating centre
of education, politics, literature, social service
and national work. When the ‘Five Friends’
plunged themselves into the Non-Cooperation
Movement of 1921, the school was converted into
a National School and was ultimately closed
down in 1926 under Government pressure.
Gopabandhu was an ardent patriot. From his student
days he had associated himself with the Utkal
Union Conference (Utkal Sammilani), organised
by the top leaders of Orissa to fight for the
amalgamation of all the Oriya-speaking areas
scattered in the neighbouring provinces under
one common administration. He started as a volunteer
and ended as the President of the Sammilani
and worked for the growth of Oriya nationalism
as a component of Indian nationalism. Ultimately
when the Non-Cooperation Movement started, he
became the President of the Orissa Provincial
Congress Committee, and merged the Utkal Union
Conference with the Indian National Congress,
thereby sublimating Oriya nationalism in the
Indian nationalism.
It was at his instance that the Nagpur Session
of the Indian National Congress in 1920 accepted
the principle of linguistic division of provinces
and creations of Provincial Congress Committees
on this principle. When the All India Congress
Committee directed the formation of a separate
Congress Committee for Congress Orissa, even
though Orissa was a division in the province
of Bihar and Orissa, Gopabandhu did not feel
the necessity of continuing the Utkal Union
Conference any longer.
It was a bold step for a leader below 50 years
of age, and it was a compliment to his leadership
when his elders in public life, though Orissa,
Gopabandhu did not feel the necessity of continuing
the Utkal Union Conference any longer. It was
a bold step for a leader below 50 years of age,
and it was a compliment to his leadership when
his elders in public life, though unhappy when
his elders in public life, though unhappy about
it, accepted his decision without any demur.
Gopabandhu was not only a high priest of Orissan
nationalism, he was also the pioneer of Indian
nationalism in Orissa. Having agreed with Mahatma
Gandhi’s proposal to lead the Non-Cooperation
Movement in Orissa, he set about organising
centres of movement throughout Orissa and formed
District Congress Comittees. He was arrested
in 1921, following the publication of a comment
in his weekly paper, the Samaj, on the alleged
rape of a woman by some police constables.
He was tried but acquitted in spite of tremendous
official pressure exerted on the trying Magistrate,
Satish Chandra Bose, an elder brother of Netaji
Subhas Chandra Bose, who resigned from Government
Service thereafter, Gopabandhu was arrested
again in June 1922 for participation in the
Non-Cooperation Movement and was imprisoned
in the Hazaribagh Jail for a little over two
years.
Earlier, Gopabandhu at the behest of Utkal Gourab
Madhu Sudan Das was persuaded to take to constitutional
politics in 1917,when
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he was
elected to the Bihar and Orissa. He completed
his term as a member, but when the first elections
were held under the Government of India Act 1919,
he stubbornly refused to go back to the Legislative
Council. In his place Utkal Gourab Madhu Sudan
Das went to the Council and became a Minister
for Local Self-Government. As a member of the
Council, Gopabandhu got the B. L. Classes of the
Ravenshaw College re-started and M. A. classes
in English opened.
He fought for the manufacture of salt by the coastal
people without payment of excise duties. He also
organised Sanskrit education in Orissa. The most
notable contribution of Gopabandhu as a legislator
was in the filed of flood and famile relief, and
when the official members from Orissa started
black-mailing him in the Council, he by his powerful
advocacy brought the Lt. Governor, Sir Edward
Gait, to Orissa who, on the conclusion of his
visit, admitted that there had been official bungling
in flood and famine relief.
Because of his flair for social service, Lala
Lajpat Rai, founder of the Servants of the People
Society at Lahore, invited Gopabandhu to become
a member of the Society. In 1926 he not only became
a member of the Society, but was also elected
as its Vice-President. On the eve of his death
he bequeathed his newspaper, the Samaj, to the
Servants of the People Society.
Flood and famine relief was the most important
part of his public work, but he realised that
unless there was a forum for ventilating the public
opinion in order to reach the ears of the authorities,
public service could not be effectively rendered.
He, therefore, founded a weekly newspaper, the
Samaj, on 4 October 1919. The Samaj had its first
office at Sakhigopal, from where it was shifted
to Puri in 1925, and to Cuttack in 1927. It became
a daily newspaper on 6 April 1930, the day of
Gandhiji’s Dandi March for breaking the Salt
Law.
On 2 June 1928 Gopabandhu attended a conference
of Oriya workers in Calcutta. He was in failing
health at the time, and died just a fortnight
later, on 17 June, at the comparatively young
age of 52.
Gopabandhu was a revolutionary for his age Coming
from an area inhabited by Brahmins steeped in
morbid superstitions, he sought to pull down the
walls of obscurantism and usher in an era of social
progress through his Satyabadi School.
Gopabandhu tried to break the barrier of caste
by introducing community-dinners for students
of all castes. The local Brahmins were so much
incensed with the unorthodox conduct of the
teachers of the Satyabadi School building and
the library. Gopabandhu, a Brahmin himself,
was however not irreligious. He was closely
associated with the temples of Lord Jagannath
at Puri and Sakhigopal at Sstyabadi. But he
had an ardent faith in the catholicity of the
cult of Lord Jagannath and believed in humanism.
His novel educational experiment at Sakhigopal
evoked admiration from far and near. It anticipated
by a quarter century Gandhiji’s constructive
programme and his scheme of basic education.
Sir Edward Gait, the Lt. Governor of Bihar and
Orisa, once visited the school and confided
to the Principal, Pandit Nilakantha Das, “I
received C.I.D. reports that bombs were being
manufactured in your school”. Pandit Nilkantha
replied, pointing at the students, “Yes,
these are lives which will ultimately destroy
the British Empire in India”.
In other words, the students had been educated
not only in the traditional system, they were
also imbued with the spirit of nationalism.
It was a part of the curriculum of the school
to take the students on foot-march to places
of historical interest to revive memories of
old glories. Pandit Godavaris Mishra, a teacher
of the school and an eminent litterateur, was
asked to produce dramas of national importance,
and he chose two eminent kings of independent
Orissa, Purushottam Dev and Mukund Dev as the
them of his dramas.
His lyrics also burned with national fervour.
Pandit Krupasindhu Mishra, another teacher and
a philosopher by training, wrote a history of
the Barabati Fort and also started writing a
history of Orissa, which was left incomplete
because of his untimely death. Gopabandhu worked
all through his life for the cultural unity
of Orissa and also for the amalgamation of all
the Oriya-speaking tracts scattered in different
provinces under one common administration. He
was, therefore, veritably one of the founders
of the separate province of Orissa. But when
the call of the nation came, he had no hesitation
in merging the Utkal Union Conference in the
Indian National Congress.
Gopalbandhu was a litterateur of no mean distinction.
Literature was the vehicle of his patriotism,
and all his poems, prose pieces and editorials
in the weekly Satyabadi Magazine and the Samaj
were intended to develop a patriotic spirit
among his people. Among his important compositions
were: ‘Bandir Atma Katha’ (Autobiography
of a Prisoner), 'Abakash Chinta' (Leisure-time
Thoughts),’Dharmapada’, 'Go-Mahatmya’
(Importance of the bovine population),’Kara
Kavita’ (poems written in Jail) and ‘Nachiketa
Upakhyan’ (The Story of Nachiketa).
Gopabandhu had a fair complexion and his usual
dress consisted of a dhoti, a kurta and a chaddar.
He was simple, unassuming and modest. His name
is a house-hold word in Orissa. A flood or a
famine even to-day brings back to the minds
of the older people the saintly bearded figure
of Gopabandhu.
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