Sandeep Sahu

sandeep-sir-284x300By Sandeep Sahu

What Albert Einstein had said about Mahatma Gandhi could well be said - and equally befittingly - about Nabakrushna Choudhury, an illustrious disciple of the Father of the Nation. “Generations to come will scarcely believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.” But in a supreme irony, the two-time Chief Minister and one of the architects of the modern state of Odisha was barely remembered on the day of his birth anniversary on Wednesday when the state government was busy organizing a human chain as part of the year-long centenary celebrations of another two-term Chief Minister: Biju Patnaik. And it wasn’t even Biju’s birth or death anniversary!

True Gandhian that he was, it is highly unlikely that Naba Babu – as he was known to one and all – would have taken offence at this slight. Nor would he have challenged the falsification of history and usurpation of the credit for setting up the Hirakud dam, the Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP), the Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) and the Burla engineering college by sycophants of other leaders. Because in a world where people would give their right hand to have their names engraved in history, Naba Babu was an anachronism; believing in doing his work quietly and without any fanfare.

But if he was alive today, Naba Babu would certainly be pained at the state of the poor, the down-trodden, the dalits and the adivasis for whom he worked ceaselessly all his life. His connect with the poor was not a put on as in the case of other politicians, but came out of a lived experience. To shun the luxuries that come with being born into a zamindar family and then live the life of a farm labourer would have been a tough call for most people, but not for him.

His biographer, the erudite Chittaranjan Das, believed that Naba Babu was essentially a social worker and never really had the appetite for the power games that are such an integral part of politics. And one tends to agree with him. How many of his contemporaries would have had the cheek to say ‘No’ to Jawaharlal Nehru, of all people, when the latter insisted that Naba Babu should become the Chief Minister of the state for a second time? Or when he refused to reconsider his decision to quit as Chief Minister in 1956? Or defied the party line and jumped headlong into the Praja Mandal agitation in the 1940s?

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Naba Babu had no use for the trappings of power. Politics for him was a means to serve the people, the downtrodden in particular, and not to acquire power. That’s why he laid down office as Chief Minister in 1956 without so much as a whimper when he found some of his own party colleagues conspiring against him. In his autobiography ‘Smruti O Anubhuti’, former Chief Minister Nilamani Routray presents a very touching account of the human side of Naba Babu. Having succeeded in his mission to remove Naba Babu as Chief Minister earlier in the day, Nilamani says he was stunned to find him playing with his young son (present Revenue Minister Bijayshree Rourtary) at his Cuttack residence barely hours after resigning as Chief Minister! “I was in tears at his magnanimous gesture,” writes the man, who readily confesses that he was among the conspirators who worked to oust Naba Babu as Chief Minister.

It is a measure of his commitment to social causes that Naba Babu participated actively in the Bhoodan and Gramdaan movements and frequently accompanied Binoba Bhave in his campaigns even when he was the Chief Minister. But unlike other politicians, he always travelled third class in trains and never billed a paisa to the state exchequer. His stints at the Sabarmati  Ashram in Ahmedabad and Shantiniketan (where he found his life partner and life-long fellow traveler Malati Devi) went a long way into the making of the person that Naba Babu was.

After retiring from politics, Naba Babu devoted the rest of his life working for social upliftment of the poor and downtrodden and solving economic, ethnic and other problems across the country. From trouble-torn Kashmir to strife-torn Assam and insurgency-infested Nagaland, there was a hardly a trouble hot spot in the country where he did not go – and succeed – in his mission to restore peace. Closer home, he camped in Rourkela after anti-Muslim riots rocked the steel city in 1964 and did not return till peace was completely restored. Down south, his intervention ensured that revolutionary leader Nagbhushan Patnaik and his colleagues, who had been sentenced to death for their violent Naxalite activities in undivided Koraput district, were pardoned by the President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy.

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If nothing else, Naba Babu should be remembered by all Odias for at least two of his lasting contributions to the state. The first of these was the abolition of zamindari, which infused hope in the peasantry groaning under the impact of centuries of oppression and exploitation. The second was the passing of the Official Language Act, 1954 in the face of stiff opposition from the bureaucracy. But alas, his dream of making Odia the official language has remained unfulfilled even 62 years after the Act was passed as his successors didn’t pursue the matter with the seriousness it deserved.

On the 115th birth anniversary of the great man, the least we can do is to pledge ourselves to fulfill his dream of conferring the status of official language on Odia. That would be the best tribute to the great man.

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