Death of Gopabandhu  

By Sambeet Dash

 In 1924 Gopabandhu Das got out of jail to a heroic welcome by the public. He was immediately received by P. C. Ray at the Provincial Congress Conference in the Cuttack Town Hall, where the later proudly made a public announcement – Gopabandhu Das is UTKALA MANI or “The Jewel of Odisha”.

Pandit Nilakantha Das smelt a rat. Not that he was jealous, he was both apprehensive and suspicious of the motives of P. C. Ray who once told him that Odias as cooks and Biharis as servants have corrupted the culture of Calcutta. He felt Gopabandhu deserved much better, a title of national stature in the lines of DESHABANDHU Chittaranjan Das, DESAPRIYA Jitendra Mohan Sengupta or LOKAMANYA Bal Gandadhar Tilak . Gopabandhu already on the national stage was no less deserving than any of the above. Something like DESHA MANI or BHARAT MANI (Jewel of India) would have been more befitting.

In 1927, Lala Lajpat Rai came to Puri and impressed by Gopabandhu’s leadership skill took him to Delhi, making the later the Vice President of Hindu Mahasabha (Conglomerate). At the same time Nilakantha was a member of Central Assembly in the nation’s capital where he gave a passionate speech about the Separation of Odisha from Bengal. He also wrote a much a circulated article about the same in The Hindustan Times –  the most circulated English Newspaper in Capital of India –  placing  the demand for a separate Odisha at the  national level.

That was when Gopabandhu coined the idea of starting a pan Odisha daily paper “THE SAMAJA” (The Society). Though the idea came a little late, glad it came late than never – for Utkalamani would die only a year later in June, 1928. His newspaper stands till date.

In 1928 Gopabandhu went to Calcutta to address a labor conference and contracted there the dreaded water-borne disease Typhoid from which he never recovered. Apprehending his death, Utkalamani summoned Nilakantha Das and others close to him, instructing them to write his final will. “I am dictating my last will and testament”, he told as Radhanath Rath wrote it in front of the teary eyed onlookers. After giving instructions to donate the Samaj printing press to Bharat Sevak Samaj, he passed away.

Next day was the eve of the auspicious Sri GUNDICHA or Rath Yatra. Gopabandhu’s dead body was taken around Satyavadi, where he dedicated most of his life in the service to mankind. Droves of mourning people gathered around the funeral pyre as his remains were consigned to flame. It was end of an era, a chapter in the history of Odisha came to an end.

Nilakantha Das attended the All India Congress Committee meet in Karachi (now part of Pakistan) in 1930, where he was declared as “The President of the Reception Committee of the upcoming Congress to be held in Puri, Odisha”. After Gopabandhu’s death he was the de facto leader of Odisha Congress.

(This is the 11th in series of recapitulation in the writer’s own words portions of Pandit Nilakantha Das’s Biography in Odia.)

Sambeet Dash is an Odia technocrat living in Georgia US.