The 18th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas organised in Bhubaneswar on January 9 turned out to be a flop show, as 60 to 70 per cent chairs meant for invitees in the main inaugural function were vacant.
The event was organised with fanfare on the theme “diaspora’s contribution to a Viksit Bharat” and addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Samata, an Odia YouTube channel, expressed deep shock in a video that the much hyped Pravasi Bharatiya Divas hosted by the Chief Minister Mohan Charan Manjhi-led BJP Government, celebrated “a festival of empty chairs”.
It went on to ridicule the event by stating that the so called “double engine government” in the state that often said that Modi would take forward the state to greater heights of progress, miserably failed to ensure the participation of the Indian diaspora in the event, despite the fact that the community was often projected as a solid support base of Modi and BJP outside our country.
Only tangential mention of Gandhi
It is well known that the Pravsi Bharatiya Divas is being celebrated from 2003 onwards on January 9 to commemorate the return of Mahatma Gandhi from South Africa to India on that day in 1915 after his historic first Satyagraha, launched on November 9, 1906, successfully concluded in 2014. That landmark Satyagraha based on non-violence contributed a great deal in restoring the dignity of Indians living and working there and confronting racial and economic discrimination in the hands of white British rulers.
Eventually the Satyagraha became the foundation of the India’s freedom struggle under the leadership of Gandhi and it led to the liberation of India from British rule and eventual decolonisation in large parts of the world.
It is rather tragic that neither the Mohan Majhi Government in Odisha nor the Government of India headed by Modi even cared to put a picture of Mahatma Gandhi in the main programme while organising the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas to commemorate Gandhi’s arrival in India in 1915.
Majhi did not even bother to take the name of Gandhi, the father of our nation, in his welcome speech and Modi just tangentially referred to Gandhi in his address with empty chairs all around the enclosure.
There is also outrage across Odisha that the State song, “Bande Utkala Janani,””Salutations to mother Utkala,” sang in several inaugural programmes including seminars in colleges and universities across Odisha, was never sung in the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas event.
The BJP, which won the mandate of the people to rule Odisha on Odia Asmita (Odia Pride) is now being questioned by the state’s public for not providing any space to the State song in an international event.
Manmohan Singh’s glowing reference to Gandhi in his Pravasi Bharatiya Divas speech
What Modi did by just causally mentioning the name of Gandhi in his speech in a very routine manner stood in sharp contrast to how the late Manmohan Singh did while addressing one of the Pravasi Bharatitya Divas meetings in 2005.
Singh referred to Gandhi’s arrival in Bombay on 9th January 1915 and his interaction with a reporter of Bombay Chronicle.
“Both my wife and I” Gandhi said, “are exceedingly glad to see again the dear old Motherland, and the kind and hearty reception which the public gave us has added to the joy, and overwhelmed us”. Then Gandhi made the profound remarks that “I can only hope that by our future conduct we shall have deserved this welcome.”
Manmohan Singh then thoughtfully observed, “Gandhiji could not have realised at the time how true these first words of his would prove to be. History has recorded in golden letters the glory of his “future conduct” which has altered all our futures”. “Perhaps,” Singh said, “there will never be a greater Pravasi than the Mahatma, but our ancient and gracious Motherland welcomes each one of you with the same affection and kindness with which it welcomed Mahatma Gandhi”.
“In return it expects nothing but your unquestioned love,” the former Prime Minister had remarked. Proceeding further he said, “I am confident that through your “future conduct” each one of you will also do our nation proud as did Bapu and Kasturba”.
Modi is nowhere near that standard set by Manmohan Singh in so glowingly and eloquently referring to the historic significance of January 9.
The same event, being organised for the first time in Odisha this year turned out to be a damp squib. The treating of a historic occasion of such significance in such shabby manner is an affront to Gandhi’s legacy and our earlier glorious record of appreciating the value of Indian diaspora.
In fact, Singh, while addressing the Indian diaspora on Pravasi Bharatiya Divas on January 9, 2005 very insightfully said, “It used to be said of the British Empire, from whose yoke Gandhiji freed us, that the sun would never set on it. If there is an empire today on which the sun truly cannot set, it is the empire of our minds, that of the children of mother India, who live today in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, the Americas and, indeed, on the icy reaches of Antarctica”.
Inclusive aspects of Indian diaspora ignored
In the Bhubaneswar meeting, Modi did not speak of the broader, larger and inclusive aspects of Indian diaspora and rather flagged Hindu festivals of Makar Sankranti and Kumbh Mela which formed the backdrop of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.
Such invocations of festivals of a particular faith by Modi would have been disapproved by Gandhi himself who on January 14, 1915, five days after his arrival in Bombay that year, referred to the welcome accorded to him by the Gurjar Sabha presided by Mohammad Ali Jinnah. In his speech Gandhi recalled with anguish that in South Africa when “anything was said about Gujaratis, it was understood to have a reference to the Hindu community only and Parsis and Mahomedans were not thought of”.
He, therefore, was happy to see a ‘Mahomedan like Jinnah’ who was a member of the Gurjar Sabha and the chairman of that function. The sub text of what Gandhi said, a few days after his arrival in India, was that an inclusive approach should be integral to embrace people professing diverse faiths.
Apart from the calculated attempts by Modi to project the faith of the majority of people in India in disregard of the constitutional vision of India, the Mohan Majhi Government of Odisha has ordered to close down small shops of numerous people in Bhubaneswar on the ground that the distinguished Pravasi Bharatiyas should not face inconvenience during their travels in the city.
Such restrictions on people engaged in earning their livelihood from business activities of very small scale is contrary to what Mahatma Gandhi did in South Africa in reaching out to the Indian indentured labourers and other Indians, disdainfully called by white Britishers as “coolies” to draft his first petition to the authorities in that country.
When many well placed Indians expressed their objection for approaching the labourers for drafting a petition, Gandhi famously replied that they were as much capable to use their faculties of thinking as anybody else to express their grievances.
In 2025, at a time when the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is being organised in Bhubaneswar, that vision of Gandhi is being bulldozed by the state’s BJP government by restricting the business activities for the small entrepreneurs on the specious plea to safeguard the comfort and convenience of Pravasi Bharatiyas.
Modi, who owes so much to the diaspora for boosting his image at the global level, should be mindful of the legacy of Gandhi, who was an exemplary and possibly the greatest Pravasi Bharatiya.
S.N. Sahu served as an officer on special duty to former President K.R. Narayanan.
