During his visit to Odisha for election campaigning on April 28, Rahul Gandhi visited Satyabhamapur village, the birthplace of Utkal Gaurab Madhusudan Das, to pay tribute on his birth anniversary.
Revered by the people of the state as ‘Madhubabu’, Das was born in 1848. He is credited for founding the Utkala Sammilani (Utkal Conference) in 1903, the strivings of which resulted in the formation of Orissa as a separate British province on the basis of the Odia language on April 1, 1936.
Strikingly, on social media, people noted Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Satyabhampur and asked why Naveen Patnaik, who has been Odisha’s chief minister for five straight terms, never visited the village even once.
Madhubabu embraced Christianity in 1868 and was highly regarded for his staunch secular credentials. The Utkala Sammilani he founded spelt out its objectives of keeping away from any religious discourse as the people of Odisha pursued diverse faiths such as Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Brahmo, and that any discussion on religion would result in irreconcilable differences and divert the conference from its goal of establishing a separate Odisha province.
As president of the Utkal Sammilani, Madhubabu in 1913 defined the Odia identity by taking into account all faiths and castes. Such a secular and inclusive vision guided the Sammilani and remained integral to Madhubabu’s worldview.
On March 31, 1921, when the Bihar-Odisha assembly discussed the resolution of a Muslim member requesting a prayer hall there for Muslims, Madhubabu as minister for local self government stated that such a request would cause a “schism” among diverse communities.
He referred to the prevalence of Brahmanism, Hinduism, Jainism and Islam and remarked that such a request on the basis of religion would cause a “schism”, which he said constituted the worst of all ‘ism’s.
“So long as we do not introduce schism,” he thoughtfully said, “religion, every religion, can be considered as most sacred by a believer of another religion.” Such a wholesome vision to avoid a schism based on religion defined his secular credentials.
Naveen’s father, Biju Patnaik, as a Brahmo, had a similar vision as that of Madhubabu and criticised the BJP and its leaders for vilifying secularism as ‘pseudo-secularism’.
He described the BJP’s Odisha unit as a ‘vigyapan party’ – one based on advertisements. This is reflected in numerous ads that the BJP has put across the country prominently featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
On May 27, 1996, Biju attacked the then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, alleging that his employment of a secularism vs pseudo-secularism binary gave the impression that he was according priority to pseudo-secularism over secularism. He was addressing the Lok Sabha during Vajpayee’s motion seeking a vote of confidence in his government.
Biju pleaded with Vajpayee to remain anchored in secularism by jettisoning pseudo-secularism.
Those words of Biju Patnaik resonate in India as general elections are being held today. So widespread is the fear that Modi will change the constitution of India if he wins over 400 seats that Union home minister Amit Shah has been forced to clarify that the BJP will never alter the constitution and that even the word secularism would not be removed from its preamble.
Biju Patnaik was pointing fingers at what Madhubabu called “schism” when he charged BJP leaders with causing divisions by using words such as pseudo-secularism to target secularism.
In yet another instance, when the Lok Sabha was discussing the motion of thanks on the president’s address on March 3, 1997 and Madhya Pradesh BJP leader Sunderlal Patwa argued that the people voted not for Deve Gowda to become prime minister but for the BJP’s rashtravad (nationalism), Biju Patnaik intervened, indicting this nationalism and charging that it would break India into 20 pieces.
Those prescient observations, conveying the message that divisive nationalism would be harmful to India’s unity and integrity, are now being reflected in the manner in which the BJP and its top leaders are employing polarising narratives in the garb of nationalism for electoral gains.
When several BJP members, while participating in the discussion following the president’s address, pointed out that the Kashmir issue never figured in the address and accused the Deve Gowda government of keeping quiet on Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Biju Patnaik said they knew nothing about the Kashmir problem and that it was he, who, as a pilot, flew a plane down to Srinagar and contained Pakistan when no one from the right-wing parties dared to go there.
He also assailed them for making the Kashmir issue an issue of Hinduism and urged them to “talk about [the] country and not Hinduism.”
In that statement of Biju’s, the imprint of Madhubabu’s secular vision was quite discernible.
Naveen Patnaik and the BJP
The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has been headed by Naveen Patnaik since its inception. Founded in the name of Biju Patnaik and claiming to carry his vision forward, Naveen Patnaik in 2000 led the BJD to form a coalition government in Odisha with the BJP, the nationalism of which Biju Patnaik said would break India into 20 pieces.
That coalition government lasted till 2009 and Naveen decided to pull his party out of it and contest elections on its own after the Kandhamal riots engineered by Hindutva forces targeted Christians.
During the past ten years, Naveen has supported almost all legislation passed by the BJP-dominated NDA regime, primarily to keep his own government safe from any coercive measures by the central agencies.
He has also upheld religious pluralism and secular ideals in Odisha by taking multiple measures for people professing diverse faiths.
Had Biju Patnaik been alive, however he would have strongly disapproved of the BJD’s uncritical stand in favour of the BJP. The BJD’s unstinted support to the BJP also negates Madhubabu’s secular vision and his Utkal Sammilani, which upheld secular ideals.
S.N. Sahu served as officer on special duty to former President KR Narayanan.
