The Odia movement was the long struggle of the Odia-speaking people, from the second half of the nineteenth century to 1936, to secure recognition of their language, to preserve their cultural identity and to unite the scattered Odia-speaking territories under a single administration. After the fall of the last independent Odia kingdom in 1568 and the successive periods of Afghan, Mughal, Maratha and British rule, the lands where Odia was spoken had been divided among different political authorities, and by the late nineteenth century they lay in three British provinces, Bengal, Madras and the Central Provinces, as well as in a large number of princely states. In each of these units the Odia people were a minority or a peripheral population, governed by officials who did not speak their language, and their language itself was threatened, in the 1860s by the claim that it was merely a dialect of Bengali and in the 1890s by the imposition of Hindi in Sambalpur. Out of this situation arose a movement, led by the educated Odia middle class that emerged after the great famine of 1866, that sought to defend the Odia language, to promote Odia literature and education, and above all to bring the Odia-speaking tracts together in a province of their own.
This article traces the history of that movement in detail. It examines the conditions that gave rise to it: the dismemberment of the Odia territories, the famine of 1866, the growth of English education, the printing press and the Odia newspaper, and the emergence of a self-conscious Odia middle class. It then follows the main phases of the movement: the language controversy of the late 1860s; the early associations, from the societies of Cuttack and Balasore in the 1860s to the Utkal Sabha; the agitation against the imposition of Hindi in Sambalpur from 1895 and the restoration of Odia there; the memorials to Lord Curzon and the Risley circular of 1903; the foundation of the Ganjam Jatiya Samiti and of the Utkal Sammilani under Madhusudan Das in 1903; the transfer of Sambalpur to the Orissa Division in 1905; the creation of the province of Bihar and Orissa in 1912; the convergence of the Odia movement with the national movement in 1920; and the long series of enquiries, from the Philip–Duff committee and the Simon Commission to the O’Donnell and Hubback committees, that led to the creation of the separate province of Orissa on 1 April 1936. It also considers the role of language and literature in the making of Odia identity, the leaders and organisations of the movement, a set of case studies, and the ways in which historians have interpreted the movement.
The article argues that the Odia movement was one of the earliest and most successful movements for linguistic and regional identity in modern India. It was a movement of the Odia middle class, but it drew support from rajas, zamindars, writers, journalists and, increasingly, from wider sections of society, and it was sustained over seventy years by a remarkable continuity of purpose. It used the methods of constitutional politics, petitions, memorials, deputations, conferences and the press, and it pursued its aims in cooperation with the colonial government as much as in opposition to it, a fact that has led some historians to see it as a rival rather than an ally of the national movement. Yet it gave the Odia people a shared identity grounded in language, literature and the cult of Jagannatha, it prepared the ground for the mass national movement of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, and it achieved in 1936 the creation of the first province in British India constituted on the basis of language, a precedent of lasting importance for the linguistic reorganisation of India after independence.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction and background
1.1 The dismemberment of the Odia country
The roots of the Odia movement lie in the long political fragmentation of the Odia-speaking region. Under the Imperial Gangas and the Suryavamsi Gajapatis, from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, the Odia kingdom had extended from the Ganga in the north to the Godavari in the south, and the Odia language, the cult of Jagannatha and a shared political and cultural tradition had bound its people together. With the death of Mukunda Deva in 1568 and the conquest of the coastal plain by the Afghans of Bengal, this unity was lost. Under the Mughals, the Marathas and finally the British, the Odia-speaking lands were divided among different authorities, and their boundaries were drawn according to the convenience of conquerors rather than the language or culture of the people. Mahanta’s account of the Odia movement begins from this point, seeing in the centuries of fragmentation after 1568 the origin of the problem that the movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries set out to solve.
By the later nineteenth century, the division of the Odia-speaking region under British rule had taken a settled form. The coastal districts of Cuttack, Puri and Balasore, conquered from the Marathas in 1803, formed the Orissa Division of the Bengal Presidency, governed from Calcutta (see British Occupation of Odisha and British Administration in Odisha). The southern Odia-speaking tracts of Ganjam, together with the Odia-speaking hill country of Vizagapatam, including the vast Jeypore estate, lay in the Madras Presidency, where they formed the northern fringe of a predominantly Telugu-speaking region. Sambalpur and the western uplands, annexed in 1849 after the extinction of the Chauhan line, were attached in 1862 to the newly formed Central Provinces, where the language of administration was Hindi. Parts of Midnapore and Singhbhum, with Odia-speaking populations, were attached to Bengal and to the Chota Nagpur division. And the interior was divided among more than two dozen princely states, the Garhjat, whose rulers acknowledged British paramountcy and many of which were supervised from Cuttack, while others were attached to Chota Nagpur or the Central Provinces. The Odia people were thus distributed across three provinces and numerous states, in none of which they formed the dominant community.
1.2 The consequences of division
The consequences of this division were felt in administration, education, employment and culture. In the Orissa Division, Bengali officials and teachers, who had acquired English education earlier and who dominated the administrative services of the Bengal Presidency, occupied most of the higher posts in the courts, offices and schools, and Bengali was widely used in official business and in education. In Ganjam, Telugu officials and landholders occupied a similar position, and Telugu was the language of administration. In Sambalpur, after 1895, Hindi was imposed as the language of the courts and offices. Everywhere the Odia people found that their language was excluded from public life or relegated to a subordinate place, that their interests counted for little in provincial capitals far away, and that their region was regarded as a backward appendage of more important territories. These grievances were felt most acutely by the educated Odias who sought employment in the services and the professions, and who found themselves in competition with better-placed outsiders in their own land.
Some British officials recognised the anomaly of the situation long before the Odia movement took organised form. According to Mahanta’s article on the Odia movement, Henry Ricketts, Commissioner of the Orissa Division, proposed in 1855 that Sambalpur be united with the Orissa Division, and in 1868 Sir Stafford Northcote, Secretary of State for India, advocated the consolidation of the Odia-speaking areas under a single administration for the sake of better government. These proposals, made in the interests of administrative efficiency, were not acted upon, but they show that the case for unification was recognised within the colonial government itself, and the leaders of the Odia movement would repeatedly cite such official opinions in support of their demands.
1.3 The famine of 1866 and the awakening of Odisha
The great famine of 1866, the Na Anka Durbhikhya, was the catastrophe that awakened the Odia middle class to political action. The failure of the rains in 1865, the isolation of the Orissa Division, which had neither roads nor railways linking it to the rest of India, and the failure of the Bengal government to recognise the scale of the crisis and to import grain in time, combined to produce a disaster in which perhaps a third of the population of the coastal districts died. The enquiry that followed exposed the ignorance and negligence of an administration that governed Odisha from Calcutta, and it forced the government to take a new interest in the region. Roads, canals and embankments were built, schools were opened, and in 1868 the Cuttack College, later Ravenshaw College, was founded. Mahanta identifies the famine as the event that gave momentum to the Odia movement, and it is easy to see why: the disaster revealed to educated Odias, in the most terrible way, the cost of their region’s political dependence and neglect.
1.4 The rise of the Odia middle class and the press
In the decades after the famine, a new Odia middle class emerged, educated in English, employed as lawyers, teachers, clerks and officials, and conscious of its identity as Odia. This class created the institutions through which the Odia movement would be organised. The Cuttack Printing Company began to publish the Utkal Dipika in 1866, under the editorship of Gauri Shankar Ray, and for half a century it was the principal organ of Odia opinion. Other journals followed, among them Sambada Bahika at Balasore, Utkal Darpan, Utkal Putra and the Sambalpur Hitaisini, and literary journals such as Utkal Sahitya provided a forum for the new Odia literature. Through these journals, educated Odias discussed the questions of language, education, employment and administration that concerned them, and they created a public opinion that could be mobilised in support of the Odia cause. The press, the school and the voluntary association were the instruments of the Odia movement, and the middle class that controlled them was its driving force.
2. Sources and historiography
The Odia movement is unusually well documented, for it was a movement of the literate and the articulate, conducted largely through the written word. Its leaders wrote petitions and memorials to the government, published newspapers and journals, delivered speeches that were printed and circulated, and kept records of their associations and conferences. The colonial government, for its part, produced a large body of correspondence, reports and enquiries on the questions the movement raised, from the language of the schools and courts to the boundaries of provinces. The historian of the Odia movement therefore has abundant material, but this material has its own biases. The writings of the movement’s leaders present the Odia case in the most favourable light and say little about divisions within the movement or about the views of those who did not share its aims, while the official records reflect the administrative concerns of the government and treat the Odia question as one of convenience and cost rather than of identity and justice.
2.1 The Odia press and literature
The Utkal Dipika, founded in 1866 and edited for many years by Gauri Shankar Ray, is the most important single source for the Odia movement in the nineteenth century. It reported the language controversy, the activities of the Odia associations, the petitions and memorials sent to the government, and the debates on education and administration, and its editorials expressed and shaped the views of the movement’s leaders. Other newspapers, among them Sambada Bahika, Utkal Darpan, the Sambalpur Hitaisini and, in the twentieth century, the Samaja of Gopabandhu Das and the Prajatantra of Harekrushna Mahtab, carried the debate forward. The literature of the period, the poetry of Radhanath Ray, Madhusudan Rao, Gangadhar Meher and Madhusudan Das himself, and the prose fiction of Fakir Mohan Senapati, is also an essential source, for it expressed the sentiments of Odia identity, love of the Odia land and language, and anguish at its division, that underlay the movement’s political demands.
2.2 Petitions, memorials and conference proceedings
The petitions and memorials submitted by the Odia associations to the government are among the most important documents of the movement. They set out the Odia case in detail, citing history, language, administrative convenience and the opinions of British officials, and they reveal the arguments the movement thought most likely to persuade the government. They include the memorials of 1875 and 1885 mentioned by Mahanta, the Sambalpur memorials of 1895 and 1901 against the imposition of Hindi, and the memorial presented to Lord Curzon by Raja Baikuntha Nath De of Balasore on 15 December 1902, according to an article in the Orissa Review. The proceedings and resolutions of the Utkal Sammilani from 1903 onwards record the demands and debates of the movement in its mature phase, and the speeches of its presidents and leaders, especially Madhusudan Das, are important statements of its aims and ideology.
2.3 Official records and enquiries
The official records of the Bengal, Madras, Central Provinces and Bihar and Orissa governments, and of the Government of India, contain the correspondence and decisions on the questions raised by the Odia movement. Particularly important are the papers relating to the Risley circular of 1903, which discussed the possible amalgamation of the Odia-speaking tracts; the Andrew Fraser enquiry of around 1900, which recommended the transfer of Sambalpur to the Orissa Division; the reports of the Philip–Duff committee of 1924 on the wishes of the Odias of the Madras Presidency; the report of the Simon Commission and of its Orissa sub-committee under Major Attlee; the report of the Orissa Boundary Committee under Samuel O’Donnell; and the report of the Orissa Administration Committee under Sir John Austin Hubback, published on 20 December 1933. These documents show how the government weighed the Odia demand against considerations of cost, administrative convenience and the claims of neighbouring provinces, and how the boundaries of the new province were finally drawn.
2.4 Memoirs and biographies
The memoirs and autobiographies of participants and contemporaries add a personal dimension to the record. Fakir Mohan Senapati’s autobiography, Atmajivana Charita, describes the language controversy and the cultural life of nineteenth-century Odisha from the standpoint of one of its principal actors. Biographies of Madhusudan Das, Gopabandhu Das and other leaders, many written by their associates, preserve their speeches, letters and recollections. Such works must be read with caution, since they were often written to celebrate their subjects, but they record much that the official documents omit.
2.5 Key documents examined
| Document | Date | What it tells us | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Utkal Dipika | from 1866 | The language controversy and the early Odia movement as seen by its leaders | Partisan; Cuttack-centred |
| Memorials on Sambalpur | 1895, 1901 | The protest against the imposition of Hindi and the demand for union with Orissa | Represents the educated elite of Sambalpur |
| Memorial to Lord Curzon | 15 December 1902 | The case for the unification of the Odia-speaking tracts | Written to persuade |
| Risley circular | 1903 | The government’s consideration of amalgamating the Odia tracts | Overtaken by the partition of Bengal |
| Proceedings of the Utkal Sammilani | from December 1903 | Demands, debates and ideology of the mature movement | Records resolutions rather than dissent |
| Report of the Philip–Duff committee | 1924 | Wishes of the Odias of Ganjam and Vizagapatam | Limited enquiry |
| Report of the Orissa Boundary Committee (O’Donnell) | early 1930s | Proposed boundaries of the new province | Shaped by administrative and financial considerations |
| Report of the Hubback committee | 20 December 1933 | Administrative arrangements for the new province | Official planning document |
2.6 How the historiography developed
The first histories of the Odia movement were written by its participants and admirers, and they presented it as the heroic struggle of a wronged people for justice, led by patriotic leaders, above all Madhusudan Das, whose devotion and sacrifice were rewarded in 1936. This narrative, which remains dominant in popular memory, emphasised the unity of the Odia people and the justice of their cause. Later historians, among them Nivedita Mohanty, whose Oriya Nationalism: Quest for a United Orissa is the standard study of the subject, P. K. Mishra, K. M. Patra and J. K. Samal, examined the movement in greater depth, tracing its social base, its organisations and its relationship with the colonial government and the national movement. More recent work has asked critical questions about the movement’s social character, its relationship with the Bengali, Telugu and Hindi-speaking communities it defined itself against, and the place of tribal communities and the princely states within the Odia identity it constructed. These questions are discussed in section 7.
3. Phases of the Odia movement
The Odia movement unfolded over seventy years, from the famine of 1866 to the creation of the separate province in 1936, and it passed through several distinct phases. In the first, from the late 1860s to the 1890s, the movement was primarily concerned with the defence of the Odia language and the promotion of Odia education and literature, and it was organised through local associations in Cuttack, Balasore and elsewhere. In the second, from the 1890s to 1903, the agitation against the imposition of Hindi in Sambalpur and the growing demand for the amalgamation of the Odia-speaking tracts gave the movement a clearer political aim, culminating in the foundation of the Utkal Sammilani. In the third, from 1903 to 1920, the Sammilani under Madhusudan Das pursued the unification of the Odia tracts by constitutional means, winning the transfer of Sambalpur in 1905 but suffering disappointment in 1912. In the fourth, from 1920 to 1936, the Odia movement converged with the national movement, and a long series of enquiries culminated in the creation of the province of Orissa. The drawing below sets out the principal phases.
The overlapping of these phases is itself significant. The language movement of the 1860s did not end when the unification movement began; the defence of Odia in Sambalpur, Ganjam and Singhbhum remained a live issue throughout. Nor did the Utkal Sammilani cease to exist when the Congress became the dominant organisation in Odisha after 1920; it continued to meet and to press the Odia case, though with diminished influence. The movement was cumulative, each phase building on the achievements and the organisations of its predecessors.
3.1 The language controversy, 1868–1870
The first great episode of the Odia movement was the controversy over the status of the Odia language in the late 1860s. In the aftermath of the famine, as the government expanded education in the Orissa Division, some Bengali teachers and officials argued that Odia was not an independent language but a dialect or corrupt form of Bengali, and that Bengali should therefore replace it as the medium of instruction and the language of administration. The most notorious statement of this view was a tract by Kanti Chandra Bhattacharya, a teacher at Balasore, whose title declared that Odia was not an independent language. The argument struck at the foundation of Odia identity, and it provoked a vigorous response. Associations were formed specifically to defend and develop the language: according to Mahanta, the Utkal Bhasa Unnati Bidhayini Sabha was founded at Balasore in 1867 and the Utkalollasini Sabha at Cuttack in 1868. Odia writers and scholars, led by Gauri Shankar Ray in the Utkal Dipika and by Fakir Mohan Senapati at Balasore, where he established a printing press, defended the independence, antiquity and literary richness of the language, and they found an influential ally in John Beames, the Collector of Balasore, a scholar of the languages of eastern India, who argued that Odia was a distinct language with its own history.
The controversy ended with the recognition of Odia as the language of instruction in the schools and of business in the courts and offices of the Orissa Division. Its significance, however, went far beyond this outcome. It made the Odia language the central symbol of Odia identity and the rallying point of the Odia middle class; it established the press, the association and the petition as the instruments of Odia politics; and it created a lasting suspicion of Bengali dominance that shaped Odia attitudes for decades. It also stimulated the development of Odia prose and textbooks, as Odia writers set out to demonstrate, through their own work, the capacity of the language for every kind of modern expression.
3.2 Associations and memorials, 1859–1902
From the 1860s onwards, educated Odias organised a growing number of associations to promote their language, education and interests. Mahanta’s account traces this growth from the Mutual Improvement Society founded in Cuttack in 1859 by Englishmen, through the Utkal Bhasa Unnati Bidhayini Sabha (1867), the Utkalollasini Sabha (1868) and the Utkal Brahmo Samaj (1869), to the Utkal Sabha, which became the principal political association of the Odia middle class. The dates given for the Utkal Sabha vary: Mahanta’s account of the Odia movement mentions both 1877 and 1882 and gives 16 August 1882 for its foundation at Cuttack, with Chaudhuri Kasinatha Das as president and Gauri Shankar Ray as secretary, while his article on Madhusudan Das dates its establishment to 1888; an Orissa Review article also mentions an Orissa Association formed in 1878 under Madhusudan Das, Fakir Mohan Senapati and Radhanath Ray. Whatever the precise chronology, by the 1880s the Odia middle class had an organisation that could speak for it, and the Utkal Sabha sent representatives to the early sessions of the Indian National Congress.
These associations pressed the case for the unification of the Odia-speaking tracts in a series of petitions and memorials. Memoranda were submitted in 1875 and 1885, associated with Raja Shyamanand De and Madhusudan Das; according to the Orissa Review, Raja Baikuntha Nath De of Balasore and Bichitrananda Das requested the unification of the Odia-speaking areas as early as 1876. In 1902 a memorial was presented to the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, and on 15 December 1902 Raja Baikuntha Nath De submitted another, asking for the amalgamation of all the Odia-speaking territories under one administration. Curzon’s government, which was then considering a general redistribution of provincial boundaries in eastern India, gave these representations a sympathetic hearing.
3.3 The Sambalpur language agitation, 1895–1905
The most dramatic threat to the Odia language came in Sambalpur, which had been part of the Central Provinces since 1862. In January 1895, on the orders of the Chief Commissioner, Sir John Woodburn, and with the support of the Deputy Commissioner, R. A. Chapman, Hindi replaced Odia as the language of the courts and government offices of Sambalpur, according to an article in the Orissa Review. The decision provoked immediate protest. On 13 June 1895 a public meeting chaired by Dharanidhar Mishra passed a resolution against the imposition of Hindi, and a memorial was forwarded to the Viceroy, Lord Elgin. The poet Gangadhar Meher lamented the suppression of the language in his verse, and the Sambalpur Hitaisini carried the protest to a wider public. In July 1901 a deputation of Balabhadra Suar, Mahant Behari Das, Madan Mohan Mishra and Braja Mohan Patnaik submitted a memorial to the Chief Commissioner, Andrew Fraser, which declared that if it was impossible to introduce Odia in a single district of the Central Provinces, the district should be returned to Orissa, and in September 1901 a group of citizens set out for Simla to petition the Viceroy directly.
The agitation succeeded. Andrew Fraser, who had enquired into the question, recommended that Sambalpur be transferred to the Orissa Division, and from 1903 Odia was restored as the official language of the district. In October 1905, as part of the reorganisation that accompanied the partition of Bengal, Sambalpur, except for two zamindaris, was transferred to the Orissa Division of Bengal, and the princely states of Gangpur and Bonai, together with other states of the western uplands, were transferred to the supervision of the Orissa authorities. The Sambalpur agitation was the first major victory of the Odia movement, and it showed that a determined local campaign, supported by the press and by Odias elsewhere, could reverse an unwelcome decision of the colonial government.
3.4 Ganjam, the Risley circular and the birth of the Utkal Sammilani, 1903
The year 1903 was decisive. In the Madras Presidency, the Odias of Ganjam, who had their own grievances against the dominance of Telugu, organised the Ganjam Jatiya Samiti, which held its first session at Berhampur in April 1903 under Shyam Sundar Rajguru, according to Mahanta. In the same year, the Government of India issued the Risley circular, named after the Home Secretary, H. H. Risley, which discussed the redistribution of provincial boundaries in eastern India and the possibility of bringing the Odia-speaking tracts, including Sambalpur and Ganjam, under a single administration. The circular raised Odia hopes to their highest pitch, and educated Odias concluded that the moment had come to create a permanent organisation that would represent all the Odia-speaking regions and press the case for unification with one voice. The result was the Utkal Sammilani, or Utkal Union Conference, whose first session met at Cuttack on 30–31 December 1903 under the presidency of the Maharaja of Mayurbhanj, Sriram Chandra Bhanj Deo.
3.5 The Utkal Sammilani under Madhusudan Das, 1903–1920
The Utkal Sammilani was the creation above all of Madhusudan Das, who led it from 1903 to 1920 with the support of rajas and zamindars such as Sriram Chandra Bhanj Deo of Mayurbhanj and Rajendra Narayan Bhanja Deo of Kanika. Its central aim was the unification of the Odia-speaking areas under one administration, but its programme was much broader, embracing the promotion of Odia education, the development of industry and crafts, social reform and the revival of Odia culture. It met annually in different towns of the Odia-speaking region, and its sessions brought together delegates from the coastal districts, Ganjam, Sambalpur, Singhbhum and the princely states, giving the Odia people for the first time a forum in which they could deliberate together as a people. Madhusudan Das deliberately kept the Sammilani separate from the Indian National Congress, believing that the Odia question was distinct from the national question and that unification could best be achieved by constitutional pressure and cooperation with the government, and he pursued the Odia case in Calcutta, in the legislative councils and in London, which he visited for the second time in June 1907 with the Raja of Kanika.
The partition of Bengal in 1905, which brought Sambalpur into the Orissa Division, was welcomed by the Sammilani, but the larger aim of unification remained unfulfilled. The southern Odia tracts of Ganjam and Vizagapatam remained in Madras, the Odia areas of Midnapore and Singhbhum remained outside, and the Orissa Division itself remained a minor part of the Bengal Presidency. The Sammilani’s annual sessions repeated the demand for unification, and its leaders kept up a constant stream of representations to the government.
3.6 Bihar and Orissa, 1912
When the partition of Bengal was annulled in 1911 and the provinces of eastern India were reorganised in 1912, the Orissa Division was separated from Bengal and joined with Bihar and Chota Nagpur to form the new province of Bihar and Orissa, with its capital at Patna. The change brought the Orissa Division and Sambalpur under one provincial government and freed them from Bengali dominance, and Madhusudan Das took his seat in the Bihar and Orissa Legislative Council on 20 January 1913. But the new arrangement was a profound disappointment to the Odia movement. The Odia districts were now a minority within a province dominated by Bihar; Ganjam and the other southern tracts remained in Madras; and the capital was far away at Patna. The Sammilani continued to press for a separate province, and the experience of the following years, in which Odia interests were frequently subordinated to those of Bihar, strengthened the conviction that only a province of their own could secure the future of the Odia people.
3.7 Convergence with the national movement, 1920
By 1920 a younger generation of Odia leaders, led by Gopabandhu Das, had come to believe that the constitutional methods of Madhusudan Das had reached their limits and that the Odia cause would be better served by joining the national movement. On 20 February 1920, Sachchidananda Sinha moved a resolution in the Imperial Legislative Council in favour of the unification of the Odia-speaking tracts, which the government accepted in principle. At the session of the Utkal Sammilani held at Chakradharpur at the end of 1920 under the presidency of Jagabandhu Singh, Gopabandhu persuaded the Sammilani to adopt the aims of the Congress alongside its own. From this point the Odia movement and the national movement were pursued together, largely by the same leaders and through the same organisations, though Madhusudan Das himself remained outside the Congress until 1924 and served as a minister in the Bihar and Orissa government from 1921 to 1923 (see National Movements in Odisha).
3.8 Enquiries and committees, 1924–1935
The 1920s and early 1930s were years of enquiry. The Philip–Duff committee of 1924 investigated the wishes of the Odias of the Madras Presidency and acknowledged their desire for union with Orissa. The Simon Commission, appointed in 1928 and boycotted by the Congress, set up an Orissa sub-committee under Major Clement Attlee, which recommended the creation of a separate province of Orissa, according to an Orissa Review article. At the first Round Table Conference in London in 1930, the Maharaja of Paralakhemundi, Krishna Chandra Gajapati Narayan Deo, made a powerful case for a separate Odia province, and the government appointed the Orissa Boundary Committee under Samuel O’Donnell to recommend its limits; Mahanta dates this committee to 1930, while other accounts place its appointment in 1931 and its report in 1932. The Orissa Administration Committee under Sir John Austin Hubback, whose report was published on 20 December 1933, worked out the administrative arrangements of the new province, recommending Cuttack as the capital with Puri as the summer headquarters, a separate High Court, a joint cadre of officials with Bihar and the creation of the new district of Koraput. The Joint Select Committee of Parliament under Lord Linlithgow endorsed the plan, and the Government of India Act of 1935 provided for the creation of the province.
3.9 The separate province, 1 April 1936, and after
By an Order-in-Council issued by the King-Emperor on 3 March 1936, the province of Orissa came into existence on 1 April 1936, with Sir John Austin Hubback as its first governor. According to Mahanta, it comprised the Orissa Division, Angul, the Khariar and Padampur areas, and the Odia-majority areas of Ganjam and Vizagapatam, covering about 33,000 square miles with a population of over eight million. It was the first province of British India constituted on the basis of language, and its creation was celebrated throughout the Odia-speaking region as the fulfilment of seventy years of struggle. The day is still celebrated as Utkal Divas, Odisha Day.
The settlement of 1936 did not, however, satisfy every Odia claim. Odia-speaking areas in Singhbhum, Midnapore and parts of the Madras Presidency remained outside the province, and their exclusion remained a grievance for decades. The princely states, though part of the Odia cultural world, were not part of the province until their merger on 1 January 1948, with Mayurbhanj following on 1 January 1949, while Seraikela and Kharsawan, claimed by Orissa, were assigned to Bihar. After independence, the Orissa Official Language Act of 1954 made Odia the official language of the state, the name of the state and its language were changed from Orissa and Oriya to Odisha and Odia in 2011, and in 2014 Odia was recognised by the Government of India as a classical language, a recognition that would have gratified the scholars who had defended its antiquity in the 1860s.
4. Language, literature and identity
The Odia movement was not only a political campaign for administrative unification; it was also a cultural movement that created, or at least gave modern form to, the sense of a distinct Odia identity. That identity rested on three foundations: the Odia language, with its long literary tradition; the cult of Jagannatha, which had for centuries been the religious and cultural centre of the Odia world; and the memory of the medieval Odia kingdom, whose greatness contrasted so sharply with the division and subordination of the present. The writers, scholars and journalists of the later nineteenth century drew on all three to articulate a vision of the Odia people as a nation with a glorious past, a rich culture and a right to a common political future, and their work gave the political movement its emotional power.
4.1 The defence of the language
The Odia language was the core of Odia identity and the focus of the movement’s earliest and most passionate struggles. The claim that Odia was a dialect of Bengali, advanced in the late 1860s, and the imposition of Hindi in Sambalpur in 1895, were experienced not merely as administrative inconveniences but as attacks on the existence of the Odia people as a people. In response, Odia scholars and writers set out to demonstrate the independence and antiquity of the language, pointing to its distinct script, its grammar, its long literary history from the medieval poets Sarala Das and the Panchasakha to the poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Upendra Bhanja, and its capacity for modern expression. The production of grammars, dictionaries and textbooks in Odia, the development of modern Odia prose, and the expansion of Odia-medium education were all part of this effort, and they were pursued with the conscious aim of proving that Odia was a language fit for every purpose of modern life.
4.2 The modern Odia literary renaissance
The late nineteenth century saw a remarkable flowering of Odia literature that was closely bound up with the Odia movement. Radhanath Ray (1848–1908), the leading poet of the period, created a new Odia poetry that combined classical and western influences, and his narrative poems celebrated the landscape, legends and history of Odisha. Madhusudan Rao (1853–1912), poet and educationist, wrote devotional and reflective poetry and textbooks that shaped the education of generations of Odia children. Fakir Mohan Senapati (1843–1918), the father of modern Odia fiction, wrote novels and short stories, above all Chha Mana Atha Guntha, that depicted the life of rural Odisha with realism, humour and a sharp eye for the exploitation of the poor, and his use of the colloquial language gave Odia prose a new vitality. Gangadhar Meher (1862–1924) of Sambalpur, whose poetry lamented the suppression of Odia in his district, brought the voice of western Odisha into the literary renaissance. Madhusudan Das himself wrote poems in Odia and English expressing his love of the Odia land and his longing for its unity. And at the turn of the century, Kantakabi Laxmikanta Mohapatra wrote the patriotic song Bande Utkala Janani, which was sung at Odia gatherings and was adopted as the state song of Odisha in 2020.
4.3 Jagannatha and the memory of the Odia kingdom
The cult of Jagannatha at Puri provided a religious and cultural centre for the Odia identity that the movement sought to unite. For centuries Jagannatha had been regarded as the true sovereign of Odisha, in whose name the Gajapati kings had ruled, and the temple at Puri, the Ratha Yatra and the network of Jagannatha shrines throughout the Odia-speaking region bound together Odias of every class, caste and district. The leaders of the Odia movement drew on this tradition to emphasise the unity of the Odia people across the boundaries that divided them, and the defence of the temple and its rituals against interference was itself a theme of Odia public life. The memory of the medieval Odia kingdom, under the Gangas and the Gajapatis, provided a vision of a past in which the Odia people had been united, powerful and independent, and historians and poets alike invoked it to give meaning to the struggle for unification.
4.4 Identity and its boundaries
The Odia identity constructed in this period was defined not only by what it included but by what it excluded. It defined itself against the Bengalis, Telugus and Hindi speakers whose dominance it resented, and the language controversies of the period left a legacy of mutual suspicion between Odias and their neighbours. It was also shaped by the social position of the middle class that created it, which was drawn largely from upper-caste Hindu families of the coastal districts. Historians have asked how far the tribal communities of the hills, the people of the princely states, and the lower castes of the plains shared in this identity, and how far the Odia movement spoke for them. The literary renaissance, with its focus on the classical heritage and the Jagannatha tradition, reflected the culture of the coastal elite more than that of the tribal and western regions, and the integration of these regions into the Odia identity was a process that continued long after 1936. These questions do not diminish the achievement of the Odia movement, but they remind us that identity is made, not simply discovered, and that its making involves choices about who belongs.
5. Leaders and organisations
The Odia movement was led by a coalition of the educated middle class and the traditional aristocracy of Odisha. Lawyers, teachers, journalists and writers provided its ideas, its organisation and its energy, while rajas and zamindars provided prestige, money and access to the colonial government. This coalition gave the movement a broad base among the Odia elite and enabled it to speak with authority on behalf of the Odia people, but it also gave it a moderate and constitutional character, and it made the movement cautious about methods that might alienate the government whose favour it sought.
5.1 Madhusudan Das, Utkal Gourab
Madhusudan Das (1848–1934) was the central figure of the Odia movement for half a century. Born at Satyabhamapur in Cuttack district, he was the first Odia to graduate from the University of Calcutta and to qualify in law, and after some years in Calcutta he returned to Cuttack on 25 September 1881, according to Mahanta, on the advice of Sir Richard Garth. He became the leading lawyer of Odisha, a member of the Bengal Legislative Council from 1888 and of the Bihar and Orissa Legislative Council from 1913, and a minister in the Bihar and Orissa government from 1921 until his resignation on 4 March 1923. He was the guiding spirit of the Utkal Sabha and the founder and leader of the Utkal Sammilani, and he pressed the Odia case in Calcutta, in Simla and in London with tireless energy. He was also a pioneer of Odia industry, founding the Utkal Tannery and promoting the art industries of Cuttack, and of social reform and women’s education. His politics were those of a liberal constitutionalist, and his long refusal to join the Congress, which he entered only in 1924, has led some historians to criticise him; but no one did more to keep the Odia question before the government and the public, and he is honoured as Utkal Gourab, the pride of Utkal. He died on 4 February 1934, two years before the creation of the province he had worked for.
5.2 Writers, journalists and scholars
The intellectual leadership of the movement was provided by writers and journalists. Gauri Shankar Ray (1838–1917), editor of the Utkal Dipika for half a century and first secretary of the Utkal Sabha, was the most important journalist of the movement, and his paper was its voice in the decades of the language controversy and the early unification campaign. Fakir Mohan Senapati, Radhanath Ray and Madhusudan Rao were not only the leading writers of their age but active participants in the movement, defending the Odia language and lending their prestige to the cause of unification. In Sambalpur, Dharanidhar Mishra, Braja Mohan Patnaik, Madan Mohan Mishra and the poet Gangadhar Meher led the resistance to Hindi. In Ganjam, Shyam Sundar Rajguru led the Ganjam Jatiya Samiti.
5.3 Rajas and zamindars
The support of the traditional aristocracy was essential to the Odia movement. Sriram Chandra Bhanj Deo, Maharaja of Mayurbhanj, presided over the first session of the Utkal Sammilani in 1903; Raja Baikuntha Nath De of Balasore presented memorials to Lord Curzon; Raja Shyamanand De submitted early memoranda; Rajendra Narayan Bhanja Deo, Raja of Kanika, was a leading supporter of the Sammilani who accompanied Madhusudan Das to London in 1907; and Krishna Chandra Gajapati Narayan Deo, Maharaja of Paralakhemundi, championed the cause of a separate province at the Round Table Conference of 1930 and was the most influential advocate of the Odia case in the final phase of the movement. The participation of these rulers gave the movement social prestige and political access, but it also shaped its character, for they had little interest in radical social change and much interest in maintaining good relations with the government.
5.4 The younger generation
From about 1910, a younger generation of leaders, many of them associated with Gopabandhu Das and the Satyabadi school, brought new ideas and methods into the movement. Gopabandhu, Nilakantha Das, Godavarish Mishra and their colleagues shared the commitment of Madhusudan Das to Odia unity but believed that it could not be separated from the struggle for national freedom, and in 1920 they brought the Utkal Sammilani into alliance with the Congress. In the final phase, leaders such as Harekrushna Mahtab, Biswanath Das of Ganjam and Bhubanananda Das combined Congress politics with the pursuit of the separate province, and in Ganjam the campaign for union with Orissa drew on the energies of the national movement.
5.5 Principal organisations
| Organisation | Founded | Character and role |
|---|---|---|
| Utkal Bhasa Unnati Bidhayini Sabha | Balasore, 1867 | Society for the defence and development of the Odia language |
| Utkalollasini Sabha | Cuttack, 1868 | Early association of educated Odias during the language controversy |
| Utkal Sabha | Cuttack, 1882 (dates vary) | Principal political association of the Odia middle class before 1903 |
| Ganjam Jatiya Samiti | Berhampur, April 1903 | Association of the Odias of Ganjam in the Madras Presidency |
| Utkal Sammilani (Utkal Union Conference) | Cuttack, 30–31 December 1903 | Representative body of all the Odia-speaking regions; led the unification movement |
| Utkal Sahitya Samaj | early twentieth century | Literary society promoting Odia language and literature |
| Utkal Pradesh Congress Committee | 1920–21 | Carried the Odia demand into the national movement after 1920 |
6. Case studies
The five case studies below examine particular episodes of the Odia movement in closer detail. Each illuminates a broader feature of the movement: the centrality of language to Odia identity; the power of a local campaign to reverse a colonial decision; the creation of a representative institution for a divided people; the convergence of regional and national aims; and the combination of persistent agitation and favourable circumstances that finally produced the separate province.
Case study 1: “Odia is not an independent language”, 1868–1870
In the years after the famine of 1866, as education expanded in the Orissa Division, Bengali teachers and officials argued that Odia was merely a dialect of Bengali and should give way to it in the schools and courts. Kanti Chandra Bhattacharya, a teacher at Balasore, published a tract asserting that Odia was not an independent language, and the argument found support among some Bengali officials and scholars. Odia writers and associations, led by Gauri Shankar Ray in the Utkal Dipika and by Fakir Mohan Senapati at Balasore, mounted a vigorous defence, supported by John Beames and other British officials who recognised Odia as a distinct language, and Odia was confirmed as the language of the schools and courts of the Orissa Division.
Significance. The controversy was the founding moment of the Odia movement. It made the Odia language the symbol of Odia identity, it brought the educated Odia middle class into organised public action for the first time, and it established the press, the association and the appeal to sympathetic officials as the methods of Odia politics. It also showed that the threat to Odia identity came not only from the colonial government but from neighbouring communities that enjoyed greater influence within it, a perception that would shape the movement’s demands for decades. The controversy stimulated the development of Odia prose and textbooks, and it contributed directly to the literary renaissance of the following decades.
Case study 2: Sambalpur, 1895–1905
In January 1895 Hindi replaced Odia as the language of the courts and offices of Sambalpur, then part of the Central Provinces. The people of Sambalpur protested at once: a public meeting under Dharanidhar Mishra on 13 June 1895 condemned the decision and sent a memorial to the Viceroy, Lord Elgin; the poet Gangadhar Meher lamented the suppression of the language; and in July 1901 a deputation of Balabhadra Suar, Mahant Behari Das, Madan Mohan Mishra and Braja Mohan Patnaik told the Chief Commissioner, Andrew Fraser, that if Odia could not be used in a single district of the Central Provinces, Sambalpur should be returned to Orissa. Fraser was persuaded; Odia was restored from 1903, and in October 1905 Sambalpur was transferred to the Orissa Division of Bengal.
Significance. The Sambalpur agitation was the first great victory of the Odia movement, and it showed what a determined, well-organised local campaign could achieve. It also transformed the language question into a territorial one: the people of Sambalpur demanded not only the restoration of Odia but union with the Odia-speaking districts of the coast, and their success brought the western Odia-speaking region into the same administration as the coastal districts for the first time under British rule. The agitation drew on the resources of the wider Odia movement, including the press and the support of Odias in Cuttack, and it strengthened the conviction that the unification of all the Odia-speaking tracts was both necessary and possible.
Case study 3: The first Utkal Sammilani, December 1903
On 30–31 December 1903, the first session of the Utkal Sammilani met at Cuttack under the presidency of Maharaja Sriram Chandra Bhanj Deo of Mayurbhanj. Organised by Madhusudan Das, it brought together delegates from the coastal districts, Ganjam, Sambalpur, Singhbhum and the princely states, including rajas, zamindars, lawyers, teachers and writers, in a single assembly representing the Odia people. Its central demand was the unification of all the Odia-speaking areas under one administration, but it also adopted resolutions on education, industry, social reform and the promotion of Odia culture.
Significance. The first Sammilani marked the birth of the Odia movement as a fully organised political force. For the first time, the Odia people had a representative body that spoke for all the Odia-speaking regions, cutting across the boundaries of provinces and states, and that met regularly to formulate and press their demands. Its composition, uniting the aristocracy and the middle class, gave it prestige and access to the government; its broad programme made it a vehicle for the social and cultural regeneration of Odisha as well as for political unification. Its decision to remain separate from the Congress, which also met in December, defined the character of the Odia movement for the next seventeen years.
Case study 4: Chakradharpur, 1920
At the end of 1920, a few days after the Nagpur session of the Indian National Congress adopted the Non-Cooperation programme, the Utkal Sammilani met at Chakradharpur in Singhbhum under the presidency of Jagabandhu Singh. Gopabandhu Das, who had attended the Nagpur session, proposed that the Sammilani adopt the aims of the Congress alongside its own aim of Odia unification. The proposal was debated and, despite the abstention of some members, carried.
Significance. The Chakradharpur resolution marked the convergence of the Odia movement and the national movement. It reflected the conviction of Gopabandhu Das and his generation that the cause of Odia unity could not be separated from the cause of Indian freedom, and that the constitutional methods of the Sammilani had reached their limits. From this point the Congress became the principal political organisation in Odisha, and the demand for a separate province was pursued as part of the national struggle. The resolution also marked a shift in leadership from Madhusudan Das to Gopabandhu Das, and from the aristocracy and the liberal professions to the Gandhian activists of the Satyabadi group.
Case study 5: The Round Table Conference and the making of the province, 1930–1936
At the first Round Table Conference in London in 1930, the Maharaja of Paralakhemundi, Krishna Chandra Gajapati Narayan Deo, made a forceful case for a separate province of Orissa. His intervention, building on the recommendation of the Simon Commission’s Orissa sub-committee, persuaded the government to appoint the O’Donnell boundary committee and then the Hubback administrative committee. The Government of India Act of 1935 provided for the new province, and the Order-in-Council of 3 March 1936 brought it into existence on 1 April 1936.
Significance. The creation of the province shows how the Odia movement’s long agitation combined with favourable political circumstances to produce success. The Odia case had been made for decades, but it was the constitutional reforms of the 1930s, which required the government to settle the shape of the provinces of British India, that provided the opportunity. The role of the Maharaja of Paralakhemundi, a ruler from Ganjam working within the framework of constitutional negotiation, shows that the moderate tradition of Madhusudan Das remained important even after the convergence with the national movement. The new province was the first in British India to be created on the basis of language, and it set a precedent that would be followed on a much larger scale after independence.
7. Odia historians, memory and the main debates
The Odia movement occupies a central place in the historiography of modern Odisha, and Odia historians have written about it extensively. Their interpretations have been shaped by the significance of the movement for the identity of the modern state, by changing views of the relationship between regional and national identity in India, and by the methods of social and cultural history. Several questions have been debated, some of which bear directly on how Odisha understands its own history and its place in India.
7.1 The celebratory tradition
The earliest accounts of the Odia movement, written by participants, admirers and journalists, presented it as the heroic struggle of a wronged people for justice and recognition, led by selfless patriots, above all Madhusudan Das, and crowned with success in 1936. This tradition emphasised the unity of the Odia people, the justice of their cause and the sacrifices of their leaders, and it remains the dominant narrative in popular memory, in school textbooks and in the annual celebrations of Utkal Divas. It has preserved a great deal of valuable information and has kept the memory of the movement alive, but it tends to pass over the divisions within the movement, its social limitations and the views of those who did not share its aims.
7.2 Regional nationalism and Indian nationalism
The most important scholarly debate concerns the relationship between the Odia movement and the Indian national movement. Nivedita Mohanty, in Oriya Nationalism: Quest for a United Orissa, 1866–1956, treated the Odia movement as a form of regional nationalism with its own logic and history, and examined its development in relation to the colonial government and the national movement. Other historians, among them P. K. Mishra, K. M. Patra and J. K. Samal, have traced the political history of the movement and its relationship with the Congress in detail. Some historians have emphasised the continuity and complementarity of the two movements, arguing that the Odia movement awakened political consciousness in Odisha and prepared the ground for the national movement, and that the two were united after 1920. Others have emphasised the tension between them, pointing to Madhusudan Das’s long reluctance to join the Congress, to the Sammilani’s preference for cooperation with the government, and to the fact that the separate province was granted by the British at a time when the Congress was engaged in Civil Disobedience. A third view sees no fundamental contradiction: regional and national identities were both being formed in this period, and the Odia movement was one of the ways in which Odias came to see themselves as part of a larger Indian nation while retaining a distinct identity within it.
7.3 Class, caste and the social base
Social historians have asked whose movement the Odia movement was. Its leadership was drawn largely from the upper-caste middle class of the coastal districts and from the aristocracy, and its demands for Odia-medium education and for the employment of Odias in the services served the interests of these groups most directly. Historians have asked how far the peasants of the coastal districts, the tribal communities of the hills, the people of the princely states and the lower castes shared in the movement or benefited from its success, and whether the Odia identity it promoted reflected the culture of the coastal elite more than that of the region as a whole. These questions do not deny the movement’s significance, but they place it within the social history of colonial Odisha and highlight the processes by which a regional identity was made.
7.4 Language, the neighbours and the colonial state
Another set of questions concerns the relationship of the Odia movement with the neighbouring linguistic communities and with the colonial state. The language controversies of the period pitted Odias against Bengalis, Telugus and Hindi speakers, and historians have examined how far these conflicts reflected genuine threats to the Odia language and how far they were the product of competition for jobs and influence among the educated classes of different communities. They have also examined the role of the colonial state, which on the one hand created the divisions the movement fought against and on the other hand provided the framework, the language policy, the census, the educational system and the constitutional reforms, within which linguistic identities were defined and pursued. The creation of the province of Orissa in 1936 can be seen both as a victory for the Odia movement and as an outcome of colonial policy, which found linguistic provinces administratively convenient and politically useful.
7.5 Public memory
The Odia movement is celebrated each year on 1 April, Utkal Divas, when the creation of the province in 1936 is commemorated throughout the state, and Madhusudan Das, Gopabandhu Das, Fakir Mohan Senapati, Radhanath Ray, Gangadhar Meher and Krishna Chandra Gajapati are honoured as the makers of modern Odisha. The recognition of Odia as a classical language in 2014 and the adoption of Bande Utkala Janani as the state song in 2020 show the continuing importance of the language and culture that the movement defended. Brajabandhu Mahanta’s articles on historyofodisha.in, “Odia Movement: A Struggle for Unity and Identity”, “Understanding Odia Movement”, “Creation of Separate Province of Odisha” and “Role of Madhusudan Das in Making Modern Odisha”, present this history for students and general readers and are the source of many of the dates and details used in this article.
7.6 Main debates
| Debate | One view | The other view | Where the evidence stands |
|---|---|---|---|
| Odia movement and the national movement | A precursor and ally of the national movement | A rival movement that cooperated with the government | The two ran separately until 1920 and then largely converged, though tensions persisted |
| Who won the province | The Odia people, through seventy years of struggle | The British, as part of their constitutional reorganisation | Odia agitation created the demand; colonial reforms provided the opportunity |
| Social base | A movement of the whole Odia people | A movement of the upper-caste coastal elite and the aristocracy | Led by the elite, with growing but uneven popular support |
| Role of Madhusudan Das | The father of modern Odisha | A loyalist who held the Odia movement back from the national struggle | His constitutional methods won real gains; his caution was criticised by the next generation |
| Language controversies | Defence of a threatened language | Also competition for jobs among educated groups | Both cultural and material motives were present |
| Date of the Utkal Sabha | 1882 | 1877 or 1888 | Sources differ; 1882 is most commonly cited |
8. Assessment
The Odia movement was one of the longest, most persistent and most successful movements for linguistic and regional identity in colonial India. Over seventy years, from the famine of 1866 to the creation of the province of Orissa in 1936, the Odia-speaking people, led by their educated middle class and supported by their traditional aristocracy, defended their language against the claims of more powerful neighbours, created a modern literature that expressed their identity, built associations and institutions that gave them a political voice, and secured, in the end, the unification of most of the Odia-speaking territories in a province of their own. When the movement began, the Odia people were divided among three provinces and many states, marginalised in their own land and uncertain even of the recognition of their language; when it ended, they had a province, a capital, a High Court and a legislature, and their language was the language of their own government.
The movement’s success owed much to its continuity of purpose and its breadth of support. From Gauri Shankar Ray and the defenders of the language in the 1860s, through the Sambalpur agitators of the 1890s and Madhusudan Das and the Utkal Sammilani, to Gopabandhu Das, Krishna Chandra Gajapati and the leaders of the 1930s, the demand for the recognition and unity of the Odia people was pursued without interruption, adapting its methods to changing circumstances but never abandoning its aim. Its leaders were able to unite rajas and lawyers, writers and zamindars, the coastal districts and the outlying regions, in a common cause, and the Utkal Sammilani gave this coalition an institutional form that sustained it over decades.
The movement also had its limitations. It was led by a narrow social elite, and its demands, for Odia-medium education, for the employment of Odias in the services, and for an Odia province, served the interests of that elite most directly. Its relationship with the national movement was ambivalent until 1920, and its preference for constitutional methods and cooperation with the government exposed it to the charge of loyalism. The Odia identity it promoted reflected the culture of the coastal districts more than that of the tribal hills and the western uplands, and the integration of these regions into a common Odia identity remained incomplete in 1936. And the province it secured left substantial Odia-speaking populations outside its borders.
Yet these limitations should not obscure the movement’s achievement. It gave the Odia people a shared identity grounded in language, literature and the tradition of Jagannatha; it produced a literary renaissance of lasting value; it prepared the ground for the mass national movement in Odisha; and it created, in 1936, the first province of British India constituted on the basis of language. That precedent was of great importance for India as a whole, for the principle that the boundaries of provinces should follow the boundaries of languages, first realised in Odisha, became the basis of the reorganisation of the states of independent India in the 1950s.
The fairest verdict is that the Odia movement was a successful struggle for the recognition and unity of a people whose identity had been threatened by political fragmentation and cultural marginalisation, and that its success was the product of seventy years of persistent, organised and largely constitutional effort, combined with the opportunity provided by the constitutional reforms of the 1930s. It made modern Odisha, and its legacy is celebrated each year on Utkal Divas. The questions it raised, of language, identity, territory and the relationship between regional and national loyalties, remain part of the public life of Odisha today.
9. Glossary
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Bande Utkala Janani | Patriotic song by Kantakabi Laxmikanta Mohapatra; adopted as the state song of Odisha in 2020 |
| Bihar and Orissa | The province created in 1912 by joining the Orissa Division and Sambalpur with Bihar and Chota Nagpur |
| Garhjat | The princely (tributary) states of Odisha |
| Ganjam Jatiya Samiti | Association of the Odias of Ganjam, first session at Berhampur in April 1903 |
| Na Anka Durbhikhya | The great famine of 1866 |
| Orissa Division | The coastal districts of Cuttack, Puri and Balasore under the Bengal Presidency, later under Bihar and Orissa |
| Risley circular | The 1903 circular of the Government of India on the redistribution of provincial boundaries, which discussed amalgamating the Odia tracts |
| Utkal | A historical name for Odisha |
| Utkal Divas | Odisha Day, 1 April, commemorating the creation of the province in 1936 |
| Utkal Gourab | “Pride of Utkal”, the title by which Madhusudan Das is honoured |
| Utkalmani | “Jewel of Utkal”, the title by which Gopabandhu Das is honoured |
| Utkal Sabha | The principal Odia political association before 1903 |
| Utkal Sammilani | The Utkal Union Conference, founded in December 1903 to work for the unification of the Odia-speaking tracts |
10. Frequently asked questions
1. What was the Odia movement? The Odia movement was the struggle of the Odia-speaking people, from the late 1860s to 1936, to defend their language, promote their culture and unite the Odia-speaking territories, then divided among Bengal, Madras, the Central Provinces and many princely states, in a single province. It was led by the educated Odia middle class and supported by rajas and zamindars, and it culminated in the creation of the province of Orissa on 1 April 1936.
2. Why was Odisha divided under British rule? The Odia-speaking lands had been fragmented since the fall of the last independent Odia kingdom in 1568, and the British acquired them piecemeal: Ganjam through the Northern Circars, the coastal districts from the Marathas in 1803, Sambalpur in 1849. They attached each region to whichever province was convenient, so that the Odia people ended up divided among Bengal, Madras and the Central Provinces, with many princely states in between.
3. What was the language controversy of the 1860s? After the famine of 1866, some Bengali teachers and officials argued that Odia was a dialect of Bengali and should be replaced by Bengali in schools and courts. Kanti Chandra Bhattacharya published a tract claiming that Odia was not an independent language. Odia writers led by Gauri Shankar Ray and Fakir Mohan Senapati, supported by John Beames, defended the language, and Odia was confirmed as the language of the schools and courts.
4. What happened in Sambalpur in 1895? In January 1895 Hindi replaced Odia as the language of the courts and offices of Sambalpur, then part of the Central Provinces. The people of Sambalpur, led by Dharanidhar Mishra and others, protested through meetings and memorials, demanding either the restoration of Odia or union with Orissa. Odia was restored from 1903, and Sambalpur was transferred to the Orissa Division in 1905.
5. What was the Utkal Sammilani? The Utkal Sammilani, or Utkal Union Conference, was founded by Madhusudan Das and first met at Cuttack on 30–31 December 1903 under the Maharaja of Mayurbhanj. It represented all the Odia-speaking regions and pressed for their unification and for the development of Odia education, industry and culture. In 1920, at Chakradharpur, it adopted the aims of the Indian National Congress.
6. Who was Madhusudan Das? Madhusudan Das (1848–1934), honoured as Utkal Gourab, was the first Odia graduate and lawyer, the founder and leader of the Utkal Sammilani, a member of the Bengal and Bihar and Orissa legislative councils, a minister from 1921 to 1923, and a pioneer of Odia industry and social reform. He was the leading figure of the Odia movement for half a century.
7. When was the separate province of Orissa created? The province of Orissa was created on 1 April 1936, by an Order-in-Council of 3 March 1936 under the Government of India Act of 1935, after the recommendations of the Simon Commission’s Orissa sub-committee, the O’Donnell boundary committee and the Hubback administrative committee. Sir John Austin Hubback was its first governor and Cuttack its capital. It was the first province in British India created on the basis of language, and 1 April is celebrated as Utkal Divas.
11. How to cite this article
Mahanta, Brajabandhu (ed.). “The Odia Movement.” History of Odisha. https://historyofodisha.com/odia-movement/ (accessed [date]).
12. References
12.1 Primary sources
- Utkal Dipika (Cuttack), from 1866.
- Sambalpur Hitaisini (Bamanda), from 1889.
- Memorials on the language of Sambalpur, 1895 and 1901.
- Memorial of Raja Baikuntha Nath De to Lord Curzon, 15 December 1902.
- Government of India, Home Department, circular on the redistribution of provincial boundaries (Risley circular), 1903.
- Proceedings of the Utkal Sammilani (Utkal Union Conference), from 1903.
- Report of the Orissa Committee (O’Donnell Committee), 1932.
- Report of the Orissa Administration Committee (Hubback Committee), 1933.
- Senapati, Fakir Mohan. Atmajivana Charita (autobiography).
12.2 Secondary sources
- Beames, John. Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian. London, 1961 (written 1875–96).
- Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India, 1885–1947. New Delhi: Macmillan, 1983.
12.3 Works by Odia historians
- Mohanty, Nivedita. Oriya Nationalism: Quest for a United Orissa, 1866–1956. New Delhi: Manohar, 1982.
- Mishra, P. K. The Political History of Orissa, 1900–1936. New Delhi, 1979.
- Patra, K. M. Orissa Legislature and Freedom Struggle, 1912–1947. New Delhi: ICHR, 1979.
- Samal, J. K. History of Modern Orissa. Calcutta, 1989.
- Mahtab, Harekrushna. The History of Orissa.
- Mahanta, Brajabandhu. Odia Movement: A Struggle for Unity and Identity. historyofodisha.in.
- Mahanta, Brajabandhu. Understanding Odia Movement. historyofodisha.in.
- Mahanta, Brajabandhu. Creation of Separate Province of Odisha. historyofodisha.in.
- Mahanta, Brajabandhu. Role of Madhusudan Das in Making Modern Odisha. historyofodisha.in.
12.4 Online resources
- Contribution of Sambalpur to the language movement, Orissa Review, April 2005.
- The making of the separate province of Orissa, Orissa Review, April 2012.
- Story of Creation of a Separate Province of Odisha, Odisha Tourism.