Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das- Makers of Indian Literature

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Utkalmani Pandit Gopabandhu Das is one of the makers of modern Orissa. He was born at a time when Orissa was passing through the most critical period of her history. The people who had built a vast empire, due to strange irony of fate, were even deprived of a homeland of their own. During the British rule Oriya-speaking tracts were thoughtlessly tagged to the neighbouring provinces where the Oriyas were subjected to utter neglect and humiliation. Poverty, flood, famine and pestilence had sapped the life-blood of a proud and prosperous people. During this period of Orissa's miserable plight Utkal Gourab Madhusudan Das and Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das had appeared as saviours of the Oriya people and by their untiring efforts and self-sacrifice had saved an ancient people from total disintegration and decay.

Besides his high stature as a political leader and social worker, Gopabandhu was also a talented poet and writer, and has made significant contribution to the making of Oriya literature. This aspect of his life is often lost sight of in the midst of his much discussed educational, political and social service activities. He was a precocious poet and had started writing poetry quite early in life. Even as a school boy he was dragged into the raging controversy of the time between the supporters of medieval Oriya poetry and modern Oriya poetry and by writing a satirical verse criticising the moderns had incurred the wrath of poet Radhanath Ray who was then the chief exponent of modern Oriya poetry. Most of the early poems of Gopabandhu were written when he was a student in the college at Cuttack. These poems published in an anthology entitled Abakas Chinta (Thoughts at Leisure) reveal a highly sensitive and perceptive mind. But being deeply involved in political and social service activities he had gradually distanced himself from the pursuit of the muse. The opportunity came to him again almost two decades later when he was put into jail for long two years as a political prisoner.