Media is a massive industry today. Our understanding of everyday life is heavily drawn from it. We live in a simulated age created by media. When I look at the Odia media today, the headlines appear flashy – both in form and content. Headlines are talking about celebrity affairs, the divorce of Odia cinema star couples, etc. It makes me wonder how gossips have become part of mainstream news.

Today we know that the media as an industry is based on the revenue model and focuses on advertisements, sponsored features and a focus on the lives of celebrities. In this regard, Maitrayee Chaudhuri writes:

The transformation of the media with the exceptional growth in advertisements not only ushered in new images but heralded new ideas of a good life and the good Indian as ‘consumer citizen’…. The stress was on success, an exclusive and glamorous lifestyle that effectively displaced the larger section of Indian men and women from public discourse. This is the time when new words such as ‘celebrity’, ‘glam quotient’, and ‘page 4’ came into circulation (Chaudhuri 2017).[i]

The story played out very similarly in Odisha. This I shall address in the next piece. But, for now, one would like to focus on the early days of the Odia press and its role in the emergence and expression of Odia identity.

The Early Beginnings

The story of Odiya media offers us a sense of the changing role of media historically. I narrate the historical context within which print media arose in Odisha. We are talking about a time when a devastating famine ravaged Odisha in 1866 – popularly known as the Na-ankhaDurvikhya, which is a metaphor for hunger and starvation in Odisha. It had claimed about one million population of Odisha, which was one-third of Odisha’s population then. [i] The starvation deaths were an eye-opener for the Odia middle class, who realised that it was not scarcity that caused this event; it was sheer mismanagement on the part of the colonial government. We could not even call it the Odisha famine then as it had no independent existence. Since the British had conquered Odisha in bits and pieces at three different time points, they merged into three separate provinces.

As Gellner (1983) explains, nations can only be defined in a specific historical context apart from will and culture. Nations themselves emerge in specific historical contexts. It requires social conditions that propel the rise of a standardised language and an effort to create a homogeneous culture. [ii]

The 19^th century can be addressed as an age of nationalism for Odisha. That was the time when Odia nationalism was brewing. Here it would not be wrong to say that Odia nationalism preceded Indian nationalism. The Indian freedom movement is not a unified, coherent struggle launched at a pan Indian level as it appears today. Myriads of local struggles addressing different local issues were synthesised as anti-colonial movements and brought under the aegis of the Indian National Congress. 

The struggles in Odisha, especially in the coastal region, dates back to 1817 when the landed gentry launched the PaikaVidroha against the draconian Sunset law. The Zamindars who failed to reach Calcutta to pay their rents before sunset lost their lands. The Bengali government servants were usually in the most convenient position to acquire them easily to become the new Zamindars. Similarly, in the Southern and Western regions of the province, Odia speakers were reduced to a minority and felt dominated by the Telegu and Hindi –speakers, respectively. [iii]

The idea of being exploited and a sense of threat to their language and identity grew further when an attempt was made to replace Odia with Bengali in schools. It was further triggered in 1870 with the publication of a booklet in Bengali by Kantichandra Bhattacharya, Uriya, SwatantraBhasaNaye(Odia is not an independent language). This booklet reduced Odia language to a dialect. However, the first-ever book printed in Odia was the new testament of the bible in 1807. [iv] A textbook revolution in Odia was unleashed in the late 19^th century.

The Odia nationalists felt strongly there was a need to maintain a distinct identity from Bengali. Odia writers like Fakir Mohan Senapati abstained from using Sanskrit words to create an authentic Odia language. He used colloquial Odia spoken by the peasant community. Odia-speakers were addressed as one imagined community [v] in the writings of vernacular newspapers like UtkalDipika, BalasoreSamadVahika, SambalpuriHiteisini, to name a few. Thus, the 19^th century was imbued with the requisite social conditions for creating an imagined community among the Odias with the vernacular turn taken by print media.

From 1849 to 1900, 62 publications were witnessed in Odisha. [vi] 20^th Century Odisha saw the birth of noted publications like Samaj, Asha and numerous newspapers and journals even though the literacy rate of India in 1901 was only 5.4%. It would be difficult to deal with some of the noted publications here. So, I would focus on one weekly prominent Odia newspaper named UtkalDipika. It derives its name from the ancient name of Odisha, and it was started in 1865 by Gourishankar Ray.

Utkal Dipika

Utkal Dipika would address its readers as “Utkala Santana” (Children of Utkala), “Utkalabasi” (residents of Utkala). Since Odisha had no separate political identity, these newspapers adopted methods for making the people imagine themselves as “Utkalaliya”. This newspaper became instrumental in picking up issues to be discussed for the Odia community, shifting its radar from one relevant community issue to another as per the requirement. Be it the famine of 1866 or giving a minute detailed briefing on the Odia Language Agitation, it brought the plight of the people and their voices before the state. It appealed to its readers regularly to write to them about their concerns.

This weekly took the lead in forging an Odia nationalism amidst the scattered Odia minorities across the Bengal, Madras and the Central Province. In the first part of the 20^th century, when Indian National Congress made its presence felt in Odisha, one could sense a growing tension between Indian Nationalism and Odia nationalism. The primary ‘others’ for Odias were Bengalis, and the British were distant ‘Other’. They were not ready to accept this anti-colonial anti-British stance.

Besides, the Indian National Congress did not intend to dilute its agenda by taking up a regional issue of a separate province for the Odias. The idea of Mother India was encapsulated in the song Vande Mataram. In December 1906, Vande Mataram was conceived a derogatory slogan by the British. The Utkala Dipika urged the Oriya speaking people to accept it in their ways of greeting. [vii] This was the starting point of the negotiation between Odia and Indian nationalism. This negotiation has taken place at different phases. Here it must be noted how the print media not only planted the idea of a nation but gradually made a shift from Odisha to India as a nation in the shared collective imagination of the people. Utkala Dipika continued its publication till 1936, the same year when Odisha got the status of an independent province.

These newspapers and magazines from the 19^th and early 20^th century Odisha were crucial in raising issues that affected ordinary people and creating an idea of a common Odia identity.  Benedict Anderson had argued that the novel and the newspaper were the key mediums of building the ‘nation as an imagined community’ (Anderson 1991: 44-45). In the next piece, I will explore whether Anderson’s claims hold good in the Odia story: that print-capitalism allowed for the birth of national consciousness by creating simple means of communication between members who spoke a given ‘language field’ creating awareness of such fields as actual communities. Did they standardise languages and allow future members of the language field to identify with the past? Did this elevate certain languages to the print form and not others, thereby prioritising certain language fields?

References:

[i] Mohanty, Bidyut.(1993). Orissa Famine of 1866: Demographic and Economic Consequences. Economic and Political Weekly. 28(1-2): 55-66.

[ii] Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. U.S.A: Blackwell Publishing.

[iii] Dash, G.N.(2006). Decolonisation and the Search for Linguistic Authenticity. Economic and Political Weekly. 46(18-24).

[iv] Dash, G.N. (2013). Oriya in Print in Herman Kulke (ed.) Imaging Odisha. Vol. II. India: Prafulla Publications.

[v] Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

[vi] Chatterjee, M. (2013). History of Journalism in Odisha. Dhenkanal: Sephali Communications.

[vi] Acharya, P. (2010). National Movement and Politics in Orissa. 1920-1929. New Delhi: Sage Publications.

[i] Chaudhuri, Maitrayee. (2017). Refashioning India: Gender, Media, and a Transformed Public Discourse. Orient Blackswan.

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Dr. Tanaya Mohanty is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar.