Odisha celebrates its New Year like most northern Indian States and regions on April 14 after observing the Utkal Divas on the first of the month. But the world’s most powerful democracy mourns the death of its most illustrious President Abraham lincoln who was assassinated on this day in 1865 at 11.40 pm by a fanatic nationalist bitterly opposed to the President’s attempts for unification of the American States as one nation. The fanatic called John Wilkes Booth, a very popular stage actor of the times, shot the President while he was watching a play at the Ford’s theatre from a .5 bore small arm. lincoln fell like a tree instantly as the bullet hit his brain.
Booth can be compared to Nathuram Godse of India who killed the Mahatma a century later. Booth fell from the box area, crashed onto the floor below, broke a leg, yet limped to centre stage to scream his ‘anti-tyranny’ slogan and vanished virtually on one leg from behind the curtains. The biggest manhunt was launched then to track him down with ten thousand troops from the armed forces, police and a pool of super detectives. lincoln died two hours and 40 minutes later in the wee hours of April 15. The manhunt was over soon, and Booth with three other conspirators were nabbed and hanged in Washington within twelve weeks after the assassination, on July 7 the same year.
The other most terrible event on April 14 was the sinking of the largest luxury liner Titanic in 1912 on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. Only 1,100-odd passengers could be saved in the grossly inadequate lifeboats. More than 1,500 others including the crew sank to the bottom of the sea with the huge liner. Titanic cost around 7.5 million dollars in 1912. After taking inflation rate into account on the present day price index, the cost would be 200 million dollars. Interestingly, the super box office hit 1997 movie Titanic cost 400 million dollars which made a huge fortune in business.
On April 14, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born in 1891 in the Central Province, now what is more or less Madhya Pradesh. He was born to a Dalit family but rose to become a celebrity of British India. He married twice, first Ramabai from the community at the age of 15. The wife died after 29 years of marriage. Then, Babasaheb, as Ambedkar was popularly called by then, married Savita, a Brahmin in1948 who lived until 2003. Babasaheb was a crusader against discriminatory treatment of the Dalits in India. He espoused Buddhism to have the Dalit tag obliterated forever and lived like a westernised Indian aristocrat. He was made the Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee. He was also chosen to be the first law and Justice Minister of the Republic of India.
However, what most Indians have never got to know is the fact that it is Sir Benegal Narsing Rau, a brilliant ICS officer and the fourth Governor of Reserve Bank of India, who was the brain behind the wisdom and primary spirit of the Constitution, calligraphed by one Shri Saxena. These great contributors do not figure in the history pages of India. Arun Shourie, a daredevil journalist-author, wrote a book which exposed many a wrong overrated due to gross public ignorance.
April 16 is also amusingly historic. Queen Anne of England Knighted Isaac Newton in recognition of his great scientific discoveries in 1705. The first locomotive train of India called the ‘fire vehicle’ ran between Bori Bunder in Bombay and Thane on April 16, 1853.
Now a bit about dreams:
In October 2013, all hell broke loose when Shovan Sarkar, a local seer at the Dandia Khera village of Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, declared publicly that a 19th century king Ram Buksh Singh has told him in multiple dreams that 1,000 tonnes of pure gold lay buried under the ruins of his palace, which could be recovered for an impoverished India suffering for long due to debt and other related burdens. The Archaeological Survey of India the same way as other State departments came alive and made a beeline at the site.
The media guys had the best of times as they did not have to move elsewhere to gather news. Nothing could match ‘getting a windfall treasure of a thousand tonnes of pure gold’! The seer also went on harping that the dead patriotic king has been bothering him for quite some time in dreams to make India wealthy with the precious yellow metal without much labour or struggle. As the Archeological Survey and other State departments began the digging work with much pomp and show, the entire national media remained glued to the act. No wonder, several claimants, mostly beggarly successors of the genial ‘dream king’, appeared on the scene with their trunks and hold-all bags to collect their shares by putting up suspect copies of genealogy and family trees. Sophisticated earthmoving machinery and huge human labour and thousands of spectators had to hang heads in shame as only garbage quality earth was excavated from even deeper layers than the dream had indicated to Sarkar, the seer.
Now, the Banajaga Yatris from the Puri temple are having dream after dream. But Goddess does not give any specific location like in the case of the Dandia Khera ruins. Big surprise that the Puri servitors have been hinted at twelve or more trees to become sacred Daru! If the dream thing is true in the wicked age of today then the servitors are living gods. They must sit in special temples and be worshipped because they can resolve all contentious issues. Nabakalebar would be the biggest event on earth and Odisha can make India rich, nay the whole loving world a happy place. The servitors can look for every divinely joyful thing and solve all human problems by getting dream directions.
Experts must visit Puri to see how the little town looks now. All roads gone, all drains buried, all electric poles standing at a dangerous angle, and the first ever sewerage system forgotten forever. The age-old water bodies are all buried to accommodate rogue builders. The only river Musa Nai, once a perennial water body where festival idols are immersed. is now low-lying garbage yard. The historic Atharnala runs over it shamefully.
The only coincidental redeeming feature is that Puri district has been blessed with a few fantastic officials who know how to function for ensuring public relief and joy -- the District Magistrate, the Superintendent of Police and a superb pro-people Sub-Collector. The bigger functionaries are all ‘show stealers’ who pose and talk big but the field functionaries keep performing nonstop to make the coming event successful.
lastly, what hurts a secular India is the media conduct. Media hypes the simple event blown out of proportions the way the State agencies do with a flawed belief that Nabakalebar would make Odisha a preferred tourist and pilgrim destination. That’s only a pipedream. The servitors, local traders and even the tour operators have already been branded unforgivably unethical and exploitative unlike in Tirupati, Vaishnodevi and Shirdi shrines where one does not get to see any entity posing problems while having a Darshan of the deities. Rather, one gets magnificent bonus services of food and stay without any cost. No servitor plays any role inside or outside the shrines.
May the lord of the Universe Shree Jagannath save the region from the shame of hostility experienced by tourists and pilgrims in Puri!
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)