“After the glorious days of Kharavela, Orissa has been reduced from sublime to the ridiculous. I have a dream to lift my State to that grade of enviable excellence the way Emperor Kharvela did.” This is what Biju Patnaik, the legendary patriarch, had said in chaste English while addressing an august gathering of professors and students in the old Assembly Hall of the then Ravenshaw College fifty years ago.
Our great leader with his repository wisdom could properly evaluate the greatness of Kharavela because he himself was great and had the inherent capability to understand an emperor who had no equals among the kings of his times. While other emperors of his times had been dangerously over-ambitious and disgustingly self-aggrandising, his noble deeds were used as gifts to his subjects and neighbouring States. He was the philosopher king that the great Lao Tzu had in mind and Plato dreamt of.
Like Plato he believed, ‘Happiness or well being of subjects is the highest aim of the ruler and virtues are needed to attain it.’ Every Odia will feel delighted to know that such a rare human being was born in Bhubaneswar.
Our complacency
In last sixties for Matriculation we had ‘Makers of Destiny’ a book glorifying people taken from the pages of history written with the blood of the people they had butchered. It included chapters on ‘Alexander the great Greek’ who massacred thousands and spent his entire career of thirteen years in the battlefield. A chapter on ‘Ashok the Beloved’, who mercilessly killed one hundred thousand innocent Odias apart from equal numbers got perished after being taken as captives. It had ‘Akbar the great Moghul’ a man known for having 300 concubines apart from many wives to have short sexual relationships with them and was ruthless against Hindu kings. But a chapter on Kharavela was missing because malevolent evils capture the attention of the historians more than the benevolent good.
Although recorded facts say, ‘The political and military performances of Kharavela, have in fact no parallel in history and this great monarch fully justifies that he attained the status of Chakravarti’ meaning the Emperor of Emperors’. With our people being unpatriotic, our intellectuals being indifferent, our historians being unduly docile and not assertive, how do we expect our people to know about the greatness of Kharvela.
His achievements
Within only twelve years of his rule, Kharavela could achieve a series of brilliant victories extending his supremacy from the North –Western part of India to the farthest extent in South. It must be remembered that the military campaigns of Kharvela never aimed at building a political empire for Kalinga by annexing conquered territories. His learned teacher Gyanalokananda perfected him in adhering to the ultimate principle of moral excellence. His cherished desire was to play the role of a Dharma Vijayi Monarch and to enhance the honour of Kalinga by defeating rising powers of his times. The Satavahanas who were bidding for political power in the Deccan were humbled, and the Yavans (Indo Greeks) in India were chased away from the soil of Bharatavarsa. Magadha got a setback too serious to rise again and the dissolution of the Tamil league that had been existing for the last 1300 years were his extraordinary achievements.
Like Caesar, Kharvel came, saw and conquered
In 44 B.C. Julius Caesar was assassinated. Four years after that Kharavela was coroneted as king and became the invincible emperor. Brutus joined the conspirators and murdered Caesar to stop him from gaining too much power while Kharavela was deep-rooted and firmly planted on the path of virtue and hence he and all his subjects adhered to unprecedented mutual trust and lovingness. And thus both the kingdom and the king prospered by virtue of oneness. At the funeral of Caesar, Mark Antony said ‘When the poor had cried, Caesar wept’. Kharavela did not weep but acted like an emperor. While walking on the bank of the river Daya, Kharavela’s teacher Gyanalokananda, reminded him about the painful cry of thousands of war widows and screaming of orphaned children during the Kalinga war, which kept stirring his heart and echoing in his mind and like Caesar he came, he saw and avenged Ashok’s genocide by conquering Magadha, honourably brought back the prestigious Kaling Jina along with all the treasures which had been plundered by King Dhana Nanda and with that he tax-freed his beloved subjects.
His Rama Rajya
Kharavela has not been adequately hallowed despite endowed with the virtues like that of Lord Rama. He had ensured health, wealth, bliss, renaissance and happiness in the life of his subjects and elevated his kingdom to the level of Rama Rajya. Despite all this and despite having the bravery of Julius Caesar, he could not be known to the world simply because neither his achievements have been written about like Shakespeare did it for Julius Caesar nor his virtues have been highlighted through folktales, ballads, moving pictures and plays as are done to make the legends out of historical figures.
Salabhanjika, a recent novel on the life of Kharavela by Dr Indramani Jena is a significant step that illuminates Kharavela’s glorious days which can stimulate interest and satisfy the appetite of the beginners and connoisseurs alike.
To live in Odisha especially in Bhubaneswar and not knowing about Kharavela is like living in Ayodhya and not knowing about Shree Rama. Or like living in Rome and not knowing about Julius Caesar. The day every Odia will become patriotic like the great Biju Patnaik, the truth that Kharavela was virtuous like Lord Rama will get radiated to the world. By naming Utkal University after him, generations of students not yet born, shall feel inspired to identify himself with a man who had become an ideal pattern of the world and whose being was brimmed with godliness.
(The writer is a poet and a thinker)