Thr Now Dead Balasore, the city of Fakir Mohan, Nanda Kishore Bal and Radhanath Ray & BJD’s loss | Radhakanta Barik

It is a pond

In the centre of the city

Three people meet here.

In the evening

By looking at the sun set

They create a new story

A new poem

Another folk song.

All three meet for hours

Then move to their homes

Work out their papers

Sitting on the chair

Bending over the table with open pen.

 

Oh, my beloved Balasore!

 

The city fortunate to create a novelist

And after sometime, make him a story writer

The first story about women’s education.

There are characters in Fakir’s novels that are Muslim landlords

Enjoying wine and women.

In Six Acres and a Third,

Mangaraj,

The petty money lender,

Celebrates in the night

As he turns into the landlord.

What a magician of words

All his words create humour and truth

To imagine the problems of peasantry

A thinker who thinks of weavers.

Today they are a dying community

No help from the present State.

 

The State is today a Hindu State

With a fascistic political project

Against the Muslims.

 

The modern poet Radhanath Ray

Composed his poems

Sitting in a garden or forest

Sitting in anyone’s house

As a guest.

His poem Mahajatra

Is India’s Hindurastra on the way to Mahajatra

To the cremation ground…

Dumping the Constitution

Destroying the democracy.

Time has passed.

Balasore, his city.

The city is on the way to Mahajatra

To the cremation ground

Over the riots against Muslims.

Without social peace there would be no creativity

We live in a graveyard.

Today policemen walk on the streets

Howling at the poor and marginal

They were in the center of stories.

Today the city is no more

The city of all these great persons.

It is the city of Sarangis

He conspired to kill Stains and his children.

It is no more a city bubbling with energy

It is dying city.

The sun is setting

Only the boots of police men create all the noise

No music and no story

It is the end of the city of harmony.

Today it has turned into a city of communal disharmony.

THERE IS A social theory about communal riots – that this never happens between two communities but it gets manufactured by politicians. A classic case is Balasore where riots were organised on Eid by criminals sponsored by the newly elected BJP government. The kingpin of the riots is Shri Sarangi but so far, there has been no police action on him, only innocent people have been arrested. The rightwing also started a riot in Cuttack and created a story of a victory procession by a newly elected MLA from the Congress, which allegedly shouted, ‘Jai Pakistan’. This, however, did not work as people of Cuttack knew the stories behind the riots of 1971, which were organised by Marwaris who were against the Muslim business community. Those riots succeeded in displacing Muslims from their major businesses like the biggest watch shop in town and the cloth merchants in college square. Today they are experimenting with riots in yet another town – Balasore.

The social structure of both the towns is almost the same, where villages need to organise themselves against the riots imposed by the Hindutva forces. It is strange to hear the BJP Member of Parliament from Balasore, Pratap Chandra Sarangi, claim that he informed the administration that Muslims in the city use beef. How this information came to him no one knows and as there is no cow slaughter anywhere in Odisha, not even in the interior areas, this appears to be a rumour, consciously spread by Sarangi which helped him create a riot in the town. This is the same Sarangi, accused of conspiring to kill Graham Stains and his children. Sarangi’s election has started a dark phase of politics in Odisha. Beef was not consumed here by Muslims even during the Moghul period, as recorded in p55 of Balasore District Gazetteer by L S S O’Malley.

Why did the Bharatiya Janata Party, after coming to power in Odisha, want riots against the Muslim? In 2002, they were militating against the Christians. Today they are ready to go against both. In 2002 they went to the Brahmin association and wanted their help to set foot in Odisha and the local Brahmins refused to encourage the party. Then they went to the Karans, the most powerful caste and their association chief told me that they too had refused to support the BJP. They went to so-called upper caste Kandhayata, who too did not approve of their actions. One fears that in the near future, they might go against the Dalits as they have done before and appeal to high caste sentiment to attack the Dalits. However, with the party’s Lok Sabha victories, some Hindu communities are looking at the BJP today to assess, what is in it for them. This may be the reason for attacking the Muslims on Eid in Balasore, where Sarangi is the MP.

A nation-wide survey conducted by the CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) found that Ram Mandir was of much lower priority to voters than the price of rice and inflation. Livelihood issues have affected voters so badly that they went for a change in their voting behaviour. When people wanted Roti and Work, the BJP advised them to go to the Ram Mandir, which obviously did not work.

Several newspapers have discussed the underlying reasons behind the failure of the Biju Janata Dal to win in 2024. They have said, the first and foremost reason was that the BJD gave more importance to the bureaucracy than to the party workers. This may be correct, but the implementation of its welfare policies depends on the bureaucracy rather than the party leaders. Welfare measures like PDS and procurement price are all worked out by the bureaucracy, with the help of local shopkeepers. This is being thus managed for the Naveen Patnaik government for last twenty years, where certain amount of corruption is allowed by the party high command. For instance, the shopkeeper takes 250 gm from each kilo of rice or wheat distributed. In the case of procurement prices, one kg of rice goes to the middleman per bag of rice to be sold to the mill owners. From the beginning, the Naveen Patnaik government has recognised that this is the only way to reach the public. Most of its public policies like midday meal or working of ICDS projects have the same impact on the public – all these schemes work on the ground level with a certain amount of corruption allowed within the system.
Let us examine the Kalia project, which provides a certain amount financial assistance to each farmer. True, certain amounts get misappropriated by the officers concerned, but most of the amount gets to the farmers speedily and smoothly. The public administration in Odisha is, therefore, different in that it shares the government’s largess. The way one gets ration card by paying some bribe is different in Odisha than in other north Indian States like Bihar or UP. In Odisha, once you pay the bribe, you do not have to pay any more. This is the difference in the style of public administration in Odisha and other north India States.

I personally feel the reason behind the failure of BJD is the vicious campaign launched by prime minister Modi against chief minister Naveen Patnaik. Modi also raked up communal issue like the Odiya vs the Tamil. An observation to my posit by professor Satya Mohanty from Columbia University was that, ‘About the vicious campaign: you’re right, of course, but we need to recognise that Modi-Shah’s main weapon has always been divide and conquer. At this point, after winning the election, their main goal must be to split the BJD opposition’s numerical strength. Shah has access to more money than anyone in Odisha can even imagine, and he has no scruples – that’s why the BJD should be trying its best to hold its flock together’.
In twenty two villages of Cuttack district, temples were built and there was massive corruption and the money got appropriated by the local elite. Hindutva forces have been working very hard to bring Hanuman and Ram into the cultural world of the Odiyas and their saffron clothes have got distributed to women of the villages. Some time ago, a big statue of Hanuman was set up on the side of a national Highway, but nobody stops there and or bow down to the Hanuman. The worst is the construction of a Hanuman temple inside the Sambelswari temple and it’s disrespect of archaeological and cultural traditions. Furthermore, they took groups of people from some cities like Bhadrak on the religious trips to the North and South, and this got the BJP votes.

The BJD, after losing the election against communal BJP, has decided to give a fight to the Hindutva forces. It is a welcome decision as this implies they will not support the BJP in the Centre. After the Dhamra port by the Adanis came up , the BJD had decided to support the bill for the administrative control of bureaucracy by the governor in Delhi. This was before the general elections. This cost the party at home. The way leaders are boycotting the BJP in Odisha after the riots happened, ought to be a clear signal to Naveen Patnaik that he should cooperate with the Congress and the Left and give a call to his members who have joined the BJP to come back to the BJD. It may be not too difficult for Naveen to form a United Front government in the State, in the near future.

The BJP in Odisha have a propaganda machinery to churn out lies and glorify their leaders. For example, Sarangi is said to be pauper – a pauper with a Rs 35,000 as pension. The present chief minister Majhi, also implicated in the Staines killing, is said to be a peon’s son.

Today, Balasore, a city that has a glorious history, is represented by Sarangi. It was the first industrial town of Odisha. Flourishing of the Salt and shipping industry made it a known place in the Moghul time, and they had a Commissioner for looking into these activities. It faced Maratha attacks. During British rule, the salt industry was shut down and only ‘English salt’ could be sold.This is Odisha’s first important city of literature, where people gathered in the centre of city nearer a pond and thought of writing as a profession. Senapati, Radhanatha Ray and Bal, all three created three chapters of literary history of Oidya literature. This is the place where Harekrishna Mahtab started his political career in 1921 and stayed here, organising the Congress Party and taking the national movement to the villages and towns. This experience helped him to become the Chief minister of Odisha.

In 2020, Baba Ramdev first came to the Nilgiri region of of Balasore district to teach the local tribals how to do Yoga. India remains in the 101 position in the global Hunger Index for 110 countries and here 22 crore people go hungry to bed. The tribals of Odisha are among the most affected by food shortage. It is no wonder, they have lean frames and got applauded by the yoga guru for their alleged ‘fitness’.

The social elite were a part of Biju Patnaik’s supporters once but have slowly moved away from Naven and looking for an alternative. Naveen Patnaik realised this in the last five years. His government allowed them to become contractors at the block PWD. The system, however, was skewered by the fact that they were paid in advance and work started after payment, often much later. As a result, the quality of work was poor. In many places the roads did not get constructed. The bridges required repairs; public work got postponed. Contractors started believing that there was no point in doing any work, only distribution of the tender money among politicians and rural elite needed to happen.

Over time, government Engineers turned blind eyes towards the work done by the contractors. This resulted in alienation of Naveen’s support base among the poor. In the mean time, BJP supporters started a campaign that noted, the corrupt do not support Modi and ‘Modi’s Guarantee’ was free of corruption. The BJP’s latest salvo against Patnaik are snapshots of his college days in Delhi as a flamboyant young man.

One year ago, Prof Subrat Mitra came to Odisha to pay a visit to his village located in Dhenkanal and he wrote a piece where he found the rural rich were ready to shift their votes from the BJD to BJP and it came true.
Modi played games with the ‘Naveen’ factor while campaigning in Odisha for his party. In a public meeting at Chandikhol he spoke in praise of Naveen Patnaik. After the incident, he had a public meeting at Bhubaneswar where he attacked Naveen Patnaik. Naveen Babu’s hobnobbing with Modi created confusion among the public and the message went down that Naveen Babu wanted the public to vote for the BJD in the assembly and Modi for Parliament. This confusion made many voters vote for the BJP for both polls. Thus, the BJP successfully fooled Naveen Patnaik.

Patnaik needs to now explain to the public that there was a deal between him and Modi in the 2024 general election. The BJP government is planning to prohibit the drinking of liquor, which is a dangerous move as sale of liquor in black is going to go to the coffers of the party with the help of the police. This is what is happening in Modi’s Gujarat too. There is another model of liquor sale, as in Kerala where sale can happen in towns but not in villages.
Many political analysts the defeat of the BJD to the Pandian factor but that may not be correct. V Karthikeyan Pandian has been Patnaik’s secretary for years before he became a minister in the Naveen cabinet. He is one of Patnaik’s most trusted aides, though his importance to the party gave Modi the opportunity to play the Tamil vs odiya card.

However, it is a fact that the internal organisation of the party started getting eroded from 2019 general elections. BJD candidates were not nominated by Naveen Patnaik but his nominees. These nominees worked at various regional points. Then, coastal Odisha was given to Bobby Das who too is a trusted person of Naveen Babu. But without Naveen’s knowledge he charged money from the candidates and when they got elected, they demanded their pound of flesh from the works done at the block level; this caused the erosion of the party at grass roots level. This is the cause of Naveen Patnaik’s defeat. But it is not yet beyond salvage. People of Odisha know, Naveen Patnaik is the leader who played a critical role in reshaping the State of Odisha, extricating it from the poverty trap to a tolerable level of human existence. The BJD can come back to power again if it plays its cards right.