Fakir Mohana : Chha-Mana-Aatha-Guntha

Fakir Mohan Senapati (ଫକିର େମାହନ େସନାପତି) born on January 13, 1843, at Mallikashpur in Balasore, played a leading role in establishing the distinct identity of Odia, a language mainly spoken in the Indian state of Odisha. Fakirmohan Senapati is regarded as the father of Odia nationalism and the morden Odia literaure. Born to father, Laxman Charan Senapati and mother Tulsi Devi Senapatie, Fakirmohan dedicated his life for the progress of Odia language in the later 19th and early 20th century. The story of Fakirmohan is indeed the story of the 'Renaissance' of Odia literature. Besides he was a social reformer and educator who used his pen to criticize and correct the aberrations prevalent in the society. He is called the father of Odia fiction. Fakir Mohan Senapati’s novel “Chha Mana Atha Guntha” (Six Acres and a Third) sets in colonial Indian society during the early decades of the19th century . It tells a tale of wealth and greed, of property and theft. On one level it is the story of an evil landlord, Ramachandra Mangaraj, who exploits poor peasants and uses the new legal system to appropriate the property of others. But this is merely one of the themes of the novel; as the text unfolds, it reveals several layers of meaning and implication. Toward the end of Mangaraj's story, he is punished by the law and we hear how the "Judge Sahib" ordered that his landed estate, his "zamindari," be taken away. It is sold to a lawyer, who as rumor in the village has it "will come with ten palanquins followed by five horses and two hundred foot-soldiers" to take possession of Mangaraj's large estate. The ordinary villagers react to this news by reminding one another of an old saying: "O horse, what difference does it make to you if you are stolen by a thief? You do not get much to eat here; you will not get much to eat there. No matter who becomes the next master, we will remain his slaves. We must look after our own interests." Fakir Mohan Senapati's novel is written from the perspective of the horse, the ordinary villager, and the foot-soldier — in other words, the labouring poor of the world. Although it contains a critique of British colonial rule, the novel offers a powerful indictment of many other forms of social and political authority as well. What makes Six Acres unusual is that its critical vision is embodied in its narrative style or mode, in the complex way the novel is narrated and organized as a literary text. Senapati's novel (the Odia original was serialized in 1897-1899 and published as a book in 1902) is justly seen as representing the apex of the tradition of literary realism in 19th century Indian literature. But its realism is complex and sophisticated, not simply mimetic; the novel seeks to analyze and explain social reality instead of merely holding up a mirror to it. The linguistic innovations of Six Acres and a Third, Senapati's first novel, need to be appreciated in this wider context. These innovations changed Odia literature forever, and inaugurated the age of modern Odia prose, but they are based in a vision of social equality and cultural self-determination. Senapati was no romantic nationalist, and his conception of language was based on his progressive social vision. In his prose works, he sought to popularize an egalitarian literary medium that was sensitive enough to draw on the rich idioms of ordinary Odias, the language of the paddy fields and the village markets. If he saw the imposition of other languages like Persian, English, or Bengali on Odias as a form of linguistic colonialism, it is because he considered the interests of Odias much like the interests of any linguistic community to be tied to democratic cultural and social access to power.