Exactly 10 years after the Indian National Congress celebrated their first independence day in the British regime, a 20-year-old student removed the Union Jack and hoisted the Congress tricolour flag on the premises of Ravenshaw College on January 26, 1940, along with Nilamani Routray to celebrate “independence day”.

An inmate of West Hostel of Ravenshaw College, the 20-year-old student was Bibudhendra Mishra, born on November 30, 1920, in Puri.

He completed his schooling from Puri Zilla School in 1936, the year in which Orissa became the first state to be carved out on linguistic lines. In 1937, when Biswanath Das was appointed prime minister of the interim Congress government, Bibudhendra ushered in the students’ movement silently by founding Orissa unit of the All India Students’ Federation responding to Subhas Chandra Bose’s call to the students to unite and join the freedom struggle.

A year later, he was in the forefront of a medical school strike in Cuttack.

Though a student, he got actively involved in the formation of Orissa wing of the Forward Bloc in August 1939 when Subhas Chandra Bose visited Cuttack and addressed a gathering in the municipality’s ground.

“Many think the Forward Bloc was antagonistic to the Congress when it was an effort by Netaji to strengthen the Congress by uniting the socialists and the leftists,” he had said.

As he and Nilamani were debarred from appearing the BA examination for removing the Union Jack and hoisting the tricolour in 1940, he passed the exam next year. However, he landed up in jail during the Quit India Movement in 1942. He was charged with treason for his links with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army (INA) and was kept at the Berhampur Jail.

“I was arrested for looking after the wellbeing of some INA personnel in Puri and I was among the last three prisoners to be released on September 12, 1945,” he said.

This release was one of his most memorable moments as he was on the waiting list to receive death sentence while in prison.

In 1946, he joined the Oriya daily Samaj as assistant editor. “I also took up the assignment of the Orissa correspondent for The Nation published by Sarat Chandra Bose, the brother of Netaji Subhas Bose,” he said.

He also functioned as general secretary of Orissa unit of the Rehabilitation Committee formed to help the INA’s injured soldiers.

After becoming a law graduate in 1949, he started legal practice and married Karmaveer Gowry Shankar Ray’s grandniece Uma in 1953. He remained an active trade union worker and became vice-president, Orissa unit of the All India Trade Union Congress in 1958.

“From 1954 to 1963, I remained an active member of the Utkal University’s senate, syndicate and academic council,” he said.

In 1958, he was elected to Rajya Sabha and in 1962 to Lok Sabha as a Congress candidate.

“My good friend Biju Patnaik wanted me to contest the mid-term election to the Assembly that was held in 1961. But Lal Bahadur Shastri had insisted on fielding me as the party’s Lok Sabha candidate from Puri, he said”. In the next parliamentary election in 1967, like many other Congress leaders, he also lost from the Puri Lok Sabha seat. However, before that, he had served as minister of law under Jawaharlal Nehru and minister of industries under Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Resuming his legal profession, he went on to become one of the most popular and revered lawyers of Cuttack to become the president of the Orissa High Court Bar Association for three terms. Today, at the age of 91, he seldom moves out of his house at Sutahat because of ill health and ailments. But looking back, he finds the India today is certainly not the India that was dreamt of during its independence.

“I was hardly 16 years old when the province of Orissa was created. Therefore, I have a very vague idea about it. But the independent India that had been dreamt was left somewhere far behind. Reservation has hampered the unity of India,” he said.

“Corruption has become rampant in the country. Even the judiciary has not remained untouched by it. Unless the young generation takes up the matter seriously and gives topmost priority to clean public life, it would be difficult to retain any hope on the future of the state and the nation,” he said.

As told to Lalmohan Patnaik