Commemoration Day, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack

The Burden of Dreams

16, November 2008

Subroto Bagchi, Co-founder and Chairman, Mindtree

Vice Chancellor, Principal, Faculty, Members

of the Senate and the Syndicate, my dear

Students, Ladies and Gentlemen.

My being with you this evening is historic

for me. The Ravenshaw ethos is part of our

family heritage. My father studied here. My

uncle studied here. Three of my elder brothers

studied here. The eldest topped his class

throughout and was elected vicepresident of

the student’s union. The third brother chose

activism over academics as his calling and was

the president of the college union in his time.

I was the last born and lived with my parents

and an immediate elder brother in far away

places like Koraput and Keonjhar. As we grew

up in those places, we were told stories about

the great Ravenshaw College, and we aspired

to one day take our place in its imposing

red structure. We learnt about the great

academicians who taught here, the minds who

mentored young people who eventually

became destiny’s children. We were also

told about something mysteriously transfor-

mational in the insipid food of the Ravenshaw

hostels that sent people straight to a place

called Dholpur House in New Delhi.

To us, Ravenshaw was sacred ground.

Unfortunately for me, by the time I was ready

to come to its hallowed precincts, my father

had retired. The last two of the brood were

picked up by the elder brothers – by then one

was a bureaucrat in Bhubaneswar and the

other had started a fledgling legal practice in

Cuttack. My immediate elder brother got

allocated to study at Ravenshaw under the

tutelage of the lawyer brother; I was sent to

live with my eldest brother in Bhubaneswar

and asked to go to the BJB College there. I

have to admit that I felt deprived.

So, whenever I got a chance, while studying

at BJB College, I came here – I stood by

the Sun Dial or peeped into the Kanika

Library. Sometimes I came to debate here.

On two occasions, I won the Inter-College

Debate competition held at Ravenshaw

College – they used to be held in the Physics

Lecture Theater and on one occasion,

Dr. Mayadhar Mansingh was one of the

judges. To be judged by someone like him

gave me a sense of high I carry even four

decades after! The prizes for the debates –

one in English and one in Oriya – were

instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout, then

Principal, in his father’s memory.

One, that vision was larger than life. As all

visions must be. It was in fact, what we may

call a “hairy, audacious goal” particularly at a

time when Orissa was coming out of the great

famine of 1866.

Secondly, that vision did not have anything to

do with Mr. Ravenshaw’s self-interest – he

was doing it for the posterity of a people that

were not his own.

Thirdly, and very importantly, the vision was

opposed at the time of its birth. Great vision

is always invariably put to test early on and

that is when many of us become frustrated.

We want the world to come to our door steps

because we have a dream. Only those dreams

have a right to be born that can withstand

opposition and cynicism.

But I am not here to talk to you about the

power of vision, nor do I want to pay tributes

to the great man who did not even want his

name to be bequeathed to the institution he

wanted to build. Instead, today, I want to talk

to you about the burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw – from now on I mean the

132 year-old-institution – has not just been a

place for mass-manufacture of employable

graduates. On its sacred space, not just lives,

but movements have been launched. We

would all do well to refresh our memories

on some of those without which we would not

be worthy of the people who have once

walked this very land before we did.

An educational institution is not just about

prescribed curriculum, about question papers

and answer sheets: it is a place to learn about

life and living by dialogue and diversity, it is

the place for creating the capacity to learn, to

question, to innovate, to push and be pushed

back, to romance life and make life a worthy

place for those who will come after us.

The report card for Ravenshaw on that score is

a glowing tribute to every single brick that

became a sentinel of our freedom; this

remarkable red edifice chose to do more than

be a witness to time―it chose to be an active

participant. Tonight, I would like to take you

down the memory lane to give you a glimpse

of that report card.

1903. Modern Oriya consciousness began

in the formation of the Utkal Sammilani by

Orissa’s first graduate, first post-graduate, and

first practicing lawyer, Madhusudan Das. When

that Utkal Sammilani had its first session here

on the Idga Ground in Cuttack, history tells us,

it was attended by 335 delegates from the

outlying areas; zamindars, representatives of

the Gadjats, the Commissioner himself,

two Christian missionaries, local intellectuals

like Radhanath Roy, Madhusudan Rao,

Then came the Salt Satyagraha and the post

graduate students of Ravenshaw College

actually dropped their examination in support

of the struggle when a batch of protesters

marched from Khurda to the sea to defy the

Salt Act of the British Empire.

1937. Even as Orissa acquired statehood

under the British Empire, there was no

legislative assembly for people’s representa-

tives to represent their will and legislate on

their behalf. It is no small coincidence that the

grounds of Ravenshaw College were chosen

for the very first meeting of the Legislative

Assembly of Orissa on July 28th, 1937.

1942. At the forefront of the Quit India

movement were the students of Ravenshaw

College. On 15 August that year, 200 of them

protested. They actually set the office room

on fire. Among the arsonists were Banamali

Patnaik, Ashok Das, Biren Mitra, Suraj Mal Saha

and Bibhudendra Mishra. The last two were

detained under the Defence of India Act

and sent away to the Berhampur Jail. The

movement spread to all other educational

institutions in the state.

Born of famine, child of a foreigner’s vision,

Ravenshaw College was the vortex of political,

intellectual and literary movements in Orissa

for the first seven decades of its existence.

That is probably why it has produced

countless heads of state, poets, politicians,

judges and bureaucrats who spread their

impact far and wide.

1947. And then came seven decades of

relative silence, except for the student unrest

of the 1960s that spread to the far corners of

the State. As the nation got largely busy with

itself, Ravenshaw College no longer buzzed

with the higher call, its portals gradually

settled down to a collective ambition that ran

from the Cuttack railway station and

terminated in New Delhi where the Union

Public Service Commission had its home.

The corridors of Ravenshaw no longer rever-

berated with the footfalls of the revolution-

ary, the thinker-doer, the game changer - they

only echoed gently a legitimate middle-class

aspiration to become a permanent employee

of the government. To the job seeker, Raven-

shaw became a means to an end – a good

education that guaranteed a good job.

If we make a roll call of the chief secretaries

to the government that independent

Orissa ever had, we will find that an over-

whelming majority of them come from this

single institution. That principle applies

equally to the coveted Indian Police Service,

the Allied Services and their less coveted

state counterparts.

In the six decades after independence, Orissa

progressed in some sense and regressed in

others, but Ravenshaw, despite its innate

capability, gently withdrew from its task of

producing thought leadership. The same

person who ran towards the safe harbor of a

government job could have aimed for the

Nobel Prize, the Booker and the Magsaysay

Award. But the burden of dreams had been

lowered for the time.

The time has come to change that.

Today’s Orissa, like today’s India, is in deeper

strife than she was a hundred years ago. We

need to address this.

I believe that the idea of the Indian State, of

elected government, of a judicial system and

of the protection of law and order, is ceasing

to be relevant to an increasing number of

people. A record number of Indian territories

are ungovernable by public admission. It is

no longer Jammu and Kashmir and the far

flung border areas in the North East; the fact

is that deep inside states like Orissa, Andhra

Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and many others, an

increasing number of districts find themselves

unable to guarantee anyone the right to life,

property and equality of justice.

Here is our own state where policemen are

mowed down in districts like Koraput. In

Nayagarh, barely two hours from the state

capital, hundreds raid the armory of the state

as if it were a college picnic and vanish as

easily as they came. In Kandhamal, someone

is burnt alive, someone is raped and twenty

thousand people become homeless, as if we

live in the backyards of Somalia or Rwanda.

All over India, government is retreating to the

metros. The rich and the worrying are building

“gated communities”―they do not realize

that shrunken freedom is no freedom. Their

gates are gates of fear and not freedom.

At the core of the problem is the issue of

widespread corruption. The reason our police,

our bureaucrats, our judges and our politi-

cians are afraid is that we have become a

collectively corrupt society. When you

become corrupt, you lose the moral authority

to govern. All forms of authority are finally

about the moral right. Only the moral right

gives us the power to stare down an oppo-

nent, as has been proven time and again in

human history, from the days of Moses to

those of the Mahatma.

When the Oriya language and identity was in

question, Ravenshaw College had a view

point; when the Salt Act was passed, the

students and the teachers at the Ravenshaw

College had a position; when the British

oppression became intolerable, right here in

the fields of Ravenshaw, the Union Jack was

trampled. Ravenshaw’s students wrote love

poems and secessionist literature with the

same ease.

Picture shows the then Leader of Opposition, Shri Biju Patnaik giving away the prize to Subroto Bagchi for the Inter-Collegiate Debate in Oriya instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout

Each time, after I won the debate, Dr. Rout

made it a point to tell me how he wished I

were a student at this Institution! I carry that

endorsement as a badge of citizenship. The

thought that I was so welcome here then,

makes me feel legitimate as your Chief Guest

this evening. Today, when you choose me

over the thousands of more well-known

Ravenshawvians who have made an impact,

you have taken away the last sense of

banishment that I carried in my inability to

make Ravenshaw my alma mater.

Ravenshaw College was born in the year 1876

because of the untiring efforts of an English-

man named Thomas Edward Ravenshaw. He

called it the Cuttack College. He was a British

civil servant in India. His vision for building an

institution of learning has several lessons for

all of us.

Bishwanath Kar and the Principal and

students of Ravenshaw College assembled to

engage in the deliberations.

1920. Students of Ravenshaw, like

Harekrushna Mahatab, N.K. Chaudhury and

their fellow alumni, opposed the idea of the

same Madhusudan Das accepting minister-

ship of the British created government and

distributed leaflets in protest; they disturbed

a progovernment felicitation meeting. Their

activities were reported to Mr. Lambart, Princi-

pal of Ravenshaw College, and their parents

were asked to withdraw the two from college

just a week before their BA examinations.

In the years that succeeded, parallel to the

uprising of Oriya consciousness, was the

beginning of the national freedom movement.

When India made her shift from self-rule to

demand for full freedom, the chants for

freedom first reverberated within the four

walls of this great Institution before they

spread far and wide.

1930. When the Orissa Pradesh Congress

Committee gave a call observing January

26th as “Independence day”, history tells us

that the hostellers of Ravenshaw College took

the lead in organizing the celebrations and

many students gave up a meal to contribute

to the funds of Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das

towards the national freedom movement.

So, how is it that our middle-class, poverty of

the mind is not on its priority?

How is it that when Kandhamal burns,

Ravenshaw’s conscience does not agitate?

While the scourge of corruption has touched

the marrow of the civil society, why are

we are not dialoguing here for a more sustain-

able future?

The burden of dreams must return once again

so that the hallowed grounds of this great

institution can show the path to a people at

crossroads with themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are three kinds of

freedom. Each one is more difficult to win than

the other; each is more intense, fuller of

churning, more demanding of loyalty than the

one before.

In the first six decades of Ravenshaw College,

India and, within that, the people of Orissa

struggled for political freedom. Contrary to

popular myth, we are not midnight’s children;

in reality it was a night of decades, and our

freedom took many generations of working,

many lives had to embrace the cause without

fear of the consequence.

That was our first freedom. Between 1947 and

today, we have been battling for our second

freedom: economic freedom for our people. In

these intervening six decades, we have not

had a famine of the 1866 variety. Although

floods and droughts have been the bane of

Orissa, they have not quite been like the great

famines that once wiped off generations in

a single go. Our people have starved to

death during this period, but it was nothing

compared to the specter of the past. With

effort we have come this far and the battle for

economic freedom is largely won.

But now, we have to embark a more crucial

journey for a more difficult freedom to

win – it is the freedom of the intellect. Unlike

political freedom, and in some sense, eco-

nomic freedom, this one is not about

unshackling from an external opponent.

Rather, it is about unshackling the mind

from within. More than ever before, we live

in times of widespread corruption, visionless

politics, non-inclusive development and a

near-total disregard for the environment.

These are oppressors in our own minds

and the potent destruction they may cause

is larger than anything a foreign hand

ever could.

To strive for freedom of the intellect, you

have to develop a sense of destiny. You must

know that you have a purpose larger than

your own self.

You must develop the true desire to learn,

beyond the mundane need to equip

yourself with a qualification. You need to

develop the capacity to deeply question

the state of things. You have to put your stake

on the ground.

You have to build substance and the power to

serve others in many valuable ways.

You must believe in your own self, follow your

heart and not seek approval from a society

that expects you to change it.

You must speak your mind and be accountable

for your words and actions.

You must not be content with the measure of

the times, for you are here to build a scale for

the future. You must create your own path and

not be path-dependent.

For this, the burden of dreams must return

again.

Not everyone can carry a burden of dreams.

A burden is, after all, a burden, and when it

is a burden of dreams, it is a life-altering

experience.

The burden of dreams is not in what the

eyes see; the burden of dreams is what you

and I must affectionately carry in our bodies

and on our chests so that we can live a

worthy life.

Only blessed ones born on a sacred space

can bear that burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw is the sacred space. The question

is: are you willing to be the blessed one?

Thank you once again for inviting me this

evening. As you take on the burden of

dreams, I pray that Ravenshaw gives Orissa

her first Nobel Laureate, her first winner of

the Booker Prize and her first to claim the

Magsaysay Award.

Subroto Bagchi co-founded MindTree where

he works as the Gardener. His books, The

High Performance Entrepreneur and Go, Kiss

the World, are Penguin bestsellers.

Vice Chancellor, Principal, Faculty, Members

of the Senate and the Syndicate, my dear

Students, Ladies and Gentlemen.

My being with you this evening is historic

for me. The Ravenshaw ethos is part of our

family heritage. My father studied here. My

uncle studied here. Three of my elder brothers

studied here. The eldest topped his class

throughout and was elected vicepresident of

the student’s union. The third brother chose

activism over academics as his calling and was

the president of the college union in his time.

I was the last born and lived with my parents

and an immediate elder brother in far away

places like Koraput and Keonjhar. As we grew

up in those places, we were told stories about

the great Ravenshaw College, and we aspired

to one day take our place in its imposing

red structure. We learnt about the great

academicians who taught here, the minds who

mentored young people who eventually

became destiny’s children. We were also

told about something mysteriously transfor-

mational in the insipid food of the Ravenshaw

hostels that sent people straight to a place

called Dholpur House in New Delhi.

To us, Ravenshaw was sacred ground.

Unfortunately for me, by the time I was ready

to come to its hallowed precincts, my father

had retired. The last two of the brood were

picked up by the elder brothers – by then one

was a bureaucrat in Bhubaneswar and the

other had started a fledgling legal practice in

Cuttack. My immediate elder brother got

allocated to study at Ravenshaw under the

tutelage of the lawyer brother; I was sent to

live with my eldest brother in Bhubaneswar

and asked to go to the BJB College there. I

have to admit that I felt deprived.

So, whenever I got a chance, while studying

at BJB College, I came here – I stood by

the Sun Dial or peeped into the Kanika

Library. Sometimes I came to debate here.

On two occasions, I won the Inter-College

Debate competition held at Ravenshaw

College – they used to be held in the Physics

Lecture Theater and on one occasion,

Dr. Mayadhar Mansingh was one of the

judges. To be judged by someone like him

gave me a sense of high I carry even four

decades after! The prizes for the debates –

one in English and one in Oriya – were

instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout, then

Principal, in his father’s memory.

One, that vision was larger than life. As all

visions must be. It was in fact, what we may

call a “hairy, audacious goal” particularly at a

time when Orissa was coming out of the great

famine of 1866.

Secondly, that vision did not have anything to

do with Mr. Ravenshaw’s self-interest – he

was doing it for the posterity of a people that

were not his own.

Thirdly, and very importantly, the vision was

opposed at the time of its birth. Great vision

is always invariably put to test early on and

that is when many of us become frustrated.

We want the world to come to our door steps

because we have a dream. Only those dreams

have a right to be born that can withstand

opposition and cynicism.

But I am not here to talk to you about the

power of vision, nor do I want to pay tributes

to the great man who did not even want his

name to be bequeathed to the institution he

wanted to build. Instead, today, I want to talk

to you about the burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw – from now on I mean the

132 year-old-institution – has not just been a

place for mass-manufacture of employable

graduates. On its sacred space, not just lives,

but movements have been launched. We

would all do well to refresh our memories

on some of those without which we would not

be worthy of the people who have once

walked this very land before we did.

An educational institution is not just about

prescribed curriculum, about question papers

and answer sheets: it is a place to learn about

life and living by dialogue and diversity, it is

the place for creating the capacity to learn, to

question, to innovate, to push and be pushed

back, to romance life and make life a worthy

place for those who will come after us.

The report card for Ravenshaw on that score is

a glowing tribute to every single brick that

became a sentinel of our freedom; this

remarkable red edifice chose to do more than

be a witness to time―it chose to be an active

participant. Tonight, I would like to take you

down the memory lane to give you a glimpse

of that report card.

1903. Modern Oriya consciousness began

in the formation of the Utkal Sammilani by

Orissa’s first graduate, first post-graduate, and

first practicing lawyer, Madhusudan Das. When

that Utkal Sammilani had its first session here

on the Idga Ground in Cuttack, history tells us,

it was attended by 335 delegates from the

outlying areas; zamindars, representatives of

the Gadjats, the Commissioner himself,

two Christian missionaries, local intellectuals

like Radhanath Roy, Madhusudan Rao,

Then came the Salt Satyagraha and the post

graduate students of Ravenshaw College

actually dropped their examination in support

of the struggle when a batch of protesters

marched from Khurda to the sea to defy the

Salt Act of the British Empire.

1937. Even as Orissa acquired statehood

under the British Empire, there was no

legislative assembly for people’s representa-

tives to represent their will and legislate on

their behalf. It is no small coincidence that the

grounds of Ravenshaw College were chosen

for the very first meeting of the Legislative

Assembly of Orissa on July 28th, 1937.

1942. At the forefront of the Quit India

movement were the students of Ravenshaw

College. On 15 August that year, 200 of them

protested. They actually set the office room

on fire. Among the arsonists were Banamali

Patnaik, Ashok Das, Biren Mitra, Suraj Mal Saha

and Bibhudendra Mishra. The last two were

detained under the Defence of India Act

and sent away to the Berhampur Jail. The

movement spread to all other educational

institutions in the state.

Born of famine, child of a foreigner’s vision,

Ravenshaw College was the vortex of political,

intellectual and literary movements in Orissa

for the first seven decades of its existence.

That is probably why it has produced

countless heads of state, poets, politicians,

judges and bureaucrats who spread their

impact far and wide.

1947. And then came seven decades of

relative silence, except for the student unrest

of the 1960s that spread to the far corners of

the State. As the nation got largely busy with

itself, Ravenshaw College no longer buzzed

with the higher call, its portals gradually

settled down to a collective ambition that ran

from the Cuttack railway station and

terminated in New Delhi where the Union

Public Service Commission had its home.

The corridors of Ravenshaw no longer rever-

berated with the footfalls of the revolution-

ary, the thinker-doer, the game changer - they

only echoed gently a legitimate middle-class

aspiration to become a permanent employee

of the government. To the job seeker, Raven-

shaw became a means to an end – a good

education that guaranteed a good job.

If we make a roll call of the chief secretaries

to the government that independent

Orissa ever had, we will find that an over-

whelming majority of them come from this

single institution. That principle applies

equally to the coveted Indian Police Service,

the Allied Services and their less coveted

state counterparts.

In the six decades after independence, Orissa

progressed in some sense and regressed in

others, but Ravenshaw, despite its innate

capability, gently withdrew from its task of

producing thought leadership. The same

person who ran towards the safe harbor of a

government job could have aimed for the

Nobel Prize, the Booker and the Magsaysay

Award. But the burden of dreams had been

lowered for the time.

The time has come to change that.

Today’s Orissa, like today’s India, is in deeper

strife than she was a hundred years ago. We

need to address this.

I believe that the idea of the Indian State, of

elected government, of a judicial system and

of the protection of law and order, is ceasing

to be relevant to an increasing number of

people. A record number of Indian territories

are ungovernable by public admission. It is

no longer Jammu and Kashmir and the far

flung border areas in the North East; the fact

is that deep inside states like Orissa, Andhra

Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and many others, an

increasing number of districts find themselves

unable to guarantee anyone the right to life,

property and equality of justice.

Here is our own state where policemen are

mowed down in districts like Koraput. In

Nayagarh, barely two hours from the state

capital, hundreds raid the armory of the state

as if it were a college picnic and vanish as

easily as they came. In Kandhamal, someone

is burnt alive, someone is raped and twenty

thousand people become homeless, as if we

live in the backyards of Somalia or Rwanda.

All over India, government is retreating to the

metros. The rich and the worrying are building

“gated communities”―they do not realize

that shrunken freedom is no freedom. Their

gates are gates of fear and not freedom.

At the core of the problem is the issue of

widespread corruption. The reason our police,

our bureaucrats, our judges and our politi-

cians are afraid is that we have become a

collectively corrupt society. When you

become corrupt, you lose the moral authority

to govern. All forms of authority are finally

about the moral right. Only the moral right

gives us the power to stare down an oppo-

nent, as has been proven time and again in

human history, from the days of Moses to

those of the Mahatma.

When the Oriya language and identity was in

question, Ravenshaw College had a view

point; when the Salt Act was passed, the

students and the teachers at the Ravenshaw

College had a position; when the British

oppression became intolerable, right here in

the fields of Ravenshaw, the Union Jack was

trampled. Ravenshaw’s students wrote love

poems and secessionist literature with the

same ease.

Picture shows the then Leader of Opposition, Shri Biju Patnaik giving away the prize to Subroto Bagchi for the Inter-Collegiate Debate in Oriya instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout

Each time, after I won the debate, Dr. Rout

made it a point to tell me how he wished I

were a student at this Institution! I carry that

endorsement as a badge of citizenship. The

thought that I was so welcome here then,

makes me feel legitimate as your Chief Guest

this evening. Today, when you choose me

over the thousands of more well-known

Ravenshawvians who have made an impact,

you have taken away the last sense of

banishment that I carried in my inability to

make Ravenshaw my alma mater.

Ravenshaw College was born in the year 1876

because of the untiring efforts of an English-

man named Thomas Edward Ravenshaw. He

called it the Cuttack College. He was a British

civil servant in India. His vision for building an

institution of learning has several lessons for

all of us.

Bishwanath Kar and the Principal and

students of Ravenshaw College assembled to

engage in the deliberations.

1920. Students of Ravenshaw, like

Harekrushna Mahatab, N.K. Chaudhury and

their fellow alumni, opposed the idea of the

same Madhusudan Das accepting minister-

ship of the British created government and

distributed leaflets in protest; they disturbed

a progovernment felicitation meeting. Their

activities were reported to Mr. Lambart, Princi-

pal of Ravenshaw College, and their parents

were asked to withdraw the two from college

just a week before their BA examinations.

In the years that succeeded, parallel to the

uprising of Oriya consciousness, was the

beginning of the national freedom movement.

When India made her shift from self-rule to

demand for full freedom, the chants for

freedom first reverberated within the four

walls of this great Institution before they

spread far and wide.

1930. When the Orissa Pradesh Congress

Committee gave a call observing January

26th as “Independence day”, history tells us

that the hostellers of Ravenshaw College took

the lead in organizing the celebrations and

many students gave up a meal to contribute

to the funds of Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das

towards the national freedom movement.

So, how is it that our middle-class, poverty of

the mind is not on its priority?

How is it that when Kandhamal burns,

Ravenshaw’s conscience does not agitate?

While the scourge of corruption has touched

the marrow of the civil society, why are

we are not dialoguing here for a more sustain-

able future?

The burden of dreams must return once again

so that the hallowed grounds of this great

institution can show the path to a people at

crossroads with themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are three kinds of

freedom. Each one is more difficult to win than

the other; each is more intense, fuller of

churning, more demanding of loyalty than the

one before.

In the first six decades of Ravenshaw College,

India and, within that, the people of Orissa

struggled for political freedom. Contrary to

popular myth, we are not midnight’s children;

in reality it was a night of decades, and our

freedom took many generations of working,

many lives had to embrace the cause without

fear of the consequence.

That was our first freedom. Between 1947 and

today, we have been battling for our second

freedom: economic freedom for our people. In

these intervening six decades, we have not

had a famine of the 1866 variety. Although

floods and droughts have been the bane of

Orissa, they have not quite been like the great

famines that once wiped off generations in

a single go. Our people have starved to

death during this period, but it was nothing

compared to the specter of the past. With

effort we have come this far and the battle for

economic freedom is largely won.

But now, we have to embark a more crucial

journey for a more difficult freedom to

win – it is the freedom of the intellect. Unlike

political freedom, and in some sense, eco-

nomic freedom, this one is not about

unshackling from an external opponent.

Rather, it is about unshackling the mind

from within. More than ever before, we live

in times of widespread corruption, visionless

politics, non-inclusive development and a

near-total disregard for the environment.

These are oppressors in our own minds

and the potent destruction they may cause

is larger than anything a foreign hand

ever could.

To strive for freedom of the intellect, you

have to develop a sense of destiny. You must

know that you have a purpose larger than

your own self.

You must develop the true desire to learn,

beyond the mundane need to equip

yourself with a qualification. You need to

develop the capacity to deeply question

the state of things. You have to put your stake

on the ground.

You have to build substance and the power to

serve others in many valuable ways.

You must believe in your own self, follow your

heart and not seek approval from a society

that expects you to change it.

You must speak your mind and be accountable

for your words and actions.

You must not be content with the measure of

the times, for you are here to build a scale for

the future. You must create your own path and

not be path-dependent.

For this, the burden of dreams must return

again.

Not everyone can carry a burden of dreams.

A burden is, after all, a burden, and when it

is a burden of dreams, it is a life-altering

experience.

The burden of dreams is not in what the

eyes see; the burden of dreams is what you

and I must affectionately carry in our bodies

and on our chests so that we can live a

worthy life.

Only blessed ones born on a sacred space

can bear that burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw is the sacred space. The question

is: are you willing to be the blessed one?

Thank you once again for inviting me this

evening. As you take on the burden of

dreams, I pray that Ravenshaw gives Orissa

her first Nobel Laureate, her first winner of

the Booker Prize and her first to claim the

Magsaysay Award.

Subroto Bagchi co-founded MindTree where

he works as the Gardener. His books, The

High Performance Entrepreneur and Go, Kiss

the World, are Penguin bestsellers.

Vice Chancellor, Principal, Faculty, Members

of the Senate and the Syndicate, my dear

Students, Ladies and Gentlemen.

My being with you this evening is historic

for me. The Ravenshaw ethos is part of our

family heritage. My father studied here. My

uncle studied here. Three of my elder brothers

studied here. The eldest topped his class

throughout and was elected vicepresident of

the student’s union. The third brother chose

activism over academics as his calling and was

the president of the college union in his time.

I was the last born and lived with my parents

and an immediate elder brother in far away

places like Koraput and Keonjhar. As we grew

up in those places, we were told stories about

the great Ravenshaw College, and we aspired

to one day take our place in its imposing

red structure. We learnt about the great

academicians who taught here, the minds who

mentored young people who eventually

became destiny’s children. We were also

told about something mysteriously transfor-

mational in the insipid food of the Ravenshaw

hostels that sent people straight to a place

called Dholpur House in New Delhi.

To us, Ravenshaw was sacred ground.

Unfortunately for me, by the time I was ready

to come to its hallowed precincts, my father

had retired. The last two of the brood were

picked up by the elder brothers – by then one

was a bureaucrat in Bhubaneswar and the

other had started a fledgling legal practice in

Cuttack. My immediate elder brother got

allocated to study at Ravenshaw under the

tutelage of the lawyer brother; I was sent to

live with my eldest brother in Bhubaneswar

and asked to go to the BJB College there. I

have to admit that I felt deprived.

So, whenever I got a chance, while studying

at BJB College, I came here – I stood by

the Sun Dial or peeped into the Kanika

Library. Sometimes I came to debate here.

On two occasions, I won the Inter-College

Debate competition held at Ravenshaw

College – they used to be held in the Physics

Lecture Theater and on one occasion,

Dr. Mayadhar Mansingh was one of the

judges. To be judged by someone like him

gave me a sense of high I carry even four

decades after! The prizes for the debates –

one in English and one in Oriya – were

instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout, then

Principal, in his father’s memory.

One, that vision was larger than life. As all

visions must be. It was in fact, what we may

call a “hairy, audacious goal” particularly at a

time when Orissa was coming out of the great

famine of 1866.

Secondly, that vision did not have anything to

do with Mr. Ravenshaw’s self-interest – he

was doing it for the posterity of a people that

were not his own.

Thirdly, and very importantly, the vision was

opposed at the time of its birth. Great vision

is always invariably put to test early on and

that is when many of us become frustrated.

We want the world to come to our door steps

because we have a dream. Only those dreams

have a right to be born that can withstand

opposition and cynicism.

But I am not here to talk to you about the

power of vision, nor do I want to pay tributes

to the great man who did not even want his

name to be bequeathed to the institution he

wanted to build. Instead, today, I want to talk

to you about the burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw – from now on I mean the

132 year-old-institution – has not just been a

place for mass-manufacture of employable

graduates. On its sacred space, not just lives,

but movements have been launched. We

would all do well to refresh our memories

on some of those without which we would not

be worthy of the people who have once

walked this very land before we did.

An educational institution is not just about

prescribed curriculum, about question papers

and answer sheets: it is a place to learn about

life and living by dialogue and diversity, it is

the place for creating the capacity to learn, to

question, to innovate, to push and be pushed

back, to romance life and make life a worthy

place for those who will come after us.

The report card for Ravenshaw on that score is

a glowing tribute to every single brick that

became a sentinel of our freedom; this

remarkable red edifice chose to do more than

be a witness to time―it chose to be an active

participant. Tonight, I would like to take you

down the memory lane to give you a glimpse

of that report card.

1903. Modern Oriya consciousness began

in the formation of the Utkal Sammilani by

Orissa’s first graduate, first post-graduate, and

first practicing lawyer, Madhusudan Das. When

that Utkal Sammilani had its first session here

on the Idga Ground in Cuttack, history tells us,

it was attended by 335 delegates from the

outlying areas; zamindars, representatives of

the Gadjats, the Commissioner himself,

two Christian missionaries, local intellectuals

like Radhanath Roy, Madhusudan Rao,

Then came the Salt Satyagraha and the post

graduate students of Ravenshaw College

actually dropped their examination in support

of the struggle when a batch of protesters

marched from Khurda to the sea to defy the

Salt Act of the British Empire.

1937. Even as Orissa acquired statehood

under the British Empire, there was no

legislative assembly for people’s representa-

tives to represent their will and legislate on

their behalf. It is no small coincidence that the

grounds of Ravenshaw College were chosen

for the very first meeting of the Legislative

Assembly of Orissa on July 28th, 1937.

1942. At the forefront of the Quit India

movement were the students of Ravenshaw

College. On 15 August that year, 200 of them

protested. They actually set the office room

on fire. Among the arsonists were Banamali

Patnaik, Ashok Das, Biren Mitra, Suraj Mal Saha

and Bibhudendra Mishra. The last two were

detained under the Defence of India Act

and sent away to the Berhampur Jail. The

movement spread to all other educational

institutions in the state.

Born of famine, child of a foreigner’s vision,

Ravenshaw College was the vortex of political,

intellectual and literary movements in Orissa

for the first seven decades of its existence.

That is probably why it has produced

countless heads of state, poets, politicians,

judges and bureaucrats who spread their

impact far and wide.

1947. And then came seven decades of

relative silence, except for the student unrest

of the 1960s that spread to the far corners of

the State. As the nation got largely busy with

itself, Ravenshaw College no longer buzzed

with the higher call, its portals gradually

settled down to a collective ambition that ran

from the Cuttack railway station and

terminated in New Delhi where the Union

Public Service Commission had its home.

The corridors of Ravenshaw no longer rever-

berated with the footfalls of the revolution-

ary, the thinker-doer, the game changer - they

only echoed gently a legitimate middle-class

aspiration to become a permanent employee

of the government. To the job seeker, Raven-

shaw became a means to an end – a good

education that guaranteed a good job.

If we make a roll call of the chief secretaries

to the government that independent

Orissa ever had, we will find that an over-

whelming majority of them come from this

single institution. That principle applies

equally to the coveted Indian Police Service,

the Allied Services and their less coveted

state counterparts.

In the six decades after independence, Orissa

progressed in some sense and regressed in

others, but Ravenshaw, despite its innate

capability, gently withdrew from its task of

producing thought leadership. The same

person who ran towards the safe harbor of a

government job could have aimed for the

Nobel Prize, the Booker and the Magsaysay

Award. But the burden of dreams had been

lowered for the time.

The time has come to change that.

Today’s Orissa, like today’s India, is in deeper

strife than she was a hundred years ago. We

need to address this.

I believe that the idea of the Indian State, of

elected government, of a judicial system and

of the protection of law and order, is ceasing

to be relevant to an increasing number of

people. A record number of Indian territories

are ungovernable by public admission. It is

no longer Jammu and Kashmir and the far

flung border areas in the North East; the fact

is that deep inside states like Orissa, Andhra

Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and many others, an

increasing number of districts find themselves

unable to guarantee anyone the right to life,

property and equality of justice.

Here is our own state where policemen are

mowed down in districts like Koraput. In

Nayagarh, barely two hours from the state

capital, hundreds raid the armory of the state

as if it were a college picnic and vanish as

easily as they came. In Kandhamal, someone

is burnt alive, someone is raped and twenty

thousand people become homeless, as if we

live in the backyards of Somalia or Rwanda.

All over India, government is retreating to the

metros. The rich and the worrying are building

“gated communities”―they do not realize

that shrunken freedom is no freedom. Their

gates are gates of fear and not freedom.

At the core of the problem is the issue of

widespread corruption. The reason our police,

our bureaucrats, our judges and our politi-

cians are afraid is that we have become a

collectively corrupt society. When you

become corrupt, you lose the moral authority

to govern. All forms of authority are finally

about the moral right. Only the moral right

gives us the power to stare down an oppo-

nent, as has been proven time and again in

human history, from the days of Moses to

those of the Mahatma.

When the Oriya language and identity was in

question, Ravenshaw College had a view

point; when the Salt Act was passed, the

students and the teachers at the Ravenshaw

College had a position; when the British

oppression became intolerable, right here in

the fields of Ravenshaw, the Union Jack was

trampled. Ravenshaw’s students wrote love

poems and secessionist literature with the

same ease.

Picture shows the then Leader of Opposition, Shri Biju Patnaik giving away the prize to Subroto Bagchi for the Inter-Collegiate Debate in Oriya instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout

Each time, after I won the debate, Dr. Rout

made it a point to tell me how he wished I

were a student at this Institution! I carry that

endorsement as a badge of citizenship. The

thought that I was so welcome here then,

makes me feel legitimate as your Chief Guest

this evening. Today, when you choose me

over the thousands of more well-known

Ravenshawvians who have made an impact,

you have taken away the last sense of

banishment that I carried in my inability to

make Ravenshaw my alma mater.

Ravenshaw College was born in the year 1876

because of the untiring efforts of an English-

man named Thomas Edward Ravenshaw. He

called it the Cuttack College. He was a British

civil servant in India. His vision for building an

institution of learning has several lessons for

all of us.

Bishwanath Kar and the Principal and

students of Ravenshaw College assembled to

engage in the deliberations.

1920. Students of Ravenshaw, like

Harekrushna Mahatab, N.K. Chaudhury and

their fellow alumni, opposed the idea of the

same Madhusudan Das accepting minister-

ship of the British created government and

distributed leaflets in protest; they disturbed

a progovernment felicitation meeting. Their

activities were reported to Mr. Lambart, Princi-

pal of Ravenshaw College, and their parents

were asked to withdraw the two from college

just a week before their BA examinations.

In the years that succeeded, parallel to the

uprising of Oriya consciousness, was the

beginning of the national freedom movement.

When India made her shift from self-rule to

demand for full freedom, the chants for

freedom first reverberated within the four

walls of this great Institution before they

spread far and wide.

1930. When the Orissa Pradesh Congress

Committee gave a call observing January

26th as “Independence day”, history tells us

that the hostellers of Ravenshaw College took

the lead in organizing the celebrations and

many students gave up a meal to contribute

to the funds of Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das

towards the national freedom movement.

So, how is it that our middle-class, poverty of

the mind is not on its priority?

How is it that when Kandhamal burns,

Ravenshaw’s conscience does not agitate?

While the scourge of corruption has touched

the marrow of the civil society, why are

we are not dialoguing here for a more sustain-

able future?

The burden of dreams must return once again

so that the hallowed grounds of this great

institution can show the path to a people at

crossroads with themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are three kinds of

freedom. Each one is more difficult to win than

the other; each is more intense, fuller of

churning, more demanding of loyalty than the

one before.

In the first six decades of Ravenshaw College,

India and, within that, the people of Orissa

struggled for political freedom. Contrary to

popular myth, we are not midnight’s children;

in reality it was a night of decades, and our

freedom took many generations of working,

many lives had to embrace the cause without

fear of the consequence.

That was our first freedom. Between 1947 and

today, we have been battling for our second

freedom: economic freedom for our people. In

these intervening six decades, we have not

had a famine of the 1866 variety. Although

floods and droughts have been the bane of

Orissa, they have not quite been like the great

famines that once wiped off generations in

a single go. Our people have starved to

death during this period, but it was nothing

compared to the specter of the past. With

effort we have come this far and the battle for

economic freedom is largely won.

But now, we have to embark a more crucial

journey for a more difficult freedom to

win – it is the freedom of the intellect. Unlike

political freedom, and in some sense, eco-

nomic freedom, this one is not about

unshackling from an external opponent.

Rather, it is about unshackling the mind

from within. More than ever before, we live

in times of widespread corruption, visionless

politics, non-inclusive development and a

near-total disregard for the environment.

These are oppressors in our own minds

and the potent destruction they may cause

is larger than anything a foreign hand

ever could.

To strive for freedom of the intellect, you

have to develop a sense of destiny. You must

know that you have a purpose larger than

your own self.

You must develop the true desire to learn,

beyond the mundane need to equip

yourself with a qualification. You need to

develop the capacity to deeply question

the state of things. You have to put your stake

on the ground.

You have to build substance and the power to

serve others in many valuable ways.

You must believe in your own self, follow your

heart and not seek approval from a society

that expects you to change it.

You must speak your mind and be accountable

for your words and actions.

You must not be content with the measure of

the times, for you are here to build a scale for

the future. You must create your own path and

not be path-dependent.

For this, the burden of dreams must return

again.

Not everyone can carry a burden of dreams.

A burden is, after all, a burden, and when it

is a burden of dreams, it is a life-altering

experience.

The burden of dreams is not in what the

eyes see; the burden of dreams is what you

and I must affectionately carry in our bodies

and on our chests so that we can live a

worthy life.

Only blessed ones born on a sacred space

can bear that burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw is the sacred space. The question

is: are you willing to be the blessed one?

Thank you once again for inviting me this

evening. As you take on the burden of

dreams, I pray that Ravenshaw gives Orissa

her first Nobel Laureate, her first winner of

the Booker Prize and her first to claim the

Magsaysay Award.

Subroto Bagchi co-founded MindTree where

he works as the Gardener. His books, The

High Performance Entrepreneur and Go, Kiss

the World, are Penguin bestsellers.

Vice Chancellor, Principal, Faculty, Members

of the Senate and the Syndicate, my dear

Students, Ladies and Gentlemen.

My being with you this evening is historic

for me. The Ravenshaw ethos is part of our

family heritage. My father studied here. My

uncle studied here. Three of my elder brothers

studied here. The eldest topped his class

throughout and was elected vicepresident of

the student’s union. The third brother chose

activism over academics as his calling and was

the president of the college union in his time.

I was the last born and lived with my parents

and an immediate elder brother in far away

places like Koraput and Keonjhar. As we grew

up in those places, we were told stories about

the great Ravenshaw College, and we aspired

to one day take our place in its imposing

red structure. We learnt about the great

academicians who taught here, the minds who

mentored young people who eventually

became destiny’s children. We were also

told about something mysteriously transfor-

mational in the insipid food of the Ravenshaw

hostels that sent people straight to a place

called Dholpur House in New Delhi.

To us, Ravenshaw was sacred ground.

Unfortunately for me, by the time I was ready

to come to its hallowed precincts, my father

had retired. The last two of the brood were

picked up by the elder brothers – by then one

was a bureaucrat in Bhubaneswar and the

other had started a fledgling legal practice in

Cuttack. My immediate elder brother got

allocated to study at Ravenshaw under the

tutelage of the lawyer brother; I was sent to

live with my eldest brother in Bhubaneswar

and asked to go to the BJB College there. I

have to admit that I felt deprived.

So, whenever I got a chance, while studying

at BJB College, I came here – I stood by

the Sun Dial or peeped into the Kanika

Library. Sometimes I came to debate here.

On two occasions, I won the Inter-College

Debate competition held at Ravenshaw

College – they used to be held in the Physics

Lecture Theater and on one occasion,

Dr. Mayadhar Mansingh was one of the

judges. To be judged by someone like him

gave me a sense of high I carry even four

decades after! The prizes for the debates –

one in English and one in Oriya – were

instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout, then

Principal, in his father’s memory.

One, that vision was larger than life. As all

visions must be. It was in fact, what we may

call a “hairy, audacious goal” particularly at a

time when Orissa was coming out of the great

famine of 1866.

Secondly, that vision did not have anything to

do with Mr. Ravenshaw’s self-interest – he

was doing it for the posterity of a people that

were not his own.

Thirdly, and very importantly, the vision was

opposed at the time of its birth. Great vision

is always invariably put to test early on and

that is when many of us become frustrated.

We want the world to come to our door steps

because we have a dream. Only those dreams

have a right to be born that can withstand

opposition and cynicism.

But I am not here to talk to you about the

power of vision, nor do I want to pay tributes

to the great man who did not even want his

name to be bequeathed to the institution he

wanted to build. Instead, today, I want to talk

to you about the burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw – from now on I mean the

132 year-old-institution – has not just been a

place for mass-manufacture of employable

graduates. On its sacred space, not just lives,

but movements have been launched. We

would all do well to refresh our memories

on some of those without which we would not

be worthy of the people who have once

walked this very land before we did.

An educational institution is not just about

prescribed curriculum, about question papers

and answer sheets: it is a place to learn about

life and living by dialogue and diversity, it is

the place for creating the capacity to learn, to

question, to innovate, to push and be pushed

back, to romance life and make life a worthy

place for those who will come after us.

The report card for Ravenshaw on that score is

a glowing tribute to every single brick that

became a sentinel of our freedom; this

remarkable red edifice chose to do more than

be a witness to time―it chose to be an active

participant. Tonight, I would like to take you

down the memory lane to give you a glimpse

of that report card.

1903. Modern Oriya consciousness began

in the formation of the Utkal Sammilani by

Orissa’s first graduate, first post-graduate, and

first practicing lawyer, Madhusudan Das. When

that Utkal Sammilani had its first session here

on the Idga Ground in Cuttack, history tells us,

it was attended by 335 delegates from the

outlying areas; zamindars, representatives of

the Gadjats, the Commissioner himself,

two Christian missionaries, local intellectuals

like Radhanath Roy, Madhusudan Rao,

Then came the Salt Satyagraha and the post

graduate students of Ravenshaw College

actually dropped their examination in support

of the struggle when a batch of protesters

marched from Khurda to the sea to defy the

Salt Act of the British Empire.

1937. Even as Orissa acquired statehood

under the British Empire, there was no

legislative assembly for people’s representa-

tives to represent their will and legislate on

their behalf. It is no small coincidence that the

grounds of Ravenshaw College were chosen

for the very first meeting of the Legislative

Assembly of Orissa on July 28th, 1937.

1942. At the forefront of the Quit India

movement were the students of Ravenshaw

College. On 15 August that year, 200 of them

protested. They actually set the office room

on fire. Among the arsonists were Banamali

Patnaik, Ashok Das, Biren Mitra, Suraj Mal Saha

and Bibhudendra Mishra. The last two were

detained under the Defence of India Act

and sent away to the Berhampur Jail. The

movement spread to all other educational

institutions in the state.

Born of famine, child of a foreigner’s vision,

Ravenshaw College was the vortex of political,

intellectual and literary movements in Orissa

for the first seven decades of its existence.

That is probably why it has produced

countless heads of state, poets, politicians,

judges and bureaucrats who spread their

impact far and wide.

1947. And then came seven decades of

relative silence, except for the student unrest

of the 1960s that spread to the far corners of

the State. As the nation got largely busy with

itself, Ravenshaw College no longer buzzed

with the higher call, its portals gradually

settled down to a collective ambition that ran

from the Cuttack railway station and

terminated in New Delhi where the Union

Public Service Commission had its home.

The corridors of Ravenshaw no longer rever-

berated with the footfalls of the revolution-

ary, the thinker-doer, the game changer - they

only echoed gently a legitimate middle-class

aspiration to become a permanent employee

of the government. To the job seeker, Raven-

shaw became a means to an end – a good

education that guaranteed a good job.

If we make a roll call of the chief secretaries

to the government that independent

Orissa ever had, we will find that an over-

whelming majority of them come from this

single institution. That principle applies

equally to the coveted Indian Police Service,

the Allied Services and their less coveted

state counterparts.

In the six decades after independence, Orissa

progressed in some sense and regressed in

others, but Ravenshaw, despite its innate

capability, gently withdrew from its task of

producing thought leadership. The same

person who ran towards the safe harbor of a

government job could have aimed for the

Nobel Prize, the Booker and the Magsaysay

Award. But the burden of dreams had been

lowered for the time.

The time has come to change that.

Today’s Orissa, like today’s India, is in deeper

strife than she was a hundred years ago. We

need to address this.

I believe that the idea of the Indian State, of

elected government, of a judicial system and

of the protection of law and order, is ceasing

to be relevant to an increasing number of

people. A record number of Indian territories

are ungovernable by public admission. It is

no longer Jammu and Kashmir and the far

flung border areas in the North East; the fact

is that deep inside states like Orissa, Andhra

Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and many others, an

increasing number of districts find themselves

unable to guarantee anyone the right to life,

property and equality of justice.

Here is our own state where policemen are

mowed down in districts like Koraput. In

Nayagarh, barely two hours from the state

capital, hundreds raid the armory of the state

as if it were a college picnic and vanish as

easily as they came. In Kandhamal, someone

is burnt alive, someone is raped and twenty

thousand people become homeless, as if we

live in the backyards of Somalia or Rwanda.

All over India, government is retreating to the

metros. The rich and the worrying are building

“gated communities”―they do not realize

that shrunken freedom is no freedom. Their

gates are gates of fear and not freedom.

At the core of the problem is the issue of

widespread corruption. The reason our police,

our bureaucrats, our judges and our politi-

cians are afraid is that we have become a

collectively corrupt society. When you

become corrupt, you lose the moral authority

to govern. All forms of authority are finally

about the moral right. Only the moral right

gives us the power to stare down an oppo-

nent, as has been proven time and again in

human history, from the days of Moses to

those of the Mahatma.

When the Oriya language and identity was in

question, Ravenshaw College had a view

point; when the Salt Act was passed, the

students and the teachers at the Ravenshaw

College had a position; when the British

oppression became intolerable, right here in

the fields of Ravenshaw, the Union Jack was

trampled. Ravenshaw’s students wrote love

poems and secessionist literature with the

same ease.

Picture shows the then Leader of Opposition, Shri Biju Patnaik giving away the prize to Subroto Bagchi for the Inter-Collegiate Debate in Oriya instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout

Each time, after I won the debate, Dr. Rout

made it a point to tell me how he wished I

were a student at this Institution! I carry that

endorsement as a badge of citizenship. The

thought that I was so welcome here then,

makes me feel legitimate as your Chief Guest

this evening. Today, when you choose me

over the thousands of more well-known

Ravenshawvians who have made an impact,

you have taken away the last sense of

banishment that I carried in my inability to

make Ravenshaw my alma mater.

Ravenshaw College was born in the year 1876

because of the untiring efforts of an English-

man named Thomas Edward Ravenshaw. He

called it the Cuttack College. He was a British

civil servant in India. His vision for building an

institution of learning has several lessons for

all of us.

Bishwanath Kar and the Principal and

students of Ravenshaw College assembled to

engage in the deliberations.

1920. Students of Ravenshaw, like

Harekrushna Mahatab, N.K. Chaudhury and

their fellow alumni, opposed the idea of the

same Madhusudan Das accepting minister-

ship of the British created government and

distributed leaflets in protest; they disturbed

a progovernment felicitation meeting. Their

activities were reported to Mr. Lambart, Princi-

pal of Ravenshaw College, and their parents

were asked to withdraw the two from college

just a week before their BA examinations.

In the years that succeeded, parallel to the

uprising of Oriya consciousness, was the

beginning of the national freedom movement.

When India made her shift from self-rule to

demand for full freedom, the chants for

freedom first reverberated within the four

walls of this great Institution before they

spread far and wide.

1930. When the Orissa Pradesh Congress

Committee gave a call observing January

26th as “Independence day”, history tells us

that the hostellers of Ravenshaw College took

the lead in organizing the celebrations and

many students gave up a meal to contribute

to the funds of Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das

towards the national freedom movement.

So, how is it that our middle-class, poverty of

the mind is not on its priority?

How is it that when Kandhamal burns,

Ravenshaw’s conscience does not agitate?

While the scourge of corruption has touched

the marrow of the civil society, why are

we are not dialoguing here for a more sustain-

able future?

The burden of dreams must return once again

so that the hallowed grounds of this great

institution can show the path to a people at

crossroads with themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are three kinds of

freedom. Each one is more difficult to win than

the other; each is more intense, fuller of

churning, more demanding of loyalty than the

one before.

In the first six decades of Ravenshaw College,

India and, within that, the people of Orissa

struggled for political freedom. Contrary to

popular myth, we are not midnight’s children;

in reality it was a night of decades, and our

freedom took many generations of working,

many lives had to embrace the cause without

fear of the consequence.

That was our first freedom. Between 1947 and

today, we have been battling for our second

freedom: economic freedom for our people. In

these intervening six decades, we have not

had a famine of the 1866 variety. Although

floods and droughts have been the bane of

Orissa, they have not quite been like the great

famines that once wiped off generations in

a single go. Our people have starved to

death during this period, but it was nothing

compared to the specter of the past. With

effort we have come this far and the battle for

economic freedom is largely won.

But now, we have to embark a more crucial

journey for a more difficult freedom to

win – it is the freedom of the intellect. Unlike

political freedom, and in some sense, eco-

nomic freedom, this one is not about

unshackling from an external opponent.

Rather, it is about unshackling the mind

from within. More than ever before, we live

in times of widespread corruption, visionless

politics, non-inclusive development and a

near-total disregard for the environment.

These are oppressors in our own minds

and the potent destruction they may cause

is larger than anything a foreign hand

ever could.

To strive for freedom of the intellect, you

have to develop a sense of destiny. You must

know that you have a purpose larger than

your own self.

You must develop the true desire to learn,

beyond the mundane need to equip

yourself with a qualification. You need to

develop the capacity to deeply question

the state of things. You have to put your stake

on the ground.

You have to build substance and the power to

serve others in many valuable ways.

You must believe in your own self, follow your

heart and not seek approval from a society

that expects you to change it.

You must speak your mind and be accountable

for your words and actions.

You must not be content with the measure of

the times, for you are here to build a scale for

the future. You must create your own path and

not be path-dependent.

For this, the burden of dreams must return

again.

Not everyone can carry a burden of dreams.

A burden is, after all, a burden, and when it

is a burden of dreams, it is a life-altering

experience.

The burden of dreams is not in what the

eyes see; the burden of dreams is what you

and I must affectionately carry in our bodies

and on our chests so that we can live a

worthy life.

Only blessed ones born on a sacred space

can bear that burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw is the sacred space. The question

is: are you willing to be the blessed one?

Thank you once again for inviting me this

evening. As you take on the burden of

dreams, I pray that Ravenshaw gives Orissa

her first Nobel Laureate, her first winner of

the Booker Prize and her first to claim the

Magsaysay Award.

Subroto Bagchi co-founded MindTree where

he works as the Gardener. His books, The

High Performance Entrepreneur and Go, Kiss

the World, are Penguin bestsellers.

Vice Chancellor, Principal, Faculty, Members

of the Senate and the Syndicate, my dear

Students, Ladies and Gentlemen.

My being with you this evening is historic

for me. The Ravenshaw ethos is part of our

family heritage. My father studied here. My

uncle studied here. Three of my elder brothers

studied here. The eldest topped his class

throughout and was elected vicepresident of

the student’s union. The third brother chose

activism over academics as his calling and was

the president of the college union in his time.

I was the last born and lived with my parents

and an immediate elder brother in far away

places like Koraput and Keonjhar. As we grew

up in those places, we were told stories about

the great Ravenshaw College, and we aspired

to one day take our place in its imposing

red structure. We learnt about the great

academicians who taught here, the minds who

mentored young people who eventually

became destiny’s children. We were also

told about something mysteriously transfor-

mational in the insipid food of the Ravenshaw

hostels that sent people straight to a place

called Dholpur House in New Delhi.

To us, Ravenshaw was sacred ground.

Unfortunately for me, by the time I was ready

to come to its hallowed precincts, my father

had retired. The last two of the brood were

picked up by the elder brothers – by then one

was a bureaucrat in Bhubaneswar and the

other had started a fledgling legal practice in

Cuttack. My immediate elder brother got

allocated to study at Ravenshaw under the

tutelage of the lawyer brother; I was sent to

live with my eldest brother in Bhubaneswar

and asked to go to the BJB College there. I

have to admit that I felt deprived.

So, whenever I got a chance, while studying

at BJB College, I came here – I stood by

the Sun Dial or peeped into the Kanika

Library. Sometimes I came to debate here.

On two occasions, I won the Inter-College

Debate competition held at Ravenshaw

College – they used to be held in the Physics

Lecture Theater and on one occasion,

Dr. Mayadhar Mansingh was one of the

judges. To be judged by someone like him

gave me a sense of high I carry even four

decades after! The prizes for the debates –

one in English and one in Oriya – were

instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout, then

Principal, in his father’s memory.

One, that vision was larger than life. As all

visions must be. It was in fact, what we may

call a “hairy, audacious goal” particularly at a

time when Orissa was coming out of the great

famine of 1866.

Secondly, that vision did not have anything to

do with Mr. Ravenshaw’s self-interest – he

was doing it for the posterity of a people that

were not his own.

Thirdly, and very importantly, the vision was

opposed at the time of its birth. Great vision

is always invariably put to test early on and

that is when many of us become frustrated.

We want the world to come to our door steps

because we have a dream. Only those dreams

have a right to be born that can withstand

opposition and cynicism.

But I am not here to talk to you about the

power of vision, nor do I want to pay tributes

to the great man who did not even want his

name to be bequeathed to the institution he

wanted to build. Instead, today, I want to talk

to you about the burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw – from now on I mean the

132 year-old-institution – has not just been a

place for mass-manufacture of employable

graduates. On its sacred space, not just lives,

but movements have been launched. We

would all do well to refresh our memories

on some of those without which we would not

be worthy of the people who have once

walked this very land before we did.

An educational institution is not just about

prescribed curriculum, about question papers

and answer sheets: it is a place to learn about

life and living by dialogue and diversity, it is

the place for creating the capacity to learn, to

question, to innovate, to push and be pushed

back, to romance life and make life a worthy

place for those who will come after us.

The report card for Ravenshaw on that score is

a glowing tribute to every single brick that

became a sentinel of our freedom; this

remarkable red edifice chose to do more than

be a witness to time―it chose to be an active

participant. Tonight, I would like to take you

down the memory lane to give you a glimpse

of that report card.

1903. Modern Oriya consciousness began

in the formation of the Utkal Sammilani by

Orissa’s first graduate, first post-graduate, and

first practicing lawyer, Madhusudan Das. When

that Utkal Sammilani had its first session here

on the Idga Ground in Cuttack, history tells us,

it was attended by 335 delegates from the

outlying areas; zamindars, representatives of

the Gadjats, the Commissioner himself,

two Christian missionaries, local intellectuals

like Radhanath Roy, Madhusudan Rao,

Then came the Salt Satyagraha and the post

graduate students of Ravenshaw College

actually dropped their examination in support

of the struggle when a batch of protesters

marched from Khurda to the sea to defy the

Salt Act of the British Empire.

1937. Even as Orissa acquired statehood

under the British Empire, there was no

legislative assembly for people’s representa-

tives to represent their will and legislate on

their behalf. It is no small coincidence that the

grounds of Ravenshaw College were chosen

for the very first meeting of the Legislative

Assembly of Orissa on July 28th, 1937.

1942. At the forefront of the Quit India

movement were the students of Ravenshaw

College. On 15 August that year, 200 of them

protested. They actually set the office room

on fire. Among the arsonists were Banamali

Patnaik, Ashok Das, Biren Mitra, Suraj Mal Saha

and Bibhudendra Mishra. The last two were

detained under the Defence of India Act

and sent away to the Berhampur Jail. The

movement spread to all other educational

institutions in the state.

Born of famine, child of a foreigner’s vision,

Ravenshaw College was the vortex of political,

intellectual and literary movements in Orissa

for the first seven decades of its existence.

That is probably why it has produced

countless heads of state, poets, politicians,

judges and bureaucrats who spread their

impact far and wide.

1947. And then came seven decades of

relative silence, except for the student unrest

of the 1960s that spread to the far corners of

the State. As the nation got largely busy with

itself, Ravenshaw College no longer buzzed

with the higher call, its portals gradually

settled down to a collective ambition that ran

from the Cuttack railway station and

terminated in New Delhi where the Union

Public Service Commission had its home.

The corridors of Ravenshaw no longer rever-

berated with the footfalls of the revolution-

ary, the thinker-doer, the game changer - they

only echoed gently a legitimate middle-class

aspiration to become a permanent employee

of the government. To the job seeker, Raven-

shaw became a means to an end – a good

education that guaranteed a good job.

If we make a roll call of the chief secretaries

to the government that independent

Orissa ever had, we will find that an over-

whelming majority of them come from this

single institution. That principle applies

equally to the coveted Indian Police Service,

the Allied Services and their less coveted

state counterparts.

In the six decades after independence, Orissa

progressed in some sense and regressed in

others, but Ravenshaw, despite its innate

capability, gently withdrew from its task of

producing thought leadership. The same

person who ran towards the safe harbor of a

government job could have aimed for the

Nobel Prize, the Booker and the Magsaysay

Award. But the burden of dreams had been

lowered for the time.

The time has come to change that.

Today’s Orissa, like today’s India, is in deeper

strife than she was a hundred years ago. We

need to address this.

I believe that the idea of the Indian State, of

elected government, of a judicial system and

of the protection of law and order, is ceasing

to be relevant to an increasing number of

people. A record number of Indian territories

are ungovernable by public admission. It is

no longer Jammu and Kashmir and the far

flung border areas in the North East; the fact

is that deep inside states like Orissa, Andhra

Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and many others, an

increasing number of districts find themselves

unable to guarantee anyone the right to life,

property and equality of justice.

Here is our own state where policemen are

mowed down in districts like Koraput. In

Nayagarh, barely two hours from the state

capital, hundreds raid the armory of the state

as if it were a college picnic and vanish as

easily as they came. In Kandhamal, someone

is burnt alive, someone is raped and twenty

thousand people become homeless, as if we

live in the backyards of Somalia or Rwanda.

All over India, government is retreating to the

metros. The rich and the worrying are building

“gated communities”―they do not realize

that shrunken freedom is no freedom. Their

gates are gates of fear and not freedom.

At the core of the problem is the issue of

widespread corruption. The reason our police,

our bureaucrats, our judges and our politi-

cians are afraid is that we have become a

collectively corrupt society. When you

become corrupt, you lose the moral authority

to govern. All forms of authority are finally

about the moral right. Only the moral right

gives us the power to stare down an oppo-

nent, as has been proven time and again in

human history, from the days of Moses to

those of the Mahatma.

When the Oriya language and identity was in

question, Ravenshaw College had a view

point; when the Salt Act was passed, the

students and the teachers at the Ravenshaw

College had a position; when the British

oppression became intolerable, right here in

the fields of Ravenshaw, the Union Jack was

trampled. Ravenshaw’s students wrote love

poems and secessionist literature with the

same ease.

Picture shows the then Leader of Opposition, Shri Biju Patnaik giving away the prize to Subroto Bagchi for the Inter-Collegiate Debate in Oriya instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout

Each time, after I won the debate, Dr. Rout

made it a point to tell me how he wished I

were a student at this Institution! I carry that

endorsement as a badge of citizenship. The

thought that I was so welcome here then,

makes me feel legitimate as your Chief Guest

this evening. Today, when you choose me

over the thousands of more well-known

Ravenshawvians who have made an impact,

you have taken away the last sense of

banishment that I carried in my inability to

make Ravenshaw my alma mater.

Ravenshaw College was born in the year 1876

because of the untiring efforts of an English-

man named Thomas Edward Ravenshaw. He

called it the Cuttack College. He was a British

civil servant in India. His vision for building an

institution of learning has several lessons for

all of us.

Bishwanath Kar and the Principal and

students of Ravenshaw College assembled to

engage in the deliberations.

1920. Students of Ravenshaw, like

Harekrushna Mahatab, N.K. Chaudhury and

their fellow alumni, opposed the idea of the

same Madhusudan Das accepting minister-

ship of the British created government and

distributed leaflets in protest; they disturbed

a progovernment felicitation meeting. Their

activities were reported to Mr. Lambart, Princi-

pal of Ravenshaw College, and their parents

were asked to withdraw the two from college

just a week before their BA examinations.

In the years that succeeded, parallel to the

uprising of Oriya consciousness, was the

beginning of the national freedom movement.

When India made her shift from self-rule to

demand for full freedom, the chants for

freedom first reverberated within the four

walls of this great Institution before they

spread far and wide.

1930. When the Orissa Pradesh Congress

Committee gave a call observing January

26th as “Independence day”, history tells us

that the hostellers of Ravenshaw College took

the lead in organizing the celebrations and

many students gave up a meal to contribute

to the funds of Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das

towards the national freedom movement.

So, how is it that our middle-class, poverty of

the mind is not on its priority?

How is it that when Kandhamal burns,

Ravenshaw’s conscience does not agitate?

While the scourge of corruption has touched

the marrow of the civil society, why are

we are not dialoguing here for a more sustain-

able future?

The burden of dreams must return once again

so that the hallowed grounds of this great

institution can show the path to a people at

crossroads with themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are three kinds of

freedom. Each one is more difficult to win than

the other; each is more intense, fuller of

churning, more demanding of loyalty than the

one before.

In the first six decades of Ravenshaw College,

India and, within that, the people of Orissa

struggled for political freedom. Contrary to

popular myth, we are not midnight’s children;

in reality it was a night of decades, and our

freedom took many generations of working,

many lives had to embrace the cause without

fear of the consequence.

That was our first freedom. Between 1947 and

today, we have been battling for our second

freedom: economic freedom for our people. In

these intervening six decades, we have not

had a famine of the 1866 variety. Although

floods and droughts have been the bane of

Orissa, they have not quite been like the great

famines that once wiped off generations in

a single go. Our people have starved to

death during this period, but it was nothing

compared to the specter of the past. With

effort we have come this far and the battle for

economic freedom is largely won.

But now, we have to embark a more crucial

journey for a more difficult freedom to

win – it is the freedom of the intellect. Unlike

political freedom, and in some sense, eco-

nomic freedom, this one is not about

unshackling from an external opponent.

Rather, it is about unshackling the mind

from within. More than ever before, we live

in times of widespread corruption, visionless

politics, non-inclusive development and a

near-total disregard for the environment.

These are oppressors in our own minds

and the potent destruction they may cause

is larger than anything a foreign hand

ever could.

To strive for freedom of the intellect, you

have to develop a sense of destiny. You must

know that you have a purpose larger than

your own self.

You must develop the true desire to learn,

beyond the mundane need to equip

yourself with a qualification. You need to

develop the capacity to deeply question

the state of things. You have to put your stake

on the ground.

You have to build substance and the power to

serve others in many valuable ways.

You must believe in your own self, follow your

heart and not seek approval from a society

that expects you to change it.

You must speak your mind and be accountable

for your words and actions.

You must not be content with the measure of

the times, for you are here to build a scale for

the future. You must create your own path and

not be path-dependent.

For this, the burden of dreams must return

again.

Not everyone can carry a burden of dreams.

A burden is, after all, a burden, and when it

is a burden of dreams, it is a life-altering

experience.

The burden of dreams is not in what the

eyes see; the burden of dreams is what you

and I must affectionately carry in our bodies

and on our chests so that we can live a

worthy life.

Only blessed ones born on a sacred space

can bear that burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw is the sacred space. The question

is: are you willing to be the blessed one?

Thank you once again for inviting me this

evening. As you take on the burden of

dreams, I pray that Ravenshaw gives Orissa

her first Nobel Laureate, her first winner of

the Booker Prize and her first to claim the

Magsaysay Award.

Subroto Bagchi co-founded MindTree where

he works as the Gardener. His books, The

High Performance Entrepreneur and Go, Kiss

the World, are Penguin bestsellers.

Vice Chancellor, Principal, Faculty, Members

of the Senate and the Syndicate, my dear

Students, Ladies and Gentlemen.

My being with you this evening is historic

for me. The Ravenshaw ethos is part of our

family heritage. My father studied here. My

uncle studied here. Three of my elder brothers

studied here. The eldest topped his class

throughout and was elected vicepresident of

the student’s union. The third brother chose

activism over academics as his calling and was

the president of the college union in his time.

I was the last born and lived with my parents

and an immediate elder brother in far away

places like Koraput and Keonjhar. As we grew

up in those places, we were told stories about

the great Ravenshaw College, and we aspired

to one day take our place in its imposing

red structure. We learnt about the great

academicians who taught here, the minds who

mentored young people who eventually

became destiny’s children. We were also

told about something mysteriously transfor-

mational in the insipid food of the Ravenshaw

hostels that sent people straight to a place

called Dholpur House in New Delhi.

To us, Ravenshaw was sacred ground.

Unfortunately for me, by the time I was ready

to come to its hallowed precincts, my father

had retired. The last two of the brood were

picked up by the elder brothers – by then one

was a bureaucrat in Bhubaneswar and the

other had started a fledgling legal practice in

Cuttack. My immediate elder brother got

allocated to study at Ravenshaw under the

tutelage of the lawyer brother; I was sent to

live with my eldest brother in Bhubaneswar

and asked to go to the BJB College there. I

have to admit that I felt deprived.

So, whenever I got a chance, while studying

at BJB College, I came here – I stood by

the Sun Dial or peeped into the Kanika

Library. Sometimes I came to debate here.

On two occasions, I won the Inter-College

Debate competition held at Ravenshaw

College – they used to be held in the Physics

Lecture Theater and on one occasion,

Dr. Mayadhar Mansingh was one of the

judges. To be judged by someone like him

gave me a sense of high I carry even four

decades after! The prizes for the debates –

one in English and one in Oriya – were

instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout, then

Principal, in his father’s memory.

One, that vision was larger than life. As all

visions must be. It was in fact, what we may

call a “hairy, audacious goal” particularly at a

time when Orissa was coming out of the great

famine of 1866.

Secondly, that vision did not have anything to

do with Mr. Ravenshaw’s self-interest – he

was doing it for the posterity of a people that

were not his own.

Thirdly, and very importantly, the vision was

opposed at the time of its birth. Great vision

is always invariably put to test early on and

that is when many of us become frustrated.

We want the world to come to our door steps

because we have a dream. Only those dreams

have a right to be born that can withstand

opposition and cynicism.

But I am not here to talk to you about the

power of vision, nor do I want to pay tributes

to the great man who did not even want his

name to be bequeathed to the institution he

wanted to build. Instead, today, I want to talk

to you about the burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw – from now on I mean the

132 year-old-institution – has not just been a

place for mass-manufacture of employable

graduates. On its sacred space, not just lives,

but movements have been launched. We

would all do well to refresh our memories

on some of those without which we would not

be worthy of the people who have once

walked this very land before we did.

An educational institution is not just about

prescribed curriculum, about question papers

and answer sheets: it is a place to learn about

life and living by dialogue and diversity, it is

the place for creating the capacity to learn, to

question, to innovate, to push and be pushed

back, to romance life and make life a worthy

place for those who will come after us.

The report card for Ravenshaw on that score is

a glowing tribute to every single brick that

became a sentinel of our freedom; this

remarkable red edifice chose to do more than

be a witness to time―it chose to be an active

participant. Tonight, I would like to take you

down the memory lane to give you a glimpse

of that report card.

1903. Modern Oriya consciousness began

in the formation of the Utkal Sammilani by

Orissa’s first graduate, first post-graduate, and

first practicing lawyer, Madhusudan Das. When

that Utkal Sammilani had its first session here

on the Idga Ground in Cuttack, history tells us,

it was attended by 335 delegates from the

outlying areas; zamindars, representatives of

the Gadjats, the Commissioner himself,

two Christian missionaries, local intellectuals

like Radhanath Roy, Madhusudan Rao,

Then came the Salt Satyagraha and the post

graduate students of Ravenshaw College

actually dropped their examination in support

of the struggle when a batch of protesters

marched from Khurda to the sea to defy the

Salt Act of the British Empire.

1937. Even as Orissa acquired statehood

under the British Empire, there was no

legislative assembly for people’s representa-

tives to represent their will and legislate on

their behalf. It is no small coincidence that the

grounds of Ravenshaw College were chosen

for the very first meeting of the Legislative

Assembly of Orissa on July 28th, 1937.

1942. At the forefront of the Quit India

movement were the students of Ravenshaw

College. On 15 August that year, 200 of them

protested. They actually set the office room

on fire. Among the arsonists were Banamali

Patnaik, Ashok Das, Biren Mitra, Suraj Mal Saha

and Bibhudendra Mishra. The last two were

detained under the Defence of India Act

and sent away to the Berhampur Jail. The

movement spread to all other educational

institutions in the state.

Born of famine, child of a foreigner’s vision,

Ravenshaw College was the vortex of political,

intellectual and literary movements in Orissa

for the first seven decades of its existence.

That is probably why it has produced

countless heads of state, poets, politicians,

judges and bureaucrats who spread their

impact far and wide.

1947. And then came seven decades of

relative silence, except for the student unrest

of the 1960s that spread to the far corners of

the State. As the nation got largely busy with

itself, Ravenshaw College no longer buzzed

with the higher call, its portals gradually

settled down to a collective ambition that ran

from the Cuttack railway station and

terminated in New Delhi where the Union

Public Service Commission had its home.

The corridors of Ravenshaw no longer rever-

berated with the footfalls of the revolution-

ary, the thinker-doer, the game changer - they

only echoed gently a legitimate middle-class

aspiration to become a permanent employee

of the government. To the job seeker, Raven-

shaw became a means to an end – a good

education that guaranteed a good job.

If we make a roll call of the chief secretaries

to the government that independent

Orissa ever had, we will find that an over-

whelming majority of them come from this

single institution. That principle applies

equally to the coveted Indian Police Service,

the Allied Services and their less coveted

state counterparts.

In the six decades after independence, Orissa

progressed in some sense and regressed in

others, but Ravenshaw, despite its innate

capability, gently withdrew from its task of

producing thought leadership. The same

person who ran towards the safe harbor of a

government job could have aimed for the

Nobel Prize, the Booker and the Magsaysay

Award. But the burden of dreams had been

lowered for the time.

The time has come to change that.

Today’s Orissa, like today’s India, is in deeper

strife than she was a hundred years ago. We

need to address this.

I believe that the idea of the Indian State, of

elected government, of a judicial system and

of the protection of law and order, is ceasing

to be relevant to an increasing number of

people. A record number of Indian territories

are ungovernable by public admission. It is

no longer Jammu and Kashmir and the far

flung border areas in the North East; the fact

is that deep inside states like Orissa, Andhra

Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and many others, an

increasing number of districts find themselves

unable to guarantee anyone the right to life,

property and equality of justice.

Here is our own state where policemen are

mowed down in districts like Koraput. In

Nayagarh, barely two hours from the state

capital, hundreds raid the armory of the state

as if it were a college picnic and vanish as

easily as they came. In Kandhamal, someone

is burnt alive, someone is raped and twenty

thousand people become homeless, as if we

live in the backyards of Somalia or Rwanda.

All over India, government is retreating to the

metros. The rich and the worrying are building

“gated communities”―they do not realize

that shrunken freedom is no freedom. Their

gates are gates of fear and not freedom.

At the core of the problem is the issue of

widespread corruption. The reason our police,

our bureaucrats, our judges and our politi-

cians are afraid is that we have become a

collectively corrupt society. When you

become corrupt, you lose the moral authority

to govern. All forms of authority are finally

about the moral right. Only the moral right

gives us the power to stare down an oppo-

nent, as has been proven time and again in

human history, from the days of Moses to

those of the Mahatma.

When the Oriya language and identity was in

question, Ravenshaw College had a view

point; when the Salt Act was passed, the

students and the teachers at the Ravenshaw

College had a position; when the British

oppression became intolerable, right here in

the fields of Ravenshaw, the Union Jack was

trampled. Ravenshaw’s students wrote love

poems and secessionist literature with the

same ease.

Picture shows the then Leader of Opposition, Shri Biju Patnaik giving away the prize to Subroto Bagchi for the Inter-Collegiate Debate in Oriya instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout

Each time, after I won the debate, Dr. Rout

made it a point to tell me how he wished I

were a student at this Institution! I carry that

endorsement as a badge of citizenship. The

thought that I was so welcome here then,

makes me feel legitimate as your Chief Guest

this evening. Today, when you choose me

over the thousands of more well-known

Ravenshawvians who have made an impact,

you have taken away the last sense of

banishment that I carried in my inability to

make Ravenshaw my alma mater.

Ravenshaw College was born in the year 1876

because of the untiring efforts of an English-

man named Thomas Edward Ravenshaw. He

called it the Cuttack College. He was a British

civil servant in India. His vision for building an

institution of learning has several lessons for

all of us.

Bishwanath Kar and the Principal and

students of Ravenshaw College assembled to

engage in the deliberations.

1920. Students of Ravenshaw, like

Harekrushna Mahatab, N.K. Chaudhury and

their fellow alumni, opposed the idea of the

same Madhusudan Das accepting minister-

ship of the British created government and

distributed leaflets in protest; they disturbed

a progovernment felicitation meeting. Their

activities were reported to Mr. Lambart, Princi-

pal of Ravenshaw College, and their parents

were asked to withdraw the two from college

just a week before their BA examinations.

In the years that succeeded, parallel to the

uprising of Oriya consciousness, was the

beginning of the national freedom movement.

When India made her shift from self-rule to

demand for full freedom, the chants for

freedom first reverberated within the four

walls of this great Institution before they

spread far and wide.

1930. When the Orissa Pradesh Congress

Committee gave a call observing January

26th as “Independence day”, history tells us

that the hostellers of Ravenshaw College took

the lead in organizing the celebrations and

many students gave up a meal to contribute

to the funds of Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das

towards the national freedom movement.

So, how is it that our middle-class, poverty of

the mind is not on its priority?

How is it that when Kandhamal burns,

Ravenshaw’s conscience does not agitate?

While the scourge of corruption has touched

the marrow of the civil society, why are

we are not dialoguing here for a more sustain-

able future?

The burden of dreams must return once again

so that the hallowed grounds of this great

institution can show the path to a people at

crossroads with themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are three kinds of

freedom. Each one is more difficult to win than

the other; each is more intense, fuller of

churning, more demanding of loyalty than the

one before.

In the first six decades of Ravenshaw College,

India and, within that, the people of Orissa

struggled for political freedom. Contrary to

popular myth, we are not midnight’s children;

in reality it was a night of decades, and our

freedom took many generations of working,

many lives had to embrace the cause without

fear of the consequence.

That was our first freedom. Between 1947 and

today, we have been battling for our second

freedom: economic freedom for our people. In

these intervening six decades, we have not

had a famine of the 1866 variety. Although

floods and droughts have been the bane of

Orissa, they have not quite been like the great

famines that once wiped off generations in

a single go. Our people have starved to

death during this period, but it was nothing

compared to the specter of the past. With

effort we have come this far and the battle for

economic freedom is largely won.

But now, we have to embark a more crucial

journey for a more difficult freedom to

win – it is the freedom of the intellect. Unlike

political freedom, and in some sense, eco-

nomic freedom, this one is not about

unshackling from an external opponent.

Rather, it is about unshackling the mind

from within. More than ever before, we live

in times of widespread corruption, visionless

politics, non-inclusive development and a

near-total disregard for the environment.

These are oppressors in our own minds

and the potent destruction they may cause

is larger than anything a foreign hand

ever could.

To strive for freedom of the intellect, you

have to develop a sense of destiny. You must

know that you have a purpose larger than

your own self.

You must develop the true desire to learn,

beyond the mundane need to equip

yourself with a qualification. You need to

develop the capacity to deeply question

the state of things. You have to put your stake

on the ground.

You have to build substance and the power to

serve others in many valuable ways.

You must believe in your own self, follow your

heart and not seek approval from a society

that expects you to change it.

You must speak your mind and be accountable

for your words and actions.

You must not be content with the measure of

the times, for you are here to build a scale for

the future. You must create your own path and

not be path-dependent.

For this, the burden of dreams must return

again.

Not everyone can carry a burden of dreams.

A burden is, after all, a burden, and when it

is a burden of dreams, it is a life-altering

experience.

The burden of dreams is not in what the

eyes see; the burden of dreams is what you

and I must affectionately carry in our bodies

and on our chests so that we can live a

worthy life.

Only blessed ones born on a sacred space

can bear that burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw is the sacred space. The question

is: are you willing to be the blessed one?

Thank you once again for inviting me this

evening. As you take on the burden of

dreams, I pray that Ravenshaw gives Orissa

her first Nobel Laureate, her first winner of

the Booker Prize and her first to claim the

Magsaysay Award.

Subroto Bagchi co-founded MindTree where

he works as the Gardener. His books, The

High Performance Entrepreneur and Go, Kiss

the World, are Penguin bestsellers.

Vice Chancellor, Principal, Faculty, Members

of the Senate and the Syndicate, my dear

Students, Ladies and Gentlemen.

My being with you this evening is historic

for me. The Ravenshaw ethos is part of our

family heritage. My father studied here. My

uncle studied here. Three of my elder brothers

studied here. The eldest topped his class

throughout and was elected vicepresident of

the student’s union. The third brother chose

activism over academics as his calling and was

the president of the college union in his time.

I was the last born and lived with my parents

and an immediate elder brother in far away

places like Koraput and Keonjhar. As we grew

up in those places, we were told stories about

the great Ravenshaw College, and we aspired

to one day take our place in its imposing

red structure. We learnt about the great

academicians who taught here, the minds who

mentored young people who eventually

became destiny’s children. We were also

told about something mysteriously transfor-

mational in the insipid food of the Ravenshaw

hostels that sent people straight to a place

called Dholpur House in New Delhi.

To us, Ravenshaw was sacred ground.

Unfortunately for me, by the time I was ready

to come to its hallowed precincts, my father

had retired. The last two of the brood were

picked up by the elder brothers – by then one

was a bureaucrat in Bhubaneswar and the

other had started a fledgling legal practice in

Cuttack. My immediate elder brother got

allocated to study at Ravenshaw under the

tutelage of the lawyer brother; I was sent to

live with my eldest brother in Bhubaneswar

and asked to go to the BJB College there. I

have to admit that I felt deprived.

So, whenever I got a chance, while studying

at BJB College, I came here – I stood by

the Sun Dial or peeped into the Kanika

Library. Sometimes I came to debate here.

On two occasions, I won the Inter-College

Debate competition held at Ravenshaw

College – they used to be held in the Physics

Lecture Theater and on one occasion,

Dr. Mayadhar Mansingh was one of the

judges. To be judged by someone like him

gave me a sense of high I carry even four

decades after! The prizes for the debates –

one in English and one in Oriya – were

instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout, then

Principal, in his father’s memory.

One, that vision was larger than life. As all

visions must be. It was in fact, what we may

call a “hairy, audacious goal” particularly at a

time when Orissa was coming out of the great

famine of 1866.

Secondly, that vision did not have anything to

do with Mr. Ravenshaw’s self-interest – he

was doing it for the posterity of a people that

were not his own.

Thirdly, and very importantly, the vision was

opposed at the time of its birth. Great vision

is always invariably put to test early on and

that is when many of us become frustrated.

We want the world to come to our door steps

because we have a dream. Only those dreams

have a right to be born that can withstand

opposition and cynicism.

But I am not here to talk to you about the

power of vision, nor do I want to pay tributes

to the great man who did not even want his

name to be bequeathed to the institution he

wanted to build. Instead, today, I want to talk

to you about the burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw – from now on I mean the

132 year-old-institution – has not just been a

place for mass-manufacture of employable

graduates. On its sacred space, not just lives,

but movements have been launched. We

would all do well to refresh our memories

on some of those without which we would not

be worthy of the people who have once

walked this very land before we did.

An educational institution is not just about

prescribed curriculum, about question papers

and answer sheets: it is a place to learn about

life and living by dialogue and diversity, it is

the place for creating the capacity to learn, to

question, to innovate, to push and be pushed

back, to romance life and make life a worthy

place for those who will come after us.

The report card for Ravenshaw on that score is

a glowing tribute to every single brick that

became a sentinel of our freedom; this

remarkable red edifice chose to do more than

be a witness to time―it chose to be an active

participant. Tonight, I would like to take you

down the memory lane to give you a glimpse

of that report card.

1903. Modern Oriya consciousness began

in the formation of the Utkal Sammilani by

Orissa’s first graduate, first post-graduate, and

first practicing lawyer, Madhusudan Das. When

that Utkal Sammilani had its first session here

on the Idga Ground in Cuttack, history tells us,

it was attended by 335 delegates from the

outlying areas; zamindars, representatives of

the Gadjats, the Commissioner himself,

two Christian missionaries, local intellectuals

like Radhanath Roy, Madhusudan Rao,

Then came the Salt Satyagraha and the post

graduate students of Ravenshaw College

actually dropped their examination in support

of the struggle when a batch of protesters

marched from Khurda to the sea to defy the

Salt Act of the British Empire.

1937. Even as Orissa acquired statehood

under the British Empire, there was no

legislative assembly for people’s representa-

tives to represent their will and legislate on

their behalf. It is no small coincidence that the

grounds of Ravenshaw College were chosen

for the very first meeting of the Legislative

Assembly of Orissa on July 28th, 1937.

1942. At the forefront of the Quit India

movement were the students of Ravenshaw

College. On 15 August that year, 200 of them

protested. They actually set the office room

on fire. Among the arsonists were Banamali

Patnaik, Ashok Das, Biren Mitra, Suraj Mal Saha

and Bibhudendra Mishra. The last two were

detained under the Defence of India Act

and sent away to the Berhampur Jail. The

movement spread to all other educational

institutions in the state.

Born of famine, child of a foreigner’s vision,

Ravenshaw College was the vortex of political,

intellectual and literary movements in Orissa

for the first seven decades of its existence.

That is probably why it has produced

countless heads of state, poets, politicians,

judges and bureaucrats who spread their

impact far and wide.

1947. And then came seven decades of

relative silence, except for the student unrest

of the 1960s that spread to the far corners of

the State. As the nation got largely busy with

itself, Ravenshaw College no longer buzzed

with the higher call, its portals gradually

settled down to a collective ambition that ran

from the Cuttack railway station and

terminated in New Delhi where the Union

Public Service Commission had its home.

The corridors of Ravenshaw no longer rever-

berated with the footfalls of the revolution-

ary, the thinker-doer, the game changer - they

only echoed gently a legitimate middle-class

aspiration to become a permanent employee

of the government. To the job seeker, Raven-

shaw became a means to an end – a good

education that guaranteed a good job.

If we make a roll call of the chief secretaries

to the government that independent

Orissa ever had, we will find that an over-

whelming majority of them come from this

single institution. That principle applies

equally to the coveted Indian Police Service,

the Allied Services and their less coveted

state counterparts.

In the six decades after independence, Orissa

progressed in some sense and regressed in

others, but Ravenshaw, despite its innate

capability, gently withdrew from its task of

producing thought leadership. The same

person who ran towards the safe harbor of a

government job could have aimed for the

Nobel Prize, the Booker and the Magsaysay

Award. But the burden of dreams had been

lowered for the time.

The time has come to change that.

Today’s Orissa, like today’s India, is in deeper

strife than she was a hundred years ago. We

need to address this.

I believe that the idea of the Indian State, of

elected government, of a judicial system and

of the protection of law and order, is ceasing

to be relevant to an increasing number of

people. A record number of Indian territories

are ungovernable by public admission. It is

no longer Jammu and Kashmir and the far

flung border areas in the North East; the fact

is that deep inside states like Orissa, Andhra

Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and many others, an

increasing number of districts find themselves

unable to guarantee anyone the right to life,

property and equality of justice.

Here is our own state where policemen are

mowed down in districts like Koraput. In

Nayagarh, barely two hours from the state

capital, hundreds raid the armory of the state

as if it were a college picnic and vanish as

easily as they came. In Kandhamal, someone

is burnt alive, someone is raped and twenty

thousand people become homeless, as if we

live in the backyards of Somalia or Rwanda.

All over India, government is retreating to the

metros. The rich and the worrying are building

“gated communities”―they do not realize

that shrunken freedom is no freedom. Their

gates are gates of fear and not freedom.

At the core of the problem is the issue of

widespread corruption. The reason our police,

our bureaucrats, our judges and our politi-

cians are afraid is that we have become a

collectively corrupt society. When you

become corrupt, you lose the moral authority

to govern. All forms of authority are finally

about the moral right. Only the moral right

gives us the power to stare down an oppo-

nent, as has been proven time and again in

human history, from the days of Moses to

those of the Mahatma.

When the Oriya language and identity was in

question, Ravenshaw College had a view

point; when the Salt Act was passed, the

students and the teachers at the Ravenshaw

College had a position; when the British

oppression became intolerable, right here in

the fields of Ravenshaw, the Union Jack was

trampled. Ravenshaw’s students wrote love

poems and secessionist literature with the

same ease.

Picture shows the then Leader of Opposition, Shri Biju Patnaik giving away the prize to Subroto Bagchi for the Inter-Collegiate Debate in Oriya instituted by Dr. Mahendra Kumar Rout

Each time, after I won the debate, Dr. Rout

made it a point to tell me how he wished I

were a student at this Institution! I carry that

endorsement as a badge of citizenship. The

thought that I was so welcome here then,

makes me feel legitimate as your Chief Guest

this evening. Today, when you choose me

over the thousands of more well-known

Ravenshawvians who have made an impact,

you have taken away the last sense of

banishment that I carried in my inability to

make Ravenshaw my alma mater.

Ravenshaw College was born in the year 1876

because of the untiring efforts of an English-

man named Thomas Edward Ravenshaw. He

called it the Cuttack College. He was a British

civil servant in India. His vision for building an

institution of learning has several lessons for

all of us.

Bishwanath Kar and the Principal and

students of Ravenshaw College assembled to

engage in the deliberations.

1920. Students of Ravenshaw, like

Harekrushna Mahatab, N.K. Chaudhury and

their fellow alumni, opposed the idea of the

same Madhusudan Das accepting minister-

ship of the British created government and

distributed leaflets in protest; they disturbed

a progovernment felicitation meeting. Their

activities were reported to Mr. Lambart, Princi-

pal of Ravenshaw College, and their parents

were asked to withdraw the two from college

just a week before their BA examinations.

In the years that succeeded, parallel to the

uprising of Oriya consciousness, was the

beginning of the national freedom movement.

When India made her shift from self-rule to

demand for full freedom, the chants for

freedom first reverberated within the four

walls of this great Institution before they

spread far and wide.

1930. When the Orissa Pradesh Congress

Committee gave a call observing January

26th as “Independence day”, history tells us

that the hostellers of Ravenshaw College took

the lead in organizing the celebrations and

many students gave up a meal to contribute

to the funds of Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das

towards the national freedom movement.

So, how is it that our middle-class, poverty of

the mind is not on its priority?

How is it that when Kandhamal burns,

Ravenshaw’s conscience does not agitate?

While the scourge of corruption has touched

the marrow of the civil society, why are

we are not dialoguing here for a more sustain-

able future?

The burden of dreams must return once again

so that the hallowed grounds of this great

institution can show the path to a people at

crossroads with themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are three kinds of

freedom. Each one is more difficult to win than

the other; each is more intense, fuller of

churning, more demanding of loyalty than the

one before.

In the first six decades of Ravenshaw College,

India and, within that, the people of Orissa

struggled for political freedom. Contrary to

popular myth, we are not midnight’s children;

in reality it was a night of decades, and our

freedom took many generations of working,

many lives had to embrace the cause without

fear of the consequence.

That was our first freedom. Between 1947 and

today, we have been battling for our second

freedom: economic freedom for our people. In

these intervening six decades, we have not

had a famine of the 1866 variety. Although

floods and droughts have been the bane of

Orissa, they have not quite been like the great

famines that once wiped off generations in

a single go. Our people have starved to

death during this period, but it was nothing

compared to the specter of the past. With

effort we have come this far and the battle for

economic freedom is largely won.

But now, we have to embark a more crucial

journey for a more difficult freedom to

win – it is the freedom of the intellect. Unlike

political freedom, and in some sense, eco-

nomic freedom, this one is not about

unshackling from an external opponent.

Rather, it is about unshackling the mind

from within. More than ever before, we live

in times of widespread corruption, visionless

politics, non-inclusive development and a

near-total disregard for the environment.

These are oppressors in our own minds

and the potent destruction they may cause

is larger than anything a foreign hand

ever could.

To strive for freedom of the intellect, you

have to develop a sense of destiny. You must

know that you have a purpose larger than

your own self.

You must develop the true desire to learn,

beyond the mundane need to equip

yourself with a qualification. You need to

develop the capacity to deeply question

the state of things. You have to put your stake

on the ground.

You have to build substance and the power to

serve others in many valuable ways.

You must believe in your own self, follow your

heart and not seek approval from a society

that expects you to change it.

You must speak your mind and be accountable

for your words and actions.

You must not be content with the measure of

the times, for you are here to build a scale for

the future. You must create your own path and

not be path-dependent.

For this, the burden of dreams must return

again.

Not everyone can carry a burden of dreams.

A burden is, after all, a burden, and when it

is a burden of dreams, it is a life-altering

experience.

The burden of dreams is not in what the

eyes see; the burden of dreams is what you

and I must affectionately carry in our bodies

and on our chests so that we can live a

worthy life.

Only blessed ones born on a sacred space

can bear that burden of dreams.

Ravenshaw is the sacred space. The question

is: are you willing to be the blessed one?

Thank you once again for inviting me this

evening. As you take on the burden of

dreams, I pray that Ravenshaw gives Orissa

her first Nobel Laureate, her first winner of

the Booker Prize and her first to claim the

Magsaysay Award.

Subroto Bagchi co-founded MindTree where

he works as the Gardener. His books, The

High Performance Entrepreneur and Go, Kiss

the World, are Penguin bestsellers.

About Mindtree

Mindtree [NSE: MINDTREE] delivers technology services and accelerates growth for Global

1000 companies by solving complex business challenges with breakthrough technical innovations.

Mindtree specializes in e-commerce, mobility, cloud enablement, digital transformation, business

intelligence, data analytics, testing, infrastructure, EAI and ERP solutions. We are among the fastest

growing technology firms globally with more than 200 clients and offices in 14 countries.