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 vice-president 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 transformational 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.

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 Englishman 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.

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, 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 ministership of the British-created government and distributed leaflets in protest. Their activities were reported to Mr. Lambart, Principal of Ravenshaw College, and their parents were asked to withdraw the two from college just a week before their BA examinations.

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. Then came the Salt Satyagraha and the post graduate students of Ravenshaw College actually dropped their examination in support of the struggle.

1937: Even as Orissa acquired statehood under the British Empire, there was no legislative assembly for people’s representatives 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. 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. 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.

If we make a roll call of the chief secretaries to the government that independent Orissa ever had, we will find that an overwhelming 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.

At the core of the problem is widespread corruption. The reason our police, our bureaucrats, our judges and our politicians are afraid is that we have become a collectively corrupt society. When you become corrupt, you lose the moral authority to govern.

Ravenshaw must reclaim its conscience. When the Oriya language and identity was in question, Ravenshaw had a viewpoint. When the Salt Act was passed, its students protested. Why not now?

The burden of dreams must return.

There are three kinds of freedom:

1. Political freedom – achieved in 1947, hard-fought over decades.

2. Economic freedom – gradually won since independence.

3. Freedom of the intellect – the hardest of all, and the next battle.

This last one is about unshackling the mind, finding purpose, building substance, questioning, serving, and believing in oneself.

Not everyone can carry the burden of dreams.

But Ravenshaw is a sacred space.

The question is: Are you willing to be the blessed one?

Thank you.