From Regionalism to Kosli Nationalism and Beyond: the Demand for a Separate State in Western Odisha

Abstract

If we analyze the discourses on regionalism in India or even while trying to make sense of such a tendency, we may find that from a long time, even during the period of British colonialism, regional forces have had their impact at the level of organization of political system in their own ways. Needless to recall that when the Britishers entered India, they could sense the regional variations very well and therefore, established ‘divide and rule’ policy to suit their administration as well as to be fitted to the regional demands and peculiarities. It is, no wonder therefore, to find that the anti-colonial freedom struggle was not a process free of contradictions and variations over different regions. The fact of the matter was that the ‘national’ issue, namely, to establish a free independent and sovereign India superseded all the parochial claims of various regions and their demands. And it is, needless to say that these regional interests and demands, which were subdued during the freedom struggle found an expression and were articulated even within the first decade of India’s independence, which has, in fact, grown both in its number and its intensity with every passage of time, which are reflected in various regional movements, over the period. In this paper, we discuss such a movement taking its stride with every passage of day, in the western part of Odisha—both in its historical as well as contemporary contexts. We make an attempt to bring out what have been the historical causes which have given birth to such a tendency and the contours and trajectories that such a movement is going through over the period, including the current state of affairs as regards Kosal Movement, which is increasingly becoming so vociferous that we can hardly ignore it—either as an observer, as an analyst or as an activist—for or against the call for a separate state in Western Odisha.