Odia Books

Mohini Mohan Senapati was born in 1881,He is a well-known odia critic and thinker, was the son of
Fakirmohan Senapati. Having lost his mother early, and living away from his distinguished father, he grew up as a lonely rebel. Despite the religious background of the family and the influence of his poet-friends as well as those of his father, such as Nanda Kishor Bal, Radhanath Ray and Madhu Sudan Rao, he turned into an atheist and iconoclast.

After doing his M.A. in Philosophy, he began his long teaching career at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack.
An admirer of Nietzsche, the great German philosopher, he was a rationalist and free thinker. His nonconformist ideas and uninhibited revolt against the status quo, shocked the readers of his time. Utkala sahitya, the periodical which published his essays regularly, became the hotbed of the readers’ reactions and counter-reactions to his essays.

In his essays in Vividha prasange he challenged the age-old beliefs, superstitions and rituals. ‘Janmantarabada’,‘Bhagya’,‘Atiprakrta’, etc, are the harbingers of new thinking in modern odia literature. ‘Nietzschenka darshanika mata’ describes the philosophy of the German thinker.‘Bartamana jugara akanksha o uddeshya’ is one of his most widely read essays. ‘Europiya mahasamarara niti bijnana’ (The ethics of the great European War) asserts that whatever is congenial for the progress of society is just and anything detrimental to it is unjust. This essay justifies warfare as a means to an end.

Mohini Mohan’s appreciation of Madhusudan Rao’s Basanta gatha and Gopal Chandra Praharaj’s Utkala
kahani are instances of his early attempts at literary criticism. In his later career he became more preoccupied with philosophical essays. He had independent ideas and thoughts of his own which he presented in his works. He considered religion and the institution of marriage as two monsters hunting the ‘body’ of society.

He pleaded for rational thinking in place of religious acceptance of the phenomena. He advocated polygamy and polyandry – even the abolition of the institution of marriage. Marriage to his mind, is a manifestation of the economic dependence of women. He was a champion of the cause of emancipation of woman and the freedom of society from the rigid principles of man-woman relationship. In ‘Streemanankara swadhina jibika’ (Independent occupation of women) he writes that unless women are allowed to pursue occupations according to their choice, the general growth of society would be stunted

Shocking as his opinions were to his generation, Mohini Mohan’s essays brought rare freshness and
novelty to odia literature. He was ahead of his time and his views were mainly nourished by his study of such western thinkers as Abbott, Nietzsche, J.S. Mill, Spencer, Hobbes, Locke, George Bernard Shaw and Charles Darwin. He even wrote on the rights and privileges of animals in ‘Jibajantumanankara adhikar’.

It is true that Mohini Mohan had been a controversial man of letters because of his original thoughts, his eccentric life style, and his controlled and moderated editing of his illustrious father’s literary works, but his prose style does not claim much applause. Frankness of expression is certainly a great virtue of his works, but the style is hardly embellished by any artistic device. His sentences, long-winded and poorly constructed,sound like the translation of English structures. However, what makes him unique in the history of modern odia literature is his free, fearless, and uninhibited thought. By introducing modern philosophical ideas of the west to odia readers, he truly justified his position as a harbinger of new thinking.

Janmantarabada
Bhagya
Atiprakrta
Nietzschenka Darshanika Mata
Bartamana jugara Akanksha O Uddeshya