Subrat Kumar Prusty

Subrat Kumar Prusty (born 1976) is an Indian Odia-language scholar, activist, social entrepreneur, literary critic and author. He is Member Secretary of the Institute of Odia Studies and Research, Bhubaneswar, Odisha. He was instrumental in preparing the research documents, advocating the awarding of Classical Language status to Odia, forming Central Institute of Classical Odia, Odia University and implementation of the Odisha Official Language Act, 1954. He was awarded the Presidential Certificate of Honour and Maharshi Badrayan Vyas Samman – 2019 for Classical Odia.
Dr. Subrat Kumar Prusty was born the third son of Late Rajkishore Prusty and Indumati Prusty in the village of Bidyadharpur, near Jajpur Town, the oldest capital of Odisha situated on the banks of Budha, a tributary of the Holy Baitarani. After his schooling at Sudarshan Padhi High School, he chose to join N.C. College Jajpur (then affiliated with Utkal University, where he did his B.A. honours, this was followed by a master's degree in Odia language and literature with a specialization in linguistics from Ravenshaw University, Cuttack. During that time, he was the publisher and editor of a monthly magazine, Maheswati, which is published in Jajpur. It was here that he started writing Odia stories and poetry. As a story writer, he owns the first literary award in School period. He did his LLB from Madhusudan Law College, Cuttack.
Prusty followed in his father's footsteps practicing Social Service. During his high school years, he established a library and book bank for rural pupils who were lacking the facilities to purchase books for their studies. To extend the service to a larger number of youth, he established Sangathan Viswabharatiyam and Ganatantrika Grama Samaj. The organization fought for the untouchables and for their social rights. As a volunteer leader of Sangathan Viswa Bharatiyam, he organised relief camps and rehabilitation in the super cyclone-hit areas of coastal Odisha from 31 October 1999 to 10 December 1999. He also participated as a front-line volunteer in the Orissa Disaster Mitigation Mission in Bhubaneswar and organised a relief camp in earthquake-hit areas of Gujarat on 31 January 2001 to 10 February 2001.
Dr. Prusty qualified for the national eligibility test (UGC-NET/JRF) in Odia three times and joined Utkal University as a research scholar. He submitted his PhD thesis entitled Social Relevance of Odia Novel and was awarded a PhD degree in 2014 from Utkal University. Through his research work, the Odia language has received classical status. He studied Ancient Indian rock paintings and inscriptions in an attempt to prove that the Indian script is not related to the Sumerian, Hurrian, or Elamite scripts but that the Indian scripts are most closely related to the cave arts which existed in primitive to modern Indian architecture, thus attempting to establish the cave arts as the forerunners of Indian scripts.
Prusty's research activities involve document preparation for the classical status of Odia language. While the common scholarly and intellectual consensus in Odisha was that Odia script, language and literature were not more than 1000 years old, Prusty proved with sufficient evidence that not only are the Odia language and script more than 5000 years old, but Odia literature is also as old as Sanskrit literature.
First time he read the rock painting of the yogimatha of Nuapada District of Odisha, he deduced that it was an older Indian script. The script Ga, and o (tha) was discovered in the Yogimatha rock painting. The painting depicted a person with four animals and an alphabet. According to Prusty, the painting had a word like Gaitha (a common Odia word at present, Gotha or 'group' in English). The art closely was related to this alphabet. The alphabet has a similarity to the script of the inscriptions in Dhauli and Jaugada of Ashoka. He assumed it was an ancient form of Indian script and it is the first glimpse of the possible origin of the Odia language and script.
Prusty proved that Kharavel's Hatigumpha inscription (40 B.C.) was the real evidence of past Odia cultural, political, ritual and social status and it is the first poetic stake inscription. Though Ashoka created many rock edicts and inscriptions before Kharavela, his instructions for administration were written in a rude and chocked language. On the other hand, the Hatigumpha inscriptions show the flexibility of a language in a sweet flow.
Prusty argued some important points about classical status for the Odia Language. He also proved that Sanskrit as the source of the modern Indo-Aryan languages, Classical Odia is the source language of East India and South-East Asia's language. As Sanskrit is the most conservative and least changed of the Indo-Aryan languages, Odia is the conservative and advance updated languages as well that linguists must understand its nature and development. Unlike the other modern languages of India, Odia meets each of these requirements. It is extremely old (According to L.S.S O’ Malley, as old as Latin and Vedic Sanskrit); it arose as an entirely independent tradition, with almost no influence from Sanskrit or other languages; and its ancient literature is indescribably vast and rich. After more than five years of deep research work without any help and guidance, Prusty published documentations which led to a political and intellectual movement for awarding Odia the status of a Classical Language.
The Annual National Language Conference on Indian languages is the brainchild of Subrat Prusty. After the recognition of Odia as a classical language, The Conference was organized by the Institute of Odia Studies and Research for two days on 2 and 3 January 2014. The goal was to help create a platform to discuss language issues and support the language movement in preserving the regional heritage and culture. The conference was inaugurated by the Minister of Education Badrinarayana Patra and was attended by more than two hundred scholars of languages, linguistics, and humanities as well as sociologists. Dr. Hermann Kulke, Professor at Kiel University, Germany, Prof. H.C. Boralingaiah, Vice-Chancellor of Kananda University, Prof. K. Rathnaiah, Vice-Chancellor of Dravidian University, Dr. K. Ramasamy, Founder Director CICT were participated as guests. the seventh National Language Conference (2021) was held on 31 March – 1 April 2021 at Sri Jagannath Sanskrit University, Puri, Odisha.
Early in his life as a student, Pruty created or was involved with various social service organisations. But soon after his research work, he again entered active organizational work and formed Janasammilani, Odisha. His views on the eradication of poverty rests on setting up industry and that reformation in agriculture should be encouraged with related cottage industry, as Odisha is essentially an agricultural state. He has worked to impart Education in Odia. For this purpose he began to train promising students to appear in various competitive examinations in Odia.
Odianess in Prusty evoked a spirit of establishing Odia Biswabidyalaya..(transl. Odia University). For this purpose he started The Institute of Odia Studies and Research. His first success was when Odia was declared a Classical Language by the Government of India. The institute, which had played an important role in documenting the classical nature of the Odia language, along with the culture department, hopes to bring in other departments in the future.
After helping the Odia language to receive classical status, Prusty's one-point mission is now to found an Odia-language university to create a body of knowledge and research in Odia and to develop the Odia language as a lingua franca like that of Palli or Sanskrit in ancient India and English in modern times.
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