Restored Sambalpur heritage house of Lakshminath Bezbaroa to be opened soon to visitors

GUWAHATI: The Sadhana Griha or work place of Lakshminath Bezbaroa, the doyen of Assamese literature, which was in ruins on the banks of the Mahanadi in Sambalpur in Odisha, has been renovated and restored would be thrown open to the people soon.
The poet had two houses in Sambalpur, one for his writing and business, and the other for residing. Renovation and restoration of the residential house will begin in October.
Bringing the Sadhana Griha back to its original status was a big challenge for INTACH, the heritage conservation trust, which was entrusted with the restoration job by the Odisha and Assam governments.Only remnants were left of the original structure.
Conservationists had to go back in history, consult books to recreate the house. Mallika Mitra, director of INTACH Conservation Institute, Bhubaneswar, who is overseeing the restoration work, told TOI on Saturday that the first house will be handed over to the government in the next three weeks. "We have used lime plaster with traditional plaster materials for the walls. Only one old window was intact and we used it as a reference to reconstruct the other windows. Our attempt was to support the roof with iron but it will be cladded with compatible materials like synthetic thatch or terracotta tiles to match the original structure," she said.
The Sadhana Griha has three rooms with a central hall. Mitra said the rooms have been designed as three galleries dedicated to his life, literary creations and family. “The other house will have more space for audio-visual display and a reading room along with other facilities," said Mitra, adding that they want to highlight his family connections with Rabindranath Tagore. Bezbaroa married Pragya Sundari Devi, Tagore's niece. The other house, where the family lived, is spacious and will showcase cultural exchanges between the two states, she added.
After a long legal battle between the owner of the ‘heritage’ plot and the Odisha government, the latter got possession of the land in 2017. The prolonged legal battle, starting in the 1980s, had nothing to do with the sentiments of the people of Assam where Bezbaroa is held in high regard. His memory was resurrected and the heritage plot came under the spotlight when the government began the construction of the second bridge over the Mahanadi.
The priceless properties, replete with the memories of a great poet-novelist, who had ushered in the Assamese renaissance, were lying unnoticed for decades. It was then that the former chief minister of Assam, Sarbananda Sonowal, and Naveen Patnaik, his Odisha counterpart, came together to preserve this treasure trove.
Sambalpur resident Deepak Panda, an author and historian, took up the cudgels on behalf of both the states to preserve the houses. When he was a child in 1968, he learned about the poet at a convention organised by the Asam Sahitya Sabha in Sambalpur. “People were initially against my decision to seek preservation of the place and even led rallies,” he said.
Originally, the land measured 2.78 acres when a Christian missionary, J G Pike, took it on lease from the government in 1902. Later, Bezbaroa acquired the land and constructed two houses in 1924. Bezbaroa died in 1938 and then in 1943, his friend and a well known businessman in Sambalpur, Omkarmall Poddar, acquired 1.63 acres of the land on lease. “The lease expired on March 31,1960 and a resumption case was first filed by the district administration on April 23, 1982, in order to take possession of the land. Different government offices by then had started functioning there," said Panda.
Panda single handedly carried out a campaign from 2007 for the restoration. "I propagated through my writings and within two years Sambalpur came to know who Bezbaroa was. It was a hard time for me. I even faced criticism for trying to save something which was of no concern in Sambalpur," said Panda.
Though the land was acquired by the Odisha government in 2017, Panda said many people continued to oppose his conservation campaigns even after 2018. But Naveen Patnaik's assurance to the Assam government to preserve Bezbaroa's memory gave Panda, as head of the Sahityarathi Lakshminath Bezbaruah Smruti Rakhya Sammittee, the strength he needed to carry on his crusade.
Despite the unprecedented rain last year and Covid delaying their task, Panda said the Sadhana Griha, where Bezbaroa penned most of his literary works and carried out his business activities, is ready to be handed over to the Odisha tourism department this September. "There will be no pause as the renovation of the residential house will start in October," he said.
Despite the financial crisis he faced, which was reflected in his letters to his wife, Bezbaroa wrote some of his finest pieces in Sambalpur. "There was constant pressure to contribute to Jonaki magazine and the journal Bahi, which ushered in a new era in modern Assamese literature," said eminent litterateur Basanta Goswami.
"The renaissance in Assam was ushered in through Jonaki by Bezbaroa. The trend continued till 1942, even after he died in 1938," he added.
Goswami added that it was Bezbaroa, who introduced the great Srimanta Sankardeva from Thapana (a sacred altar in Vaishnavite monasteries) to the people. "Sri Sankardev and Sri Madhabdev are among the most important literary works which he penned in Sambalpur, portraying Sankardev and his ardent disciple Madhabdev not only as saints but as great social reformers, who worked for the transformation of society through art and culture," Goswami said.
Bezbaroa lived in Sambalpur for 20 years from 1917 to 1937, though his connection with the present western Odisha region was since he began his timber business in 1895. He was a business associate of the B Borooah Company. Until 1916, Bezbaroa lived in Howrah, and that period is known as the most productive period of his life, from the literary perspective. In 1916, he joined the timber division of Birds and Company, and in 1917 shifted to Sambalpur. Lakshminath's journal Banhi, the prime Assamese journal of that time, and the chief mouthpiece of Lakshminath, first appeared in 1909, from Calcutta. Lakshminath later edited this journal from his Sambalpur house, though it was published from Asamiya press at Guwahati.