Shaheed Baji Rout: Life, Legacy and Martyrdom
In a world where young is associated with the age where a person should have the most
amount of fun in their lives , there exist some real-time stories of heroes who sacrificed their
youth for the country. They not only did their best in order to weave a better future of the
nation , but did not even hesitate before giving up their lives at a young age, for a cause – for
the nation’s pride. One such martyr was Baji Rout. A real-time hero who gave up his life
fighting for Bharat at just the tender age of 12 years old. He didn’t think for his own , but
kept the nation first and that is what makes him the real hero. Baji Rout is the best example to
“Service before Self” which happens to be the motto of the Indian Armed Forces .
The young boy was born in a boatman’s family in the village of Nilakanthapur in Dhenkanal,
a small town in Odisha on 5th October, 1926. Unfortunately, his father passed away when he
was little and he had to take up his father’s occupation and became a ferryman on the
Brahmani River. He did not get much education due to weak financial condition of his family.
His mother also worked part time in milling and husking rice to win the bread and butter for
the family.
Baji Rout despite not being able to have much exposure to education, had a sense of
realisation towards the exploitation faced by Indians from the British rule. He grew strong
anguish against the Britishers by seeing the ill treatment being given to the Indian people
under the colonial rule. There also goes a saying that, once when Baji Rout was having a
meal with his family and asked for some salt from his mother, his mother refused stating that
salt is very expensive and she cannot afford to buy it. This sparked outrage in Baji Rout’s
mind that how could the Britishers impose such heavy taxes on such an important entity like
salt. During this time there was a spirit of revolt swept through the Odia region under the
leadership of Baihsnav Charan Pattanayak or Veer Baihsnav as he was commonly known. He
emerged as the founder of the group – “Prajamandal(Party of the People)” which had a wing
for youngsters called the “Banar Sena(Monkey army – a reference taken from the sacred text
Ramayana wherein this army helped Rama)” , of which Baji Rout became an active member.
Baji was assigned the Sentry- duty that is the duty to keep a watch on the movements of
Britishers over the Brahmani lake on which he worked as a ferry-man. In the early morning
hours of 11 October,1938 Baji was peacefully sleeping in his boat tied up with the support of
a tree, and while he was sleeping two British officers came in the neighbouring village and
started shooting down the villagers. However, even when they had shot only two villagers ,
they decided to abort as the villagers were already indignant and after all the ongoing
atrocities being done in the town, their control would have been difficult. So, the Britishers
came to the river’s bank and rushed Baji from his sleep and on gunpoint asked him to row the
Britishers to the opposite bank of the river. To which Baji fearlessly replied and is often
quoted –
“This boat belongs to the Prajamandal(The party of the people). It cannot be hired out to you
– The Enemy of the people.”
The Britishers were not very contented with this refusal of Baji and kept on persuading him
to row them across the river. Baji Rout known being the explicitly fierce person that he is
known to be called upon the villagers in his highest voice and with this people rushed from
their sleep and came towards him. However, fate was not with him that day. The Britishers
started firing at the villagers coming towards and many of them martyred and amongst one of
them was the youngest of them all – a confident revolutionary and just a 12 year old boy –
Baji Rout. His sacrifice for the nation was commendable as he proved it does not take any
extraordinary skills to stand up for the nation – it takes courage that can be portrayed by a
person of any age ,even a little boy.