Prof L K Mahapatra: Why I Became A Teacher?

On the occasion of Teachers Day yesterday, we spoke and heard many speak about the role of teachers in their lives. On other days, however, we all can be heard lamenting the absence of brilliant teachers of the past and the fact that the teaching profession no
longer attracts the best of minds. In this context, it is important to recognize what attracted the brilliant minds of yesteryear to the teaching profession.

Noted educationist of Odisha and internationally-renowned anthropologist Professor L K Mahapatra passed away on June 1. The former Vice-Chancellor of Utkal and Sambalpur Universities, and former Chairman of Nabakrushna Choudhury Centre for Development Studies, had been one of the most eminent Professors of Utkal University and ensured that his Department of Anthropology became a Centre of Excellence. One can find tributes to this eminent teacher by his students and fellow intellectuals and leaders at https://www.lkmahapatra.org/tribute

Professor Mahapatra had a brilliant academic record and stood second in the entire Odisha state in his Matriculation in 1947, and had always topped right up to his Masters at Calcutta University, the most eminent institution of higher education in the country then. In the L K Mahapatra Felicitation Volume titled Science, Culture and Development published by Paragon Publishers in 1992, the Editors, noted anthropologists N K Behura and K C Tripathy, had asked Professor Mahapatra why he chose the teaching profession when he could have joined any other profession given his brilliant academic record.

He replied:

In my high school days itself at Baripada High School, I had been impressed with the teacher’s role and status. In those days, the Maharaja of Mayurbhanj occupied the pinnacle of glory and was a charismatic figure, whose actions occupied the hearts and heads of his subjects. He was, nonetheless, respectful towards teachers. We were both afraid of, and attracted towards, some of our teachers. Some teachers, notably Professor Kunja Bihari Das and Santosh Kumar Kabi, literally shaped me and some of my cohorts at school. No wonder, I wanted to be a teacher, and a better teacher, in those days of nationalistic turmoil and transition.

Just before I was to appear at the intermediate examinations in 1948, I had the privilege of listening to three Extension Lectures, delivered by Professor K P Chattopadhyay of Calcutta University. He eloquently painted the socially useful role of anthropologists in bringing up the plight of the suppressed and oppressed sections of
society, especially the tribal people, before the general public in order to ameliorate their conditions of life.

Although at that time, I was thinking of taking up Economics Honours for my BA, I fell for Anthropology as a discipline holding the comparative key to the Social Sciences. Thus, Anthropology promised to me an intellectual fare, apart from ensuring emotional satisfaction and idealistic fixation. After that, I never looked back, but only
forward to be a teacher and an Anthropologist.

I had to go to Calcutta University to study Anthropology Honours, as Anthropology was not taught in Odisha till 1958. During my studies there, seeing my teachers at work, I could identify the real attractions of the teaching profession. Especially at the university, I found that the teacher was under no boss. He could be independent-minded, could brush aside power and pelf as trash and could meet anyone in society on an intellectual and moral plane without fear or favour.

In other words, unlike a government servant, a university teacher was nobody’s yesman. I very much liked this image of the teacher.