AOG Heroes

Liked the movie air lift now meet Mathunny Mathews the man who is credited to the world’s highest civilian evacuation in history. Mathews was a businessman from Kerala, residing in Kuwait. When Kuwait was invaded by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq Mathews helped in the safe airlift evacuation of about 170,000 Indians from Kuwait during the 1990 Invasion of Kuwait. It is hailed as the world’s largest civilian evacuation in history.
His role in evacuation of the Indians from Kuwait inspired director Raja Krishna Menon to write the script for the movie “Airlift”. The character Ranjit Katyal (played by Akshay Kumar) was based on him. Akshay Kumar won a lot of accolades for his portrayal of the character based on Mr Mathews.
Air India was the company that flew in and out of Kuwait’s & Iraq’s war zone to evacuate 1,70,000 Indians. Resulting in this fearless feat, Air India holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the most people evacuated by a civil airliner. This remarkable feat was possible because a hero selflessly gave up the fear of death and mastered the art of living for others.
Mathews’ son George said in an interview that his father and his father’s teams sacrifices weren’t talked much. All the credit went to Air India and people slowly forgot the man who took the initiative of this. Mathews died on 20th may 2017which is a year after the movie release. Mathews didn’t highlight his works which led to the death of an unrecognized hero. A hero who believed helping the needy when they needed!

FALLEN FREEDOM HERO

It is important we start with a fallen not-much-appreciated hero, “Gopabandhu Das” who reformed the Education system(1909) making it more of authentic mentoring rather than the British clerical system for ground-level employees, something that we are still struggling with even today. Gopabandhu das was a social worker, reformer, political activist, journalist & also a poet!

Gopandhu das though had an established law practice, quit his job for the welfare of people and fight for freedom. He saw education as the means to meet ends of British Raj and freedom of mind. In 1909, Das established a school near Puri. The school was popularly known as Satyabadi Bakul Bana Bidyalaya, which operated in the gurukula tradition and aimed to impart a liberal education on a non-sectarian basis. His system allowed children of all castes and backgrounds to sit, dine and study together. Gopabandhu Das emphasized on co-curricular activities generating nationalistic feeling within students through education and teach them the value of service to mankind.

Das saw journalism as a means to educate the masses even though they were illiterate.  Thus, in 1919, he started a weekly newspaper called The Samaja, based at the school campus which eventually became a significant media presence for Indian nationalists by 1927. The writing style was intentionally simplistic, thus the newspaper is still a mass churner in the Odisha market.

Take a moment today, to acknowledge the freedom and be a proud Oriya… because heroes have shed blood to give us that freedom.