Fakir Mohan Senapati (1843-1918) is remembered largely for his emancipation of early Odia fictional narratives both collection of short stories and novels, as well as autobiography, poetry, essay, text books, dictionary, spiritual and journalistic writing and translations into Odia which enriched early modern Odia literary canon. Perhaps, Senapati's identity may be aptly remembered more than the literary the socio-political and socio-economic changes which challenges and urgency he lived upon and accepted and refabricated around the historical time line in British Odisha when many changes were in threshold. Senapati remains the early chronicler of the 'SOCIAL REALISM' narrative tradition in Indian Literature and his fictional narratives which is a sum total of four novels and twenty short stories are set within the local Odia traditions focuses upon the hundred and more years of the tumultuous history of Odisha, emerging of colonial modernity in early 19th century and its effects during British rule. Senapati is also conscious of foreign and native encounter which simultaneously built up Odia collective identity in the past. He examines and mentions of the chronology of shifting of the power structure such as the Afghan, Mughal, and Maratha invasions long before the arrival of British East India Company (1803) in Odisha. Fakir Mohan Senapati remains a critic of the 'HYBRID' modernities - the collision of Odia modernities and British modernities during the colonial rule which influenced each other for near about hundred and fifty years and addresses important political factor responsible for demanding first a language province and then, sovereign intellectual sub-national identity. Senapati's fictional narrative may be compared with the rare classics in world literature; for Senapati's collective voice forms new waves across national and subnational boundaries in British India which is anticolonial and brings forth local resistances towards the emerging of European orders during British rule chiefly on the basis of the demands of the emerging collective Odia identity of his time.----------------------------------------------------Collision of Modernities in British Odisha, Vol. I, 2017, General Editor: Sarat Kumar Jena.This book contains brief modernities debate by Satya P Mohanty. Special critical section on fictional narratives of Fakir Mohan Senapati is contributed by Jitendra N Patnaik, Shubhendu Mund, and Sarat Kumar Jena. Brief analytical work on Senapati's short stories are contributed by Udayanath Sahoo, and Sarat Kumar Jena. A short memoir section on life and work of Fakir Mohan Senapati is written by Monica Das.
About the Author: Professor (Dr) Jitendra Narayan Patnaik taught English in Ravenshaw University, Utkal University and Sanaa University, Yemen. He worked as Editor, Odisha Review, Director, English Language Teaching Institute of Odisha and President, State Selection Board. Satya P. Mohanty is a Professor of English at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (USA). Dr Monica Das is the great granddaughter of the legendary Fakirmohan Senapati. She worked as Associate Professor of Economics at Delhi University, New Delhi. Professor (Dr) Udayanath Sahoo worked as a professor of Linguistics and Literature and Headed the Post Graduate Department of Odia at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. He has extended comparative research work on the tradition of Mahabharata and Bhagbata in Eastern India. Dr Subhendu Mund is well-known Odia poet, critic of Indian English literature and Odia literature, lyricist, translator and lexicographer. He has been the Vice-President of the Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies since 2008. Sarat Kumar Jena, PhD Comparative Literature is an Assistant Professor of communication at Institute of Advanced Research, Gandhinagar and a senior researcher of comparative literature at Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar. He is an alumni of ESOF 2016 (EuroScience Open Forum, Manchester, UK), and Greifswalder Ukranicum at Greifswald University, Greifswald (Germany, 2014). He is the founder-chair of IACLSC (International Association of Comparative Literature, Society and Culture).