Antaryami Mishra

Antaryami Mishra is an Odia writer, columnist and researcher who has worked for nearly fifty years on the Odia language, its grammar, culture and history. He was named for the Padma Shri in 2023 in the field of literature and education, from Odisha ^[1].

Making the case for Odia

Mishra was born on 1 July 1950, the son of the freedom fighter Satyabadi Mishra ^[2]. Despite living with a disability, he wrote a steady stream of articles and books setting out the evidence for Odia as a classical language ^[2]. His book Odia-Eka Shastriya Bhasa, published in 2013 before the government granted that status, traced how the language grew over the centuries; it was later published in Hindi too ^[2].

His newspaper columns pressed for an Odia language university and for classical status, and the Odisha government set up a committee to prepare the report for that claim, later adding him as a special member ^[2].

Wider work

He co-wrote Odia Bhasa’ra Itibruta, a history of the language, and co-edited the Cultural Heritage of Odisha series covering the state’s 30 districts ^[2]. He has served on the Odisha Sahitya Akademi and been nominated to the central Sahitya Akademi ^[2]. He is also well known as a speaker on the Jagannath tradition, the Ramayana, the Bhagavad Gita and Vedanta ^[2].

North Odisha University gave him an honorary DLitt for his writing on classical Odia, and he received the President’s Certificate of Honour for 2019 for his work on the language ^[2].