Tens of thousands had packed a patch of green in the heart of this city to hear Indira Gandhi deliver her “blood and unity” speech on October 30, 1984.
Thirty-seven years on, the open playground where the then Prime Minister delivered her last public speech a day before her assassination has been turned into a public park that still draws some 10,000 people every day.
“I still get goosebumps when I remember her speech that day — it was so forceful,” Odisha Congress president Niranjan Patnaik told The Telegraph on Sunday, Indira’s death anniversary.
“She said she might not be alive tomorrow but every drop of her blood would strengthen India and keep it united,” Patnaik, now in his early 70s, added.
“Meri khoon ki har boond Bharat ki ekta ko mazboot banayegi (Every drop of my blood will strengthen India’s unity),” the then Prime Minister had said, aware of a threat to her life following the army operation to flush out militants from the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June that year.
The morning after her Bhubaneswar speech, Indira was shot dead by her bodyguards at her Safdarjung Road residence in New Delhi.
As a tribute to her, then Congress chief minister J.B. Patnaik converted the playground, which stood opposite the state secretariat and Assembly, into a leafy, 10.6-acre park.
A 12ft bronze statue of the late Prime Minister was made in Russia, by sculptors Dimitry Ryebachev and Alexander Ryebachev, at J.B. Patnaik’s initiative and installed at the park.
Today, the Indira Gandhi Park boasts a variety of flowers and nearly 8,000 trees including wild date palm, sandalwood and jamun (black plum), apart from a water fountain, a walking and jogging track, and an open gym.
The statue was unveiled and the park inaugurated on Indira’s fourth death anniversary — October 31, 1988 — by her son and then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. State Congress leaders pay homage to Indira before the statue every year on her birth and death anniversaries.
Indira had addressed three rallies in Odisha on October 30, 1984, campaigning for the upcoming general election in early 1985 — which was eventually advanced to December 1984 following her assassination. Her last meeting of the day was in Bhubaneswar before she flew back to Delhi.
Niranjan Patnaik, who was then a young minister in the J.B. Patnaik government, said: “I had been given charge of Indiraji’s meeting at Jajpur. The place is nearly 80km from Bhubaneswar. From Jajpur, she left for another rally in Odisha and I came straight to Bhubaneswar to attend her last meeting of the day.”
His voice turned sombre as he added: “We had little idea that it would be her last public meeting.... But her last words continue to inspire generations.”
Manoranjan Das, a senior Congress leader who was president of the Congress’s Bhubaneswar district youth wing in 1984, said: “I was among those assigned the job of organising the rally. The meeting began around 5pm, but the ground had been packed by 3pm.
“There was absolutely no space left. Even the state secretariat staff had to climb atop the building to listen to her from across the road. The sound system had to be adjusted for that. Such was the crush of people that I could not even get close to the dais.”
Das recalled that some people had opposed the conversion of the playground into a park, but J.B. Patnaik had stood firm. “Later, these same people began coming to the park for their morning walk,” he said.
Jatni MLA Suresh Routray, who was an MLA back then too, said nearly 350 trucks had been used to bring people from various parts of the state to Bhubaneswar for Indira’s meeting.
