BHUBANESWAR: Union Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday released a book titled The Saga of Kudopali: The Unsung Story of 1857, an inspiring and long-neglected chapter of India’s freedom movement, at the inaugural ceremony of the World Book Fair-2026 at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi.
The book, which was earlier published in Odia, English and Hindi, was formally released in 10 additional languages - Spanish, Bengali, Punjabi, Assamese, Malayalam, Urdu, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu, making it available in a total of 13 languages.
Unveiling the book, Pradhan said this remarkable multilingual expansion marks one of the most significant efforts to bring a forgotten freedom struggle of eastern India to the global audience. “The revolt of Kudopali in Sambalpur district, stands as one of the earliest and most valiant mass uprisings of the 1857 movement. Led by fearless Surendra Sai, the tribal population of the region resisted British authority with unmatched courage, sacrificing lives, homes and livelihoods for India’s freedom,” he said.
For decades, Pradhan said, this chapter of resistance remained outside mainstream historical narratives - a silence that this publication now seeks to correct. “This initiative will provide India’s freedom movement a new global identity by highlighting sacrifices from regions that history books often ignored. The story of Kudopali is not merely Odisha’s pride, but part of the soul of India’s independence struggle,” he said.
Historians, scholars, publishers and cultural leaders hailed the project as a landmark contribution to decolonising Indian history and honouring indigenous resistance movements.
A specially-curated documentary video on the Kudopali uprising was also screened at the event, presenting the extraordinary bravery of the tribal freedom fighters who rose against British colonial rule in western Odisha in 1857, before many well-known revolts elsewhere in the country.