What Does It Mean to Be Odia in 2025?

2025ରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ହେବା ମାନେ କ'ଣ?

Ask a room full of Odia twenty-somethings what it means to be Odia, and you'll get an answer that surprises you. Not because it's complicated — but because it's quietly confident.

The generation that grew up with satellite TV, smartphones, and one foot always halfway out the door to Bangalore or London has come back to something their grandparents never had to articulate: a deliberate, chosen Odia identity.

"When I was in college in Pune, I used to hide the fact that I'm from Odisha," says Sourav, 26, a software engineer now back in Bhubaneswar. "People had no idea where it was. But now? I wear it. Odia is cool. Our food, our art, our language — it's all having a moment."

The Identity Gap

For decades, being Odia in cosmopolitan India meant fielding the same tired questions: "Is that near Andhra Pradesh?" or "Do you speak Hindi?" Odisha — one of India's largest states by area, home to some of its oldest civilisations — had an image problem.

That's changing. The Pattachitra art movement, once confined to Raghurajpur village, now hangs in galleries from London to São Paulo. Odissi classical dance has thousands of practitioners worldwide. Sambalpuri ikat fabric is worn at fashion weeks. Pakhala Bhata, the humble fermented rice dish, gets features in international food magazines.

A Language Reclaimed

Perhaps nothing marks the shift more than language. Odia, one of India's classical languages with a literary tradition stretching back over a thousand years, had been slowly retreating from urban spaces. Now it's coming back — often in unexpected forms.

Social media accounts that post in Odia script have hundreds of thousands of followers. Gen Z creators code-switch effortlessly between English and Odia in the same sentence. Memes in Odia dialect spread faster than their Hindi equivalents.

"My parents told me to learn 'proper' Hindi and English," says Ankita, 23, from Cuttack. "But I'm actually trying to improve my Odia. I want to read the old poetry. I want to understand what my grandmother says properly."

Identity as Choice

What's perhaps most striking is that for this generation, Odia identity is a choice — and they're choosing it proudly. For their parents, being Odia was a fact, sometimes a burden. For them, it's an asset.

The temple cities, the tribal art, the coastline, the food — these are things they're discovering with fresh eyes, often after living elsewhere and coming back. The Odia diaspora — in Bangalore, Mumbai, London, New York — maintains this identity across oceans, cooking pakhala in shared flats, celebrating Rath Yatra in hired halls, teaching their children Odia on weekends.

To be Odia in 2025 is to carry something ancient while walking into the future. It's to know where you're from — and to be glad of it.