A Brief Life Sketch Of Gour Govinda Svāmī
Śrī Śrīmad Gour Govinda Svāmī Mahārāja made his appearance as Braja Bandhu Manik in a Vaiṣṇava family on 2nd September 1929. He appeared in the village of Jagannāthaapur, not far from Jagannātha Purī Dhāma, in Orissa, India, but as his mother was descended from the Giri family of the village Gadeigiri, Braja Bandhu spent his childhood there. His grandfather was a Paramahaṁsa whose only business was to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and cry before the local Deity of Kṛṣṇa known as Gopāl Jiu. He taught Braja Bandhu how to chant the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra by counting on his fingers. In the company of his uncles, Braja Bandhu would travel from village to village chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa and singing the songs of Narottama Dāsa Ṭhākura. The Giri family have been known since the time of Śyāmānanda Prabhu as the most famous kīrtana performers in Orissa. Three hundred years ago, in the temple registers of Jagannātha Purī, the king of Orissa wrote that the kīrtana party of Gadeigiri should come to perform kīrtana for Lord Jagannātha whenever possible. In Orissa they are seen as kīrtana-Gurus.
From the age of six, Braja Bandhu worshiped the Deity of Gopāl by making garlands, and sometimes, under the light of a candle, by singing hymns for Him from palm-leaf manuscripts. He would never take any food that was not offered to Gopāl.
By the age of eight he had read the entire Bhagavad-gītā, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta and could also explain their meanings. At night many villagers would come to hear his recitation of the Bhāgavata, Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata. Thus from the very beginning of his life he was absorbed in chanting Kṛṣṇa’s holy name, studying Vaiṣṇava literature, and worshipping his beloved Gopāl. Friends and relatives remember him as always being very quiet and introspective. He was never interested in playing with other boys or in going to see cinema shows or theatre.
After the death of his father in 1955, as the eldest son he became responsible for maintaining the family, and on the request of his widowed mother he entered the gṛhastha-āśramas. He first met his wife, Śrīmatī Vasanti Devi, during their marriage ceremony. Because of financial constraints he could not enrol formally in University courses, but he studied privately at night to attend the examinations, obtaining a B.A. degree from Utkal University with overall second highest marks on the exam. He later also obtained a B.Ed. degree in a similar way and took up the profession of a schoolteacher. Despite many responsibilities, however, his devotion to Gopāl never slackened. He would daily rise at 3.30 a.m., chant the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra, worship Tulasī-devī, and speak to his family from the Bhagavad-gītā. In school he would take every opportunity to speak to his students about Kṛṣṇa and devotional principles. Some of his students would become his disciples thirty years later.
During school breaks he would take his wife and travel to the Himalayan Mountains, visiting different tīrthas and ashrams, and he would sometimes engage in philosophical debates with the māyāvādīs he found there.
On 8 April 1974, at the age of forty-five, Braja Bandhu left his home and relatives in search of spiritual perfection. Giving himself the name:
“Gour-Gopālānanda Dāsa”
And carrying only a Bhagavad-gītā and a begging bowl, he wandered around India, visiting many sacred places along the banks of the Ganges River. He was looking for his spiritual master, that person who could help him develop an understanding of the mahā-mantra. Although he had met many sadhus and Gurus during his householder days — Orissa has many prominent sects of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas — he had not found any whose teachings sufficiently touched his heart. Still not finding his spiritual master after wandering in this way for one year, he eventually reached Vṛndāvana, thinking that his desire would certainly be fulfilled in Kṛṣṇa’s dear abode.
Two weeks after arriving in Vṛndāvana he saw a huge signboard which read:
“International Society for Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, Founder-Ācārya His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedānta Svāmī Prabhupāda,”
And he met a group of Western devotees who gave him a copy of Back to Godhead magazine. When he read the contents describing the glory of divine love for Kṛṣṇa, his heart became anxious to meet the founder of the movement, Śrīla Prabhupāda. Gaining entrance to Śrīla Prabhupāda room, he introduced himself and the first question Śrīla Prabhupāda asked was:
“Have you taken sannyāsa?
Gour-Gopālānanda replied that he had not.
“Then I will give you sannyāsa!”
Exclaimed Śrīla Prabhupāda. Understanding that Śrīla Prabhupāda knew his heart; he surrendered himself at his lotus feet and soon became Prabhupāda’s initiated disciple.
In 1975, at the opening of ISKCON’s Śrī Śrī Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma mandira in Vṛndāvana, Śrīla Prabhupāda awarded him the sannyāsa order, sending him to preach in Orissa and to construct a temple on the newly donated property in Bhubaneswar.
The donated land was a jungle full of mosquitoes, snakes and scorpions. It was so far from the city centre that even during the daytime people were afraid to visit. Meditating on the desire of Śrīla Prabhupāda, Gour Govinda Svāmī worked with unwavering determination. Sometimes residing in the storeroom of a tea dealer and even sometimes sharing a small hut with road construction workers, he began translating Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books into Oriya as he had been instructed. He would visit house after house, office after office, in and around Bhubaneswar to collect some small donations, and he constructed with his own hands a thatched hut on the donated property.
In early 1977 Śrīla Prabhupāda came to Bhubaneswar. Although the arrangement had been made for him to stay comfortably in the State Guesthouse, Śrīla Prabhupāda at once rejected this proposal:
“I will only stay where my disciple child Gour Govinda has built a mud hut for me.”
Śrīla Prabhupāda stayed in Bhubaneswar for seventeen days, during which time he started translation work on the tenth canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. On the auspicious occasion of Lord Nityānanda’s appearance day he laid the foundation stone of the temple-to-be, his last-founded project.
During a visit to Māyāpura in 1979, Gour Govinda Svāmī was attending kīrtana one day when he fell to the ground unconscious. He was carried back to his room followed by several ISKCON leaders and other concerned devotees.
Doctors came to examine him but were unable to diagnose the cause of his condition. One person even suggested that he may have been possessed by a ghost. Finally, Akiñcana Kṛṣṇadāsa Bābājī Mahārāja, a god brother of Śrīla Prabhupāda, explained that Gour Govinda Svāmī was manifesting the symptoms of bhāva, the advanced stage of ecstatic love of God.
When he returned to Bhubaneswar he became even more absorbed in the mission of his spiritual master. Some western devotees had been sent there to assist him, but most of them could not tolerate the austere conditions. They were amazed to see how he was never disturbed, how he would eat only once a day, and how he would never sleep. He would simply preach, chant, and write in his notebooks both day and night.
Following Śrīla Prabhupāda’s order, Gour Govinda Mahārāja preached vigorously all over the land of Orissa. The simple pāda-yātrā festivals and Nāma-hāṭṭa programs that he started have helped hundreds and thousands of people in the ancient land of Lord Caitanya’s pastimes discover their spiritual roots and take up the chanting of the mahā-mantra:
hare kṛṣṇa hare kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa hare hare
hare rāma hare rāma rāma rāma hare hare
Śrīla Prabhupāda gave Gour Govinda Svāmī three principal instructions: to translate his books from English into Oriya, to build the temple in Bhubaneswar, and to preach all over the world. Carrying out these instructions was Gour Govinda Svāmī’s life and soul. He had a strict policy of not eating until he had completed his quota of translation for the day. Devotees would be struck to see how even after undergoing long international flights Gour Govinda Svāmī would always insist upon first doing the translation work given him by his spiritual master before he would eat or sleep. This was a practice he maintained up to his very last day.
In 1985 Śrīla Gour Govinda Svāmī first travelled overseas for preaching. He had so much enthusiasm for speaking kṛṣṇa-kathā that he continued this every year for the following eleven years, despite a crippling leg injury and great personal inconvenience.
Although he was always very meek and humble in his personal dealings, in his classes on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam he would roar like a lion, smashing the pride and cutting the misconceptions from the hearts of his listeners. Kṛṣṇa-kathā was his life and soul. He would often say:
“The day that goes by without kṛṣṇa-kathā, that is a very bad day.”
In the course of his lecturing he would inevitably burst into song, nourishing everyone with the devotional sentiments of joy, humility and surrender as expressed in the prayers of Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura and other Ācāryas.
Gour Govinda Svāmī’s knowledge of scripture was formidable. He would substantiate everything he said with evidence from all over the Vedic literature. Sometimes he would question a disciple and if the disciple could not answer with reference to the scriptures he would immediately exclaim:
“He is a cheater!
Don’t be a crooked person. A Vaiṣṇava quotes authority.”
In this way Gour Govinda Svāmī always preached fearlessly, never compromising the conclusions of the scripture in the name of being practical.
“One who cannot see Kṛṣṇa,”
He would say,
“Is a blind man. He may speak about Kṛṣṇa, but in his mind he is speculating. Therefore his words will never be effective. A real sadhu never speaks theoretically.”
Gour Govinda Mahārāja always kept a diary, making daily entries without fail. Each entry would conclude in the same way:
“Whatever service this servant has performed today, Gopāl knows.”
Every day he would pray to Gopāl in his diary:
“Please give me the association of like-minded devotees.”
In 1991, on Rāma Navanī, the auspicious appearance day of Lord Rāmacandra, after sixteen years of determined endeavour, Gour Govinda Mahārāja fulfilled the instruction of his beloved spiritual master Śrīla Prabhupāda by opening the magnificent Śrī Śrī Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma temple in Bhubaneswar. Since that time the Śrī Śrī Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma mandira has grown into a flourishing project that every year attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors.
He never gave up his simple lifestyle. Until his last days he continued to live in the small mud hut next to the one he had built for Śrīla Prabhupāda in 1977. Several times he was requested by devotees to expand his managerial responsibilities, but he always refused, saying:
“I am not a manager, I am a preacher.”
However, when the land in Gadeigiri, where he spent his childhood and where his beloved Gopāl resided in a simple structure, was donated to ISKCON, he did take up the responsibility of one more project, that of building Gopāl a magnificent temple.
Gour Govinda Svāmī said:
“I have opened a ‘crying school’ here in Bhubaneswar. Unless we cry for Kṛṣṇa, we cannot get His mercy.”
This was the message he preached so vigorously all over the world during the last ten years of his manifest pastimes.
In late January, 1996, he mentioned;
“Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta said that this material world is not a fit place for any gentleman. Therefore, because he was disgusted, he left this world prematurely. I may also leave. I don’t know. Let me ask Gopāl. I will do whatever He wants.”
The next day Gour Govinda Svāmī went to Gadeigiri to see his Gopāl. After returning, for the next four days he preached more powerfully than ever to thousands of people who flocked to the Prabhupāda Centennial festival in Bhubaneswar. Then he left for the annual ISKCON management meetings in Śrīdham Māyāpura.
On 9 February 1996, the holy appearance day of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, two senior ISKCON devotees requested an appointment in the early evening to see Gour Govinda Mahārāja. They had never spoken personally with him before but had become very eager to hear from him after reading some of his books. They inquired:
“Why did Caitanya Mahāprabhu stay in Jagannātha Purī?”
Delighted by their question, he began to explain the confidential significance of Mahāprabhu’s pastimes in Purī. He lovingly described the pain of separation felt by Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa when Kṛṣṇa was away from Vṛndāvana. This moving pastime appears in chapter eight of The Embankment of Separation.
Enchanting all the devotees in his room with the nectarean topics of Kṛṣṇa, he gradually unfolded the pastime to the point where Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa were finally united after Their long separation. He described how Kṛṣṇa became so ecstatic upon seeing Rādhārāṇī that He manifested a form with big round eyes and shrunken limbs, Lord Jagannātha. At that time the devotees noticed that tears had come to his eyes and his voice had become choked up. Barely audibly, he said:
“Then the eyes of Kṛṣṇa fell upon the eyes of Rādhārāṇī. Eye-to-eye union.”
Unable to continue, he apologised with folded hands:
“Please excuse me. I cannot speak.”
He then gave his final instruction:
“Kīrtana! Kīrtana!”
The devotees present began to chant as their spiritual master calmly lay back on his bed, breathing slowly and deeply. A servant placed a picture of Gopāl Jiu in his hand. Then, gazing lovingly at that picture of his worshipable Deity, Gour Govinda Svāmī called out, “Gopāl!” and departed for the spiritual sky to be united with his beloved Lord.
Every day before Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class, Gour Govinda Svāmī would sing an Orissan song he had learned as a boy. Now his prayer was fulfilled:
paramānanda he mādhava
paduṅgaluci makaranda
se-makaranda pāna-kari
ānande bolo ‘hari hari’
hariṅka nāme vānda velā
pāri karibe cakā-dolā
se-cakā-dolāṅka-pāyāre
mana-mo rahu nirantare
mana mo nirantare rahu
’hā-kṛṣṇa’ boli jīva jāu
hā-kṛṣṇa boli jāu jīva
mote udhāra rādhā-dhava
mote udhāra rādhā-dhava
mote udhāra rādhā-dhava
“O supremely blissful Mādhava!
The nectar is coming from Your lotus feet. Drinking that nectar, I blissfully sing ‘Hari! Hari!’ Taking the name of Hari, I am binding a raft on which Lord Jagannātha will ferry me across this ocean of material existence. May my mind always remain at the lotus feet of that Lord Jagannātha who has very large round eyes. In this way, I call out, ‘Alas! Kṛṣṇa!’ and give up my life. O husband of Rādhārāṇī, please deliver me.”
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