Remembering Gopal Dass Gupta

The Divine Worker

Like most Hindu spiritual aspirants of his time Gopal Dass had turned to Sri Aurobindo through Essays on the Gita, & diligently practiced this ideal offered by Sri Aurobindo in his Uttarpāra Speech: "...not only to understand intellectually but to realise what... He demands of those who aspire to do His work, to be free from repulsion & desire, to do work for Him without demand for fruit, to renounce self-will & become a passive & faithful instrument in His hands, to have an equal heart for high & low, friend & opponent, success & failure, yet not to do His work negligently." Prior to settling in the Ashram Gopal Dass had been a conscientious principled teacher in Government institutions, habituated to obey their principles & policies. Jayantilal Parekh appointed him stock-keeper of the reams of paper purchased for printing the 30-volume SABCL & keeping a register of customers who had paid in advance & sending them volumes ready for dispatch. Then the Research & Publication (R&P) wing of Jayantilal's Archives charged him with compiling a glossary-cum-index of proper names in SABCL & in its own Archives & Research Journal (A&R). When Gopal Dass's backbreaking fifteen years of labour was crowned by Research & Publication's refusal to publish it, it was Harikant Patel, the Managing Trustee of the Ashram, who saw to it that a decent number of Gopal Dass's 368-page Glossary & Index ended up on SABDA's lap. Then Gopal Dass, conscientious soul that he was, without care for his ailing 76-years old body, went on to add half-a-dozen more draining years of & produced a 30-page Corrigenda-cum-Addenda, as ‘Supplement to the Glossary’, which Harikant got published in 1996 - just two years before Gopal Dass's body gave up.

By Sunjoy Bhatt

Gopal Dass ji joined us either at the end of 1969 or in the beginning of 1970. The work of publishing the Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo as part of the commemoration of his Birth Centenary in 1972 was then on hand in the Ashram Press. The presence of Gopal Dassji to help us in this important project was a godsend. We could not have found a better person.

Gopal Dass ji was given the responsibility for maintaining the subscribers' list, keeping a record of and close watch on when and which volumes were dispatched. He had also to maintain the accounts and the stock list as well. This laborious task continued for years till the publication work was completed and the last subscriber was provided with his complete set. All this painstaking work he handled with singular patience and devotion all by himself, something that could not have been done without a fully trained and orderly mind capable of taking the fullest responsibility for the smallest detail. The ledgers and records that he kept in this connection were valued so much that we had preserved all of them till the other day.

Victory in any battle is usually attributed to the General and he is showered with all the laurels. But without the secret, dependable strength of the trained and vigilant soldier, would victory have been possible? Similarly, when a great work is undertaken or something lasting is to be built, it is the silent, steadfast men behind the scenes who keep up the tempo and progress and lend joy and satisfaction to a worthy task accomplished.

Whatever work was either entrusted to him or he voluntarily took upon himself, Gopal Dass ji proved himself to be best suited to it, be it in the matter of the responsibility it entailed, meticulousness of detail or the care and completeness of execution. Behind his outward personality as a self-effacing and trustworthy worker was his perfect moral rectitude, backed by a deep religious faith nurtured through a life full of difficult circumstances. True humility was one of Gopal Dassji's divine virtues; he never overestimated his abilities. But when entrusted with a task, however challenging, he would accept it without the least hesitation in all sincerity.

All serious students of Aurobindonian literature are today greatly beholden to Gopal Dass ji for the monumental work he did by compiling his Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo's Works and subsequently its Supplement. It is not known how he happened to take upon himself this stupendous task. While reading Sri Aurobindo, he might have wondered about the significance and background of some of the proper names that he came across. It may have prompted him to suggest to some colleague the need for preparing a glossary and the latter may have casually remarked, "Why don't you take it up? Whatever the original cause, he worked on it doggedly for fifteen long years. Researching on the entries, making the index-cards, checking and rechecking them. Gopal Dassji went carefully through all the thirty volumes of Sri Aurobindo's Collected Works and also the eighteen volumes of Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research journal. He had to hunt for and refer to national biographies, encyclopedias and reference books covering various subjects, philosophical, religious, literary and others. In all this laborious and time-taking task, his academic training, discipline and teaching experience must have been greatly helpful. Finally he neatly typed the entire manuscript which was published in 1989.

Undoubtedly here was a silent, dedicated, divine worker whom few can really emulate. Indeed every time we remember him we should bow our heads in gratitude to him.

By Jayantilal Parekh

Source:
Mother India,
August 1999 Issues