GAHANANANDA --- A GLANCE 1

In the long line of illumined souls that the Ramakrishna Order has given to the world, Swami Gahanananda stands out as the unique exemplar of little talk and much service. He had great clarity of conception about work and its secrets and was a perfect karma yogi.

After taking over from Swami Dayananda as Secretary of the Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratishthan, then Shishu Mangal, Swami Gahanananda laboriously and with great foresight converted it from a 32-bed maternity and child-care medical unit to a 550-bed full-fledged general hospital.

Firm in his views, resolute in mind and indefatigable in work, Naresh Maharaj, as he was popularly known to devotees, never lost his poise or balance of mind despite steering Seva Pratishthan through the most trying of circumstances in turbulent times in West Bengal when politics of a perverse kind tore life in the metropolis apart. A delightful combination he was of head and heart, a rare fruition of personality harmony, what Swami Vivekananda used to refer to as one having 'immense idealism with immense practicality', and a character to back it up, built on the granite foundation of implicit faith in Sri Ramakrishna and surrender to his ideals.

Swami Gahanananda belonged to that rare breed of humanity whose fidelity to the force it hails from, loyalty to the cause it represents was unimpeachable and, thus, he was a pivotal power of the organisation (Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission) when things went awry in those calamitous days of perfidious politics in West Bengal that threatened to seal the fate of the academic activities of the Mission. The monk in him stood still amidst a raging political typhoon that dragged the Mission to Court, and like a deft helmsman he steered the ship of the Sangha safely home unto calmer waters. The threat to the Mission that day was on all sides and was weathered by Swami Gahanananda and his monastic brothers conjointly but all concerned admit that the steely resolve and unruffled calm of Naresh Maharaj carried many a day when a less determined stance would have played the Mission's interests into the hands of the political masterminds of the day debilitating the Order for good. These are contentious issues and need not be dwelt on in this essay at length but suffice it to say that the Mission in all its glory still stands supreme thanks to the labour of love of monks like Swami Gahanananda whose hearts ever bled to secure the well-being of the Mission.

Such are the children of the Lord, such are the sages and saints of the Ramakrishna Order who behold the Master embodied in the organisation and serve it with their hearts' ardour to to do justice to their spiritual vocation. Swami Gahanananda stands at par with the luminaries of the Order and it was our privilege to have beheld him and to have been blessed by him for the life eternal. Jai Gurudev!