Passing of a Guru

June 17, 2009

Shri Prakash Gossai, celebrated pandit, spiritual guide and guru to thousands of Hindus in Guyana, the Caribbean, USA and Canada passed away on Monday. He was a comparatively young man, just fifty-six years of age and only a month ago, he was chosen by this newspaper as a “Special Person”.

Even though Hinduism was introduced into Guyana over a hundred and fifty years ago, there remains some opacity about many of the traditions of that “religion”. The word is in scare quotes because, as individuals such as Shri Gossai (the “Sri” is an honorific title) insisted, Hinduism as “a way of life” was grounded on a totally different set of premises than on those of, for example, the paradigmatic Abrahaminic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Much of the departed pandit’s fame came from the innovations he introduced in transmitting the teachings and values of his ancient tradition within a radically different milieu.

The word “Guru” etymologically means “remover of darkness” and thus a guru in Hinduism is an individual who removes “darkness” or ignorance from the minds of practitioners.

Shri Prakash Gossai was a guru in the fullest meaning of the term. All the canonical texts of Hinduism – from the millennia-old Vedas to the comparatively “new” five-hundred-year-old Ramcharitmanas – are in poetical metres and are traditionally set to music.

Shri Gossai was born with an innate musical talent and very early on he applied it to the exposition of the sacred texts.

But if he had continued with just melodious singing he would have been just an entertainer. Shri Gossai’s unique innovation was to marry his melodious recitals to meticulously and creatively constructed lessons (or “kathas”) based on the texts.

The voice would bring the devotees into his presence but the lessons would send them away transformed. It was the quintessence of the oral tradition practised for thousands of years but the application of the ancient, unchangeable principles were applied to the local conditions and exigencies with such clarity and wit that it “removed the scales from the eyes” of the devotees. He was a guru.
Shri Gossai was facilitated in his quest to reintegrate modern Hindus with their ancient way of life because, unlike many of his pandit peers, he received a very solid grounding in the sciences at the University level and subsequently, in teaching methodology in New York.

He was in a position to answer questions - especially from the young - in an idiom to which they could relate.

Simultaneously however, coming from the rural community of Mahaicony, he was never far away from the cadences of the bulk of the Hindu community that shared his pastoral origins.

One of Shri Gossai’s innovations was in adapting the singing of religious songs (“bhajans”) and chanting of the verses of the sacred texts – especially the Ramcharitmanas, the mainstay of the local Hindu community that originated in North India – away from the old melodies that was considered passé and into modern popular tunes that resonated with his western audiences.

Closely aligned with this innovation was his transliteration and translation of much of his bhajans and textual selections that made the words of the original comprehensible.

But his singular achievement were his answers to the modern questions that challenged the Hindu in the west that was illuminated by his willingness to delve deeply into the original texts but yet not couch the answers in esoterica.

His pithy acronyms and allusions on obscure matters made them simple. Sri Tulsidas, who composed the Ramcharitmanas by using the same technique to the millennia-old Ramayan in sixteenth-century India, would have been proud of him.

We extend our sympathies and condolences to the family and relatives of Shri Prakash Gossai. As he has wished for so many others, “May his atma (soul) find Moksha (union) with the Paramatma (Supreme soul).