Biography

Gauranga Prabhu, a disciple of H.H. Radhanath Swami, is a monk, a motivational speaker who has transformed various lives through his activities, preachings and has strived to bring change in the society.He spent his childhood at Bhilai and has fond memories with that place. He has been a bright student since his childhood. He was good at academics, sports, and various co-curricular activities in school. He was amongst the top rankers in his class. Guarang Dasa winning a trophy in school.Later, he aimed to become an engineer, and he pursued his graduation at IIT Bombay in 1989. His attention was drawn to Krishna consciousness during his college days. He began to read Bhagavad Gita while in college and was curious about the pursuit of life and death, since early in life.An incident occurred in his life while he was in college, when one of his batchmates tried to attempt suicide for not achieving a gold medal in academics rather he bagged a silver medal; the boy tried to hang himself by a rope, but his rope broke, and he was saved from committing a blunder. He tried to do so because he always scored a gold medal in almost every exam that he had given, and he could not handle the pressure of coming second. In an interview, while discussing this incident in relation to his other college friends who, even after failing in 3 or 4 subjects, roamed happily around the campus, and according to Dasa, their (his college friends) philosophy was , From this incident, Dasa gathered, Certainly, it is not an achievement that makes you happy or unhappy. It must be something more Then, he came up with an equation of stress i.e. Stress = Expectations Reality and Happiness = Attainment Desire. This made him realise that it was indeed expectations attached to those achievements that define whether a person is happy or not. This pushed him more to gather knowledge about life, and this inspired him to join ISKCON.He never planned to be a monk, but gradually, when he started receiving his answers about his queries on life, he continued his search for knowledge and converted into a Monk. In 1993, he joined ISKCON as a monk.He conducted many Bhagavad Gita seminars in all prominent engineering colleges, medical colleges, and management institutes. He also began social work to uplift the minor sections in society.He counsels on stress management in several co-operative organizations for senior-level managers. He features on the popular Atma, a daily spiritual discourse on Star TV, he airs the timeless message of the Gita to millions in India and the U.K.He is a Global Duty Officer for the ISKCON Governing Body Commission (GBC). He is the trustee of ISKCON GBC College, member of the GBC Organizational Development Committee and GBC Nominations Committee, Divisional Director of Devotee Care and Temple Development, Systems & Administration departments of ISKCON temples Worldwide. He is the Director of the Govardhan Ecovillage, a United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) award winning Eco-village community and Co-President of the ISKCON Chowpatty temple. He is also serving as Trustee and Administrative Director for Bhaktivedanta Research Centre (BRC), Kolkata.He started Govardhan Ecovillage in the year 2005 with 5 humans and 8 cattle and (as of 2020) there are 250 human and 100 cattle associated with the village. The main aim to begin with the Govardhan Ecovillage was to create living spaces, not buildings. This objective is achieved by making use of natural elements such as mud for building walls, energy from the sun, fuel from cow dung and modern technology like plastic pyrolysis plant, solid biotechnology plant for food waste management.Gauranga Dasa also started a rural development plan in Govardhan Ecovillage which comprised of women empowerment and has impacted over 12000 family people in tribal villages. The objective of this program is to capture the strength of women in the rural environment and empower them with an inclusive participatory approach of women empowerment. Women empowerment programme held at Govardhan Ecovillage for rural and tribal women.