Srila Gaura Kishora Dasa Babaji disappeared from this world at Nabadwip on 17 November 1915, his own seventy-seventh birthday. Both gaudiyahistory.iskcondesiretree.com and gosai.com agree that this was also the day of Utthana Ekadashi. Beyond the events described below, very little more is recorded about him with any confidence.
| Disappeared | 17 November 1915, his 77th birthday, on Utthana Ekadashi |
| Place | Nabadwip |
| Samadhi relocated | Roughly sixteen years later, after flooding of the Ganges, according to one source |
| Disciple's sannyasa | 1918, before a photograph of Gaura Kishora Dasa Babaji |
A Contest Over His Samadhi #
His body was placed in a samadhi tomb at Nabadwip. But according to gaudiyahistory.iskcondesiretree.com, flooding of the Ganges some sixteen years later forced it to be moved. Several local babajis are said to have argued over who should be the one to handle the sacred body. By this account, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati settled the matter. He declared himself the only genuine disciple of "Paramahamsa Babaji Maharaja" and set a test of personal purity. None of the rival babajis was willing to meet this test before a police inspector who had been called in to keep order. The account says that the other babajis left without a word. Bhaktisiddhanta then set up the samadhi again within the grounds of Sri Chaitanya Matha at Mayapur, where it remains.
Another devotional account describes what appears to be this same confrontation, in much the same words. But it places it on the very day of Gaura Kishora Dasa Babaji's disappearance in 1915, not sixteen years later over a flood-driven move. In this version the head priests of Nabadwip's temples and ashramas argued over where his body would be buried. This account names the police inspector called to the scene as Mr. Jatindranath Simha. The two accounts do not agree on when this confrontation took place or on what caused it. Both are reported here without trying to settle the difference.
In another account, the disputing babajis objected that Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati was not a sannyasi, and so had no right to prepare the samadhi of one who had renounced his home. He answered them, "I am the sole disciple of Paramahamsa Babaji Maharaja. Even though I have not accepted sannyasa, I am a celibate brahmachari, and, by the grace of Babaji Maharaja, I am not a hypocritical renunciate... He who within the last one year, or six months, three months, one month or even three days has not indulged in illicit association with women will be able to touch this spiritually blissful body. If anyone else touches it, he will be completely ruined." One by one, the babajis are said to have turned and left. Some of those present then suggested that Gaura Kishora Dasa Babaji had expressed a last wish to have his body dragged through the streets of Nabadwip in the dust of the Dhama. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati replied that even Krishnachandra Himself would think it a success to carry his Gurudeva on His own head or shoulders, "for after the departure of Haridasa Thakura, Sri Gaurasundara took the spiritual body of the Thakura on His lap and danced. What dignity He adorned it with! Therefore, following in the footsteps of Sriman Mahaprabhu, we shall also bear Babaji Maharaja's spiritually blissful body on our heads."
Sannyasa Before a Photograph #
In 1918, three years after Gaura Kishora Dasa Babaji's disappearance, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati took a step that had no real earlier example in Vaishnava practice. He did not receive the sannyasa order of formal renunciation from a living teacher. Instead, he sat down before a photograph of his guru. In Wikipedia's words (drawing on Ferdinando Sardella's academic study Modern Hindu Personalism), he "invested that order upon himself." The same Wikipedia article cites June McDaniel's The Madness of the Saints, and on that basis says some scholars of Vaishnavism have treated the formal validity of this sannyasa as an open question. But within the Gaudiya Math and the later ISKCON lineage descending from Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, the act has never been in dispute. There it is remembered as an act of loyalty to a guru who had already left the world. It was taken in the firm belief that Gaura Kishora Dasa Babaji's approval did not require his physical presence. Both views are reported here without judging between them.
A Life That Left Few Records #
Almost nothing else about Srila Gaura Kishora Dasa Babaji can be stated with certainty from written records. No writings of his own survive. There is no photograph except the one honoured by his disciple. And there is no record from his own time apart from the memories later gathered by his followers. This lack of records is not mainly a gap in research. It comes from the kind of life he lived. He sought no following and built no institution. All accounts say that he actively discouraged the personal attention that might have produced a fuller record. What remains is what his one acknowledged disciple, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, carried forward. One part is his place in the guru-parampara, set out on the guru-parampara chart here. The other is his way of renunciation, which later Gaudiya Vaishnavas, down to Srila Prabhupada, continued to hold up as an example.
