More Daily Life from 1964

We also saw quite a lot of our friend Gopal Bhattacharya.

 

Gopal was an idealistic teacher who was in charge of the Teacher Training programmes in Tripura State. He was an ardent member of the Gandhian organisation, Sorbodaya (Servants of All), which was trying to put Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals into practice in everyday community life. If there was trouble between communities, like rioting between Hindus and Muslims, Sorbodaya volunteer workers would talk to the leaders of both communities and persuade them to pursue their aims by peaceful means only. And it usually worked. 

Gopal had studied for four years at Melbourne University, so he knew what our way of life was like. Like Mahatma Gandhi his hero, he gave away most of his salary to support needy youngsters in their education, and similar projects, and lived as frugally as he could on very simple food, simple clothing and simple accommodation.

 

He had renounced marriage and family, as a protest against child marriage; his parents had married him to a girl of his own age when he was very young. We admired him greatly. 

When I first met Gopal, he was the Principal of a Training College in the southern part of Tripura, and the scooter was useful for visiting him and his institution.

 

Basic Education, as prescribed by Gandhi, was the catch-cry in those days: children and other students were expected to learn by doing; doing normal village activities like cottage handcrafts and agriculture. So Gopal used to join his students digging in the fields and at other tasks which most educated people in that society thought beneath them. 

He and his fellow Sorbodaya workers certainly put most Christian missionaries to shame in the extent of their asceticism, and simplicity of life. 

We also met several very pleasant American young people who were workers with the Peace Corps, which had been set up by President Kennedy. The Peace Corps was similar to our own organisation Volunteer Service Abroad.

 

Two Peace Corps workers had been allocated to Gopal’s Training College to work alongside the students there. I remember bringing one of them back to Agartala on the scooter, along with a live chicken for our kitchen in a village-style kit. 

And the evening when I had dropped another Peace Corps couple home to their College rooms on the other side of town and was returning to the mission compound in the mission landrover through a patch of jungle, when I saw an animal in the headlights which turned out on closer look to be a leopard about two metres long. I did not stop to investigate.