'GOWD SARASWATH BRAHMIN SAMAJ PUNE'

The Genesis -
By the grace of the Almighty and blessings from our revered Gurus, in July 2016, a group of GSB bandhavas were able to accomplish the long-standing dream of the GSB community in Pune, by forming an association exclusively for the GSB community. The association was subsequently registered as ‘GOWD SARASWATH BRAHMIN SAMAJ PUNE’ (Regd no: 5459), under the Charity Commissioner, Maharashtra State.

The seed of the Samaj was sown when on 15th of July 2016, eight members of GSB community namely i) Ramdas Radhakrishna Pai, ii) Prakash Laxman Kini, iii) P G Balakrishna Kamath, iv) Basty Anantha Shenoy, v) Radhakrishna Shridhar Shenoy, vi) Nitin Madhav Pai and vii) Sasang Sachidananda Pai had met at Shri. Vedamurthy Manjunath Vittal Bhatmam’s residence. Recognising the aspirations of the Pune GSB community, the meeting unanimously decided to celebrate the first ever GSB Ganeshotsav in Pune which fell on 5th September 2016 and also work to form an association for GSB community.

In pursuance to the agenda set on 15th July 2016, a wider group of 31 members of GSB Community living in Pune-Pimpri-Chinchwad gathered to further deliberate on the formation of a body for GSBs in Pune. The meeting set the objective of the new body as to work exclusively for the cultural, spiritual, charitable and welfare requirements of the community. The meeting appointed an Ad-hoc Committee with a mandate to initiate all the necessary steps to give a legal shape to the body and have it registered with the name ‘GOWD SARASWATH BRAHMIN SAMAJ PUNE’. As a result of the dedicated work of the Ad-hoc Committee, all the organisational and legal requirements were completed in a short time and the Samaj was registered on October 24, 2016.

Since its inception, the GSB Samaj has been dedicatedly working to fulfil the declared objectives and live up to the aspirations of the Community in Pune. As per our constitution and as assigned by the 1ST General Body of the Samaj held in September 2017, , our moto has been be to strive for protecting and preserving the GSB community’s rich cultural heritage and traditions. We have also started taking up charitable work to help the needy. In the past two years we have already made a good beginning and a number of community events are being regularly organized. Some of the events and festivals being celebrated in a traditional way are the yearly 5 days Ganesh Utsav, Navarathri celebrations, Ram-Navami, Karthika Ekadashi and Choodi Pooja. We have initiated our charitable work to help children in orphanage and other needy sections. As we progress and build up funds, we have plans to take up more of these, especially the charitable work.

Needless to say, the entire GSB Community in Pune has been extending full cooperation and wholeheartedly participating in the above said festivities making these events a grand success. This has provided us much needed encouragement and a feeling of satisfaction.

Despite the promising work done so far, we have a long way to go – expand the membership of Samaj, start regularly organizing the activities and services of the Samaj and reach out to every GSB family in Pune so that the Community members can take advantage of the services to be offered by the Samaj. On our part, we remain ready to serve better to the best of our abilities and assist the GSB community in realising its aspirations.