Vo Gokul ka gwaalaa thhaa
Posted by: Atul on: March 4, 2026
This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in other sites without the knowledge and consent of the web administrator of atulsongaday.me, then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.
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Today’s song is from a Religious film- Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu-1953.
Consequent to the grand success of the film BAIJU BAWRA-1952, the Prakash Pictures of the Bhatt brothers came out of its financial crisis, making a handsome profit and regaining its fame. For their next film, they repeated the Hero of Baiju Bawra – Bharat Bhushan and resorted again to their comfort zone of Religious/Mythological film Genre.
For a change, this time they opted for a story on a Saint from Eastern India. They hoped, perhaps, to recapture the Hindi film market in the Eastern Territory, which had suffered due to the closed outflow of Hindi films from New Theatres, Calcutta, which was on the verge of closing down totally. To attract the East India audience,they even hired R.C.Boral- one of the major supporters of New Theatres from its beginning- as the Music Director of this film.
Perhaps, all these moves helped and sure enough, the film not only did very well on the Box Office, but the film’s Hero, Bharat Bhushan, also got the “Best Actor” FilmFare Award. The film was directed by Vijay Bhatt as usual and the cast of the film included Bharat Bhushan, Ameeta, Durga Khote, B.M.Vyas, Rai Mohan, Sulochana Chaterjee, Ram Mohan, Madan Puri, Umakant and a host of other actors. 16 songs were written by Bharat Vyas, who wrote in chaste Hindi, suitable and appropriate for such films. The film was released at Super Cinema, Bombay on 11-12-1954.
The Bhakti Movement was India’s own way to combat foreign attackers, cruel rulers and the sleeping people of India. The movement from 1300 to 1600 AD produced many religious Saints and social reformers from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and from Assam to Gujarat. Indian culture is such that the advice given by a religious saint is more acceptable than that given by a social reformer. Thus, in this hour of need, India’s Saints tried to teach message of reforms such as removal of Untouchability, freedom from Varnashram lifestyles, importance of education, Women’s emancipation and other such matters,through their poems, dohas, Abhangs and writings as well as kirtans. They tried to make the masses wake up against the ill effects of social practices that were being observed those days.
Saints appeared in ALL areas of India,during this period. However,due to language problems, knowledge and information about Saints in other regions trickled down very slowly. States which shared the use of Devanagari script were aware about them in a better way. Thus,Maharashtra,Gujarat,Rajasthan and the Northern Hindi belt states exchanged their knowledge about their saints more frequently than other regions such as Bengal, the Eastern states or the southern states where the scripts were different. Andhra and Karnataka were closer as their scripts are similar, except perhaps the alphabet ‘K’. Tamil and Malayalam scripts have Dravidian origins and were not easily accessible for the rest of India.
Truly speaking, Great Souls do not belong to any specific area, state, region or a language. They belong to India and their language is Love for God and Compassion for the downtrodden. Without exception, the Saints never limited their teachings only to religious matters but they also advocated social reforms. Indian sentiments accept more easily,anything given through Religion. This, precisely, was what the selfish upper caste priestly classes had done earlier, to subjugate the unsuspecting masses,by falsely pushing their private agendas,in the garb of religious scripture tenets.
Understanding this, the Saints tried to bring the Holy books and the religious tenets into vernacular languages,to make the masses realise what the Truth was. They also propagated the reformative information from the Holy books through their Keertans, Akhyans, Dohas, Abhanga, owees and Chaupais.
During the Bhakti movement period, almost all regions had their own saints and Great Bhakts. One such Great soul enlightened the people of Eastern India.
He was known as Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
Lord Chaitanya is considered and was established by Vedic scripture as the most recent incarnation of God. The Lord always descends to establish the codes of religion. This is confirmed in Bhagavad-gita (4.6-8) where Lord Krishna explains that although He is unborn and the Lord of all living beings, He still descends in His spiritual form in order to re-establish the proper religious principles and annihilate the miscreants whenever there is a decline of religion and a rise in irreligious activity.
The story of the film was….
It happened in the fifteenth Century. The tyranny of the rulers, the hypocrisy of the priests, the meaningless austerity of the pedantic Pandits who had turned away from God and the apathy of the rich towards the poor – all combined together to create a chaos in the midst of which the soul of the country prayed for a Messiah. And a Messiah was born in the house of Jagannath Mishra, in the year 1486, on the night of Lunar eclipse when the sky was rent up with the sacred name of Hari. Chaitanya was that Messiah. . After the death of eight children, Biswarup was the ninth son and Chaitanya was the tenth issue. . He was named as Vishwambhar but was called by his mother Sachi Devi as Nimai, whereas the neighbours used to call him Gouranga because he was extremely fair-looking. Nimai was very wild in his childhood and resembled the boy Krishna.
As Nimai grew up the economic condition of the family became very bad. Kalipada Basu, the money-lending neighbour, began to press hard for his dues. He was an evil-minded man who was associated with a low- spirited Tantrik named Bhairabananda and used to blaspheme and belittle the Vaishnavas. . Nimai became young and completed his education only to lose his father forever. He earned a reputation as a Pandit, won the love of all for his sacrificing, loving nature and his devotion to God. Kalipada tried to occupy his house but failed.
Nimai started a school of his own. A career being settled Nimai was now married to Vishnupriya, daughter of the Court-Pandit Sanatan Misra. The death anniversary of his father approached and Nimai went to Gaya. After having a darshan of the Vishnu-Pada-Padma in the temple and after listening to the Krishna-Leela from a Sadhu named Iswarpuri, Nimai fainted. The power that was so long waiting and lying dormant in him now broke up. Thereafter he seemed a changed man. He was lost as a husband to Vishnupriya, lost as a son to Sachi Devi. He was lost IN Krishna and was crying all the time.
Thereafter he changed totally to Krishna Bhakti. He started many keertan schools and hundreds of people became his followers. He did a lot of miracles too.
He converted the local Qazi to krishna bhakti,who had come to convert him to Islam. Chaitanya travelled to Puri and from there toured South India,upto Cape Comorin (Kanyakumari),winning many learned scholars to his following.He came back to Puri and after 18 years in Puri,one day simply disappeared with his soul and body,while doing kirtan.
Bharat Bhushan (14 June 1920 – 27 January 1992) was an actor in Hindi films, script writer and producer, who is best remembered for playing Baiju Bawra in the 1952 film of the same name .He was born in Meerut, and brought up in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. Bharat Bhushan was born on 14 June 1920 in a Vaishya (Baniya) family at Meerut, Uttar Pradesh.
His father, Raibahadur Motilal, was the government pleader of Meerut. His mother died when he was two years old. His elder brother was film producer Ramesh Chandra, who owned the Ideal Studio at Lucknow. The brothers left for Aligarh to stay with their grandfather after their mother’s death. He did his studies and earned a graduate degree from Dharam Samaj College, Aligarh. After this he took to acting against his father’s wishes. He first went to Calcutta to join cinema and later established himself in Bombay.
He married into a prominent family in Meerut, Zamindar Raibahadur Budha Prakash’s daughter Sarla. They had two daughters, Anuradha and Aparajitha. Anuradha had polio-associated complications. His other daughter Aparajita played the role of Mandodari in the famous TV show Ramanand Sagar’s famous serial Ramayan. In an interview, Aparajita had said that after the sudden demise of her husband, she turned to acting. Aparajita has done more than 50 films in her career. Bhushan’s wife Sarla died of labour complications after delivering their second child in the early 1960s, soon after the release of film Barsaat Ki Raat. In 1967, he married actress Ratna, his co-star in the same film.
Bhushan owned bungalows in Bandra, Bombay and other areas. He was an avid reader and boasted of his collection of books, which he had to sell off like his cars and bungalows in bad times, after he turned co-producer on the pleadings of his brother. Only a few of his films were successes and unfortunately, the rest flopped. He died after he escaped his financial crisis, on 27 January 1992.
He made his debut with the Kidar Sharma hit Chitralekha (1941). However, he struggled for over a decade to make a mark in Hindi movies till Baiju Bawra (1952), which gave him instant stardom and legendary status along with Mohammad Rafi, Meena Kumari and Naushad Ali. Though a very talented actor and a prominent star of the 1950s and 1960s in Hindi language films, he often took on roles of tragic musicians in the movies. Films in which he starred as lead actor include Basant Bahar.
“He portrays historical and mythological characters the best in Hindi movies,” states contemporary actor-producer Chandrashekar. He wrote scripts and stories for Barsat Ki Raat, Nayi Umar Ki Nayi Fasal, Basant Bahar, Dooj Ka Chand, etc. He was the producer of Dooj Ka Chand. His brother R. Chandra made many films such as Bebus, Minar, and Basant Bahar.
He was the recipient of the second Filmfare best actor award for the film Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in 1954. Most of the great songs of major singers of that period such as Rafi, Manna Dey, Talat, and Mukesh were pictured on him. He was the first chocolate-faced good-looking star of Hindi films. He was one of the few actors who had a good sense of music, so most music-based movies were made with him in lead roles in the 1950s and 1960s.
He acted in Hindi language movies until the 1990s. He acted in 211 Hindi films,in all. His last film was Maachis-1996. He is still loved and revered by the Indians for the great movies and great songs that he gave in spite of personal tragedies and stiff competition from his contemporaries. He is considered to be one of the greatest stars and legends of Hindi cinema.
Here is a song from this film, sung by Dhananjay Bhattacharya and Lata Mangeshkar. Enjoy….
Song- Vo Gokul ka gwaala thha (Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu)(1953) Singers- Dhananjay Bhattacharya, Lata Mangeshkar, Lyricist- Bharat Vyas, MD- R.C.Boral
Lyrics
vo gokul kaa gwaalaa thhaa
vo gokul kaa gvaalaa thhaa
bholaa bhaalaa thhaa nand kishor
yashoda kaa ujiyaalaa thhaa jise kahte hain maakhan chor
ho o o gokul kaa gwaalaa thhaa
o o o o
nirmohee ee
nirmohee vo kaalaa thhaa aa
nandlaalaa vo kaalaa thhaa
vo chhaliyaa
vo chhaliyaa badaa barjor
raadhaa pe jaadu daalaa thhaa
jise kahte hain ham chitchor
nirmohee
vo kaalaa thhaa
o o o o o o o o o
sohnee sooorat
aa aa
sohnee soorat mohnee moorat
sohnee soorat
mohnee moorat
nainaa aa aa
nainaa madhur vishaal aal
nainaa madhur vishaal
tirachhi palakiyaan aan aan aan
tirachhi baansuriyaa aa
tirachhee palakiyaan
tirachhee baansuriyaa
tiachhee tirchhee uski chaal aal
tirchhee kanhaiyaa kee chaal
sun bhakton kee karun pukaar
aa aa aa aa
sun bhakton kee karun pukaar
vo o o gokul ko o o o chhod chalaa
vo gokul ko o o o chhod chalaa
badaa nirmam thhaa krishna muraa aar
munh raadhaa se mod chalaa krishna muraaar
man raadhaa kaa tod chalaa krishna muraar
nirmohee vo kaalaa aa thhaa aa aa
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Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
March 4, 2026 at 9:03 pm
Dear Arun ji
Today’s post and the article is very timely. Just yesterday, that is 3rd March, was the Gaur Poornima, the anniversary of the appearance of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. This is a major celebration for our religion, especially the Gaudiya Matth segment. At our ashram in Radha Kund (close to Goverdhan) special abhishek and pooja was performed yesterday. Being also the day of Chandra Grahan (Moon Eclipse), the pooja took place after 6.50 pm, when the effect of the eclipse came to an end, as per astrological calculations. The celebrations continued till 9.30 / 10.00 pm.
Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is a unique incarnation, as per our scriptures and tradition, in that it is believed that He is a merged manifestation of Krishna and Radha in a single form.
Thanks so much for this post and the details.
Sincere regards
Sudhir
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