Message To Krishna Kanta Desai (IRM)

RE: Krishna Kanta Desai and the ISKCON Revival Movement (IRM)

PADA: First of all I'd like to say that Krishna Kanta did a great job helping Bangalore get on track with the worship of Srila Prabhupada. That's a great big help to the overall program or re-establishing the worship of Srila Prabhupada. Bravo.

Dear Krishna Kanta, our main differences seem to be first of all -- your idea that Srila Prabhupada will be the only guru for the next 10,000 years for ISKCON. Maybe he will be, but he also said that we cannot speculate on these types of issues. Pure devotees are self effulgent, and they may manifest whenever they like by their own and Krishna's will. 

Srila Prabhupada also said that he wanted future pure devotees, future gurus and etc. Its not that WE will get to decide whether a pure devotee should either appear or not appear -- and where, when, and how he will appear, speak, decide, operate, and so on. 

We really have no way to say definitely that a future pure devotee will either appear or not appear, period. This is a little like the Christians giving specific dates for the second coming of Jesus, its all speculation. Neither did Srila Prabhupada make a definitive statement that a future pure devotee would either appear or not appear, or whether any future pure devotee would occupy some (or any) post in official ISKCON (or not) and / or what post he would take in any sphere (or not) etc. 

Mano rathena.

Then you said, even if a future pure devotee appears, he will have to act as a priest and be under the control of the ISKCON GBC -- as per the July 9th letter. Sorry! Pure devotees are not subordinated to a Governing Body? In other words, a pure devotee does what Krishna dictates, not what Ravindra Swarupa dasa and the GBC dictates? Where does the July 9th letter -- or any other directive -- say, this letter also applies to pure devotees and for the next 10,000 years?

The July 9th 1977 letter simply establishes that ISKCON's current conditioned soul leaders will have to act as agents for the pure devotee under a managerial body as priests, it does not say this same rule would apply to future pure devotees. Nor does Srila Prabhupada say any future pure devotees will have to act as priests, nor have previous pure devotees acted under the legislation of a defective Governing Body as its priests. 

That being said, we sort of agree on some things, we do NOT think that Srila Prabhupada's position as founder acharya will ever change. He will always be the preeminent acharya for the Krishna movement in whatever corporate structure that takes, from this time onward. And his books will be "the law books" for the Krishna movement and its devotees -- even if another great soul appears later on. He has laid the foundation for the Krishna religion especially in the West, and thus he will always the most prominent authority for the Krishna religion for both the short and long term future. He will certainly be like Madhvacharya for the Krishna's, i.e. the main acharya.

However, pure devotees whether past or future seem to mainly act as independent preachers and are generally aloof from all formal institutions. I think its a little speculative for you to say they must work only as priests within a particular institution, when none of us are working within formal ISKCON either? 

Srila Prabhupada is a prime example of this aloof independence. Then again, some future great soul might act as a non-acharya "reformer" for the current institutional society, sort of like Martin Luther reformed the Christian church. Or, there may never be any more prominent future gurus or reformers, and we will all have to carry on with our current sort of grass roots program of mainly laymen -- as for example the Protestants are doing. We really do not know what will happen, but there are a number of possibilities.

Of course, the Christians are always praying that Lord Jesus will come back here to purify the earth, their idea being -- they should all hope and pray that their pure devotee acharya will physically come back to this planet, and he will bless and grace our planet, and this will benefit everyone. I think your idea paints the picture that pure devotees are sort of competing with one another, and thus a future pure person will be usurping Srila Prabhupada's post in some manner, but that is not how pure devotees act with one another, they augment and serve one another.

I also see no reason why we should say that a future pure devotee guru also cannot function in ours or ISKCON's Krishna society, since the main official ISKCON society is basically a basket case anyway, and thus some help to rectify things there would be better than none. Nor can we say any future pure devotee will NOT give "pure divyam jnanam which destroys sins" (aka diksha) either in or out of any institution. Pure devotees are above institutional restrictions, and our restrictions.

Nor does it make any sense that a future pure devotee should NOT be allowed to give any divyam jnanam which destroys sins aka diksha, since that is their main function, and that is also how the conditioned souls are saved. Then again there are people who say that even if Jesus came back, he would not be allowed back into his modern church, and maybe so. Thus we should be careful NOT to make a wedge against future pure devotees -- since that might harm the movement that they (and Krishna) are trying to develop, should any appear in future.

Nor do we know for certain if a future pure devotee will have any contact with corporate ISKCON or not, at all. Yet a future pure devotee could still be the person who revives the Krishna mission and the aim and objects of ISKCON, just like other gurus and reformers revived the Gaudiya Mission from time to time under different named institutions. Srila Prabhupada was not allowed to reform the Gaudiya Matha by the bogus leaders there, so we need to make sure we do not follow that model in the event some future bona fide person appears who has the potency to reform the Krishna religion.

And a future person would still use the books and teachings of Srila Prabhupada as the foundational writings for the ongoing Krishna mission. In other words, pure devotees work conjointly and there would be a continuity of the teachings of Srila Prabhupada in a revived and reformed mission under a future bona fide saint.

We simply cannot speculate on what Krishna's future dictation would be, but for sure, a pure devotee will NOT work under the authority of a governing body of conditioned souls -- and act as a proxy under a governing body commission -- as per the July 9th letter. There is simply no precedent of pure devotees being subordinated to a Governing Body, especially one as foolish as this lot.

Anyway, a self effulgent person may or may not appear, we have no way of determining that he either will or won't, its called mental speculation. Srila Prabhupada did NOT want us to speculate on this topic, he simply said some people could (maybe, might) "become guru" when the training is complete (i.e. they are pure), or great demigods and saints might take birth in our movement etc., and thus it is theoretically possible that a future pure person might or could appear.

This issue has caused us a lot of trouble for all of us because you folks said there is "a direct quote" that there will be no more pure devotee gurus assisting ISKCON for the next 10,000 years, but there are no such quotes to that effect anywhere. Conversely, there are many quotes hoping another pure person will or could appear. A pure devotee sometimes comes when people pray sufficiently for his appearance, so we might think about that for a minute.

The next problem is -- your idea that we cannot initiate anyone outside of official GBC controlled corporate ISKCON, as Bangalore is now doing. OK that simply is not going to work. Corporate ISKCON may be contaminated with false acharyas for hundreds of years, or even forever, and thus we cannot stop initiations waiting for these deviants to rectify, they might never do that?

We are going to need initiated people NOW to do the preaching, pooja and so many other functions, and its not realistic to think that we have to wait for folks like Hrdayananada to become a rtvik before we can move ahead. In sum, we cannot hitch our horse to their wagon, their wagon may never move.

The next problem is -- official and legal ISKCON might not even exist over time, so your idea that initiations can only take place on their official property is very constrictive and not realistic. For example, Texas is the Texas Krishnas and not ISKCON. Radhanath's Chowpatty is not ISKCON. Caru is not ISKCON. Harivilas in not ISKCON. And in short, ISKCON is being wound down, spun-off, sold off, and transformed into other various charities, legal entities and off shoots. How can we insist that people have to get initiated on an ISKCON property by an ISKCON leader, if its contaminated, or if there are no properties in future at all, or there are none in their area?

Apart from that, ISKCON is ALREADY officially bankrupted in the USA and some other countries. So your plan that everyone will eventually have to take shelter of ISKCON leaders on ISKCON properties, simply will not work for most people. Never mind the leaders of what is left of the bits and pieces of ISKCON may never reform and reestablish the worship of the acharya. So we should initiate people independently, at least for the immediate term. This is why Bangalore and others have had to reject your process, they realized you were way too sentimental thinking you are going to "reform" these GBC's folks, when that is not happening anytime soon.

The next problem is that you folks and Kamsahanta objected to our getting the BBTI lawsuit going, so we could have the legal rights to original books. Your folks said we were "compromised" with Hansadutta and Bhagavan because we needed them to assist with the BBTI case. OK, but without their help, there would never have been a lawsuit case?

And we would not have the legal right to print original books?

Your friend Mukunda from England even wrote to tell me "lawyers are all nonsense" when we were putting the BBTI case together. Great, so the bad guys and their changed-up books get all of the million dollar legal help, but the original books get nothing, not even 50 cents worth of representation? I think this shows how ignorant some folks have been about the fact that we need to have original un-edited books -- or the whole thing becomes changed-up, if not contaminated fully, and in a short time. Actually it amazes some of us that so few "Prabhupada fanatics" even thought that the book changes issue was such a big problem at all during the 1980s and 90s, and thus so few helped us with the lawsuit, only a handful of people really.

I am thus not sure how our NOT having original books helps us going forward, that we should only have Jayadvaita's changed-up books and not originals? Notice! As an added bonus, many hundreds of devotees who DID NOT KNOW the books were being changed were alerted due to our lawsuit scheme, and they began to demand originals. Meanwhile, millions of original edition books will gradually be printed, and various web sites are ALREADY presenting originals etc. -- and all of this is thanks to our BBTI lawsuit scheme, and it thus seems -- once again -- you folks have had no actual tangible plan to get these books printed in original editions?

Nor does it even seem you wanted us to have these original editions? Nor have you explained why you opposed those of us who got the original editions and paint us as the bad guys? Anyway, our idea all along has been -- that we will need to continue going forward using original books, and at the present time -- thousands and thousands of people agree with us on this, even some prominent people inside the official institution. In short, we are winning on this issue from strength to strength.

The next problem is that you said your IRM is going to war against the poison case, after you first of all said you were not going to comment on it. Then, you and Adridharana dasa penned a dubious article for Tamal so he could insert your article into his bogus book against us. The only good news is, you then lost almost all of your original IRM folks, like Jitarati, Kamsahanta, Naveen and many others, who ALL fled en masse from the IRM to come over and work with us on this issue.

You handed off your best people to our team, and we have to thank you for that. However, maybe instead of going to war against most of the other Prabhupadanugas, you might have wanted to join with us? Jesus said that Satan's work is -- to divide his church, and divide and conquer it thereby.
FYI! This issue is still being investigated and more news will come out on this eventually, and its looking more solid for us all the time. Meanwhile, thousands of people have joined us in accepting that this is a valid issue and they are a little surprised you seem to be still defending / cheering on the bad guys and main suspects.

The next problem is -- You seem to think that curbing the child molesting program is not a good idea. What was happening in mid-1990s was that -- (A) some children were suicidal and dying, (B) a number of children (probably several hundred) were still in dangerous areas of total control by the evil infrastructure, and (C) some girls were being married off at 13 years old to much older men etc.

The Windle Turley lawsuit helped curb all these programs, and a number of victims thanked us for saving them from dying, being abused, and being married off at 13 to older men etc. Unfortunately, what a number of these victims have told us is that -- it is you folks who caused these problems in the first place, because you folks (and the GBC's folks?) wanted that the victims process of dying, being abused, and being married off to much older men etc. -- should have continued, because you opposed having these problems addressed and contained. And none of you ever would have contained these problems, and none of you has done anything of substance for the victims ever since either.

In sum, your idea that children should simply die, suffer, be abused, be married off at age 13 etc. is not the solution, rather its part and parcel of the original problem i.e.: NO ONE CARES! That is what the victims say to us all the time!

There are still a number of ex-children who are alienated and dysfunctional from the society, and some of them are even favorable to Krishna but they just have no shelter. Yet you and the so-called GBC do not seem to have any sort of out reach program to encourage them at all, whereas at least some of the ex-victims are helping some of our programs and they are trying to make some sort of come back, and a number of them read our sites and they are telling us they are glad at least someone tried to help them. 

You folks thus never sued anyone over these issues, or gave any sort of practical fix solution whatever, even up to the present time. So yes, the victims think there is an anti-children element in ISKCON, because some people have adamantly opposed fixing these problems and abuses. Anyway, the solution to cover up these crimes, sweep it all this under the rug, OK same agenda as the GBC's and perps?

Allowing crimes against ISKCON children is simply -- not the solution -- whatever the problem is. Its amazing to us that a sector of folks criticize that some these ex-children are having a bad attitude about the religion. when the same people wanted to cover up their molesting. That is what caused these bad attitudes. The victims think ISKCON is producing an anti-children atmosphere, because people say their victimization cannot be halted. Of course covering up for molesting makes Srila Prabhupada and Krishna look bad, no kidding!

So here we were in 1997, we had all sorts of evidences of criminal activities, including child abuse, and we also introduced the poison case but, ooops, you folks decided to make the whole issue "are the GBC gurus or ritviks." That simply took most of the life out of our "criminal" case since the real issue is, should criminals be in charge of ISKCON? You guys also could have started your own child molesting case in India because there were many victims from there as well, and you could have brought down the house of Tamal in the process.

Nope, you folks decided to strip out the criminal complaint issue and make this a sort of obscure ritvk vs regular guru issue, which is incomprehensible even to most of the devotees of ISKCON, never mind the courts. I was also just a little bit appalled that despite we had smoking gun evidence of abuse in India, you folks did not want to save even one past, current or future victim from victimization over there by launching a criminal complaint against the perp's regime over there. Had you folks made a lawsuit about this issue there, we could have had hundreds of victims join a class action and shut down the evil empire, and maybe even get some of them jailed. Nope, you folks wanted to preserve the evil empire and its henchmen, and attack -- us.

So now we had weak tea, no real good weapons to go after the bad guys. And the results were predictable: Adridharana was railroaded into hiding; Some poor guy committed suicide in the Calcutta jail because you folks had no way to defend him; A USA devotee has to stay in India basically forever because his passport was confiscated;  Calcutta temple was over taken by JPS's goondas with knives and choppers, and so on and so forth. And your team really could not counter any of this attack because, your idea had only come up with a weak tea case against the bad guys, and because the case was weakened its been essentially almost a stalemate ever since.

And so -- that has been the trouble ever since, the case went on for years because we did not make a clear issue, that these guys are criminals. Never mind you folks could have brought the evil house down on just one issue, by starting a child abuse case. That itself would have put some of their top tier guys in trouble -- and maybe jail. But nope, we had to be nice guys.

I really cannot detail herein some of the crimes that were going on to minors, but suffice it to say, many were saved from terrible mistreatment by our having them pulled out of their abusive situations. The lawsuit forced many (or most) of the parents to agree with us that there was a problem, and follow our advice to pull their kids out of danger. 

We sort of made them take action to get their children free from some of these places, because now they would look foolish to keep their kids in there. Hardly no one else thought there was even a big problem with this? And you folks apparently think -- not only there was not a big problem, the abusive situation should not even have been checked or reigned in? Sulochana said this is like -- putting children into a wood chipper, that is the entire plan, to continue placing children in victimization?

And that is why some people have asked me, "Is it the tea and crumpets over there in England"? We find it rather odd that our main critics on saving ISKCON's children are Krishna Kanta Desai, Prahlad das, Mukunda das, and to some extent Kamsahanta das, all from England. 

Isn't that where Jimmy Savile was molesting over a hundred kids, and apparently many people knew about it, but no one spoke up for years and years together because they "did not want to make waves"? That seems to be your guys pro-forma solution for this problem, lets not care about it, lets squash the protest of this program, and hope it disappears. Sorry, that makes you folks look like you are in bed with Jimmy Savile's agenda?

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2970049/Abuse-grand-scale-Jimmy-Savile-raped-sexually-assaulted-victims-aged-5-75-41-NHS-hospitals-including-60-Stoke-Mandeville-24-year-reign-abuse.html

Isn't the UK where a small city had 1,400 children being trafficked, raped and severely mistreated, and despite many people knew, they did not want to say anything? What is it with this program anyway? And the lack of action did not help in the long run anyway. 

These programs all had to be taken down later on, and the policy of sweeping it all under the rug did not solve the issue, it only made the issue worse when it eventually exploded in everyone's faces later on. And that would have happened to us too, it all would have come out later anyway, but worse. This is why "sweeping the garbage under the carpet" -- is only a very short term solution and it always makes the long range problem worse. 

And sweeping it under the carpet makes the impression YOU FOLKS DO NOT CARE ABOUT CHILDREN BEING ABUSED. Then again, you folks do not care that the guru said he was being poisoned either, your club members all opposed me when we came out with this issue? You folks also told me not to bother with the changed books issue, so lets just keep sweeping under the rug ....

So to sum, yes agreed, the child abuse issue was a bad thing for ISKCON, but by that time the ISKCON house had already been burnt to toast. Now we are bad guys for breaking down the smoking door of the burning house -- to save the children burning inside the house? One thing we hear a lot is, we never see your guys ever discuss the suicides, the ongoing abuses, the concocted marriages, -- never mind what was your guys plan to contain these problems? OK you guys never had a plan or we would have seen it since 1995 when this issue all started to manifest publicly?

To sum up, it is our feeling that all of these issues are inter-connected.

(A) The bogus guru program is connected to the poison issue.
(B) The poison issue is connected to the criminality issue.
(C) The criminality issue is connected to the exploiting of women and children issue.
(D) The sexual predator issue has been protected by the above agenda.
(E) The banning, beating, molesting and suing of devotees issue is part of the above agenda.
(F) The books changes issue is part of the above agenda.
(G) Voting in gurus is part of the ecclesiastical Gaudiya Matha program, which also had a poison issue, self appointed guru issue, sexual predator guru issue, homosexual guru issue, etc.

... and so on and so forth.

Anyway that is our basic side of the story. As for your idea that we are not helping with any lawsuit to correct all this, that makes no sense, the July 9th letter, the will, the DOM, the 1977 conversations, and in sum all the documents that have been used in court, were found on our early printed newsletters and later on our web sites, sometimes decades before they were posted elsewhere. 

I am hoping we can eventually start to dialogue and work more closely on all these issues because, all these issues are here to stay. There will always be persons trying to infiltrate our religion and make it into a criminal program, and / or make false gurus, criminal gurus, sexual predator gurus and so forth. 

And ISKCON / Krishna devotees will be judged by how they deal with these issues going forward, but unfortunately, we have already been judged collectively for the worse, for not being very efficient in dealing with these issues post-1977. We will have to change that perception if we want ISKCON to become recognized as a bona fide institution, and if we want to give our actual members actual protection from criminals and abusers infiltering the religion. 

And if we are perceived as not offering protection to women, children, brahmanas and cows, and we do not even care if our guru complained he was being poisoned, we will never be taken seriously by the mass of people. And if fools sitting in a vyasa is not a big issue, mass molesting is not a big issue, women being exploited is not a big issue, changed books is not a big issue, our guru complaining he is being poisoned is not a big issue, us dissenters getting shot is not a big issue, then what does it take to make a big issue for you folks?

ys pd