Ladies Site Protesting ISKCON's Misogyny Leaders

[PADA: Yep, more and more people are protesting various things all over the world at the moment, and it looks like ISKCON is part of that process. More women from ISKCON are starting to challenge "the powers that be." Hey, you are alienating half the world population (the women). 

And one of the former ISKCON scholars who left way back in 1983 told me -- ISKCON is suffering from a "brahmana brain drain" of the intelligent scholarly male devotees, and a women drain from exploiting the women. Srila Prabhupada wanted the women to be included, not excluded. And that is simply not being done on any realistic scale.

Thus! Women should be more empowered in ISKCON! OK sign us up. Ooops! But they cannot be "empowered" to be another sin-absorbing Jesus - like diksha guru. Not going to work!

Don't let people touch our feet or!

We will be absorbing karma from them!

And! We will have to suffer. 

OK, applies equally to women.

For example, one lady started a forum to address the GBC / Basu Ghosh / Bhakti Vikas swami / India ICC Bureau / Lokanath program that says -- a chain of God's guru successors from Vaikuntha contains: -- illicit sex with men, women, children, and maybe cats; drug addicts; alcoholics; mad fools like Satsvarupa who says "the more I chant the drier it gets" etc. 

Wonderful successors to God they hand selected here! They forgot to select my  cat lady neighbor as one of their messiahs, because she is not going to be having illicit sex and drugs in her house, nor would she ever worship an illicit sex guru parampara! Therefore, she does not qualify to be among their successors!

And thus, this poor ex-ISKCON lady who has been "dissenting against the BVKS / ICC / GBC pedophile worship regime" -- right away got a flurry of verbal assaults -- if not threats -- from the BVKS / ICC / Basu Ghosh / GBC pedophile guru lover's cabal. 

Worse, the India ICC folks said that us bogus Western Mlecchas are not qualified to attack their anal sex epidemic guru sampradaya -- because we Western folks worship pure devotees -- like Jesus. Pedophile's parampara worship = bona fide -- pure devotee's worship = bogus. Who knew! 

We cannot have people worshiping pure devotees, because -- that is a deviation. Worship of pedophiles is the actual standard of the VEDAS. WTF? The GBC / ICC folks want people to worship their parampara of drunks, drug addicts, sexual predators and / or pedophiles as their messiahs, and not worship pure devotees, and this is the ICC scholar's sector?  

And therefore, we have to offer our food to their illicit sex deviants, so we will become contaminated with their illicit sex and child molester sympathy "beeja." And all sorts of people will be getting cancer and other fatal ailments from eating that contaminated bhogha. One of our friends at Alachua says, when they find out someone there is sick in the hospital, the first thing they suspect is -- cancer. And quite a lot of the time, fatal levels. 

Have to admit! So far it has worked out pretty good for the molester messiah's project. They got thousands of people banned, several thousand kids molested, some folks beaten, some assassinated, big lawsuits, bad publicity etc. And they even got most of the temples emptied out, bankrupted and simultaneously started a cancer epidemic. And that is what they call "preaching in good standing."

Well, hee hee, maybe not! Anyway! Women's voices should be more included in the management of ISKCON. For example: more women in the gurukula process probably would have avoided most or all the pedophile problems going on left, right and center. The women were complaining about this mess, and they were largely ignored. 

Sulochan said the GBC are "anti-women, children and family, but pro-homosexual and pedophile." Sums it up eh what? 

OK so they are not only anti-women, they are pro-deviation. The biggest surprises from our police, FBI, media and courts contacts is -- what has taken such a long time? For example, where child abuse is found in a "karmi" child's day care, there are shortly afterwards -- angry parents outside protesting, lawsuits, police reports, contacts with the media etc. In ISKCON? Sounds of crickets. Dead silent. No protest to be found? Even karmi women get out there and protests, so for the ISKCON ladies to be protesting at this late stage is good -- but a day late, or decades late, and $500 dollars short.  

In any case, here are some more ladies who have had it up to here with the bogus GBC leaders. There seems to be an ever growing protest of these guys, albeit a little late in the game to have saved some of the victims, but better late than never. ys pd 

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Petition · Denuncia líder espiritual misógino de ISKCON · Change.org

Denunciation Ragunatha Swami started this petition to GBC. ISKCON Governing Body Commission. 

As a society we are going through historical moments of social discontent, not only in the Krishna Consciousness movement, but also in the general society.

Emergingly in recent years and from different parts of the planet, as if it were a butterfly effect, a large number of girls and devout women have denounced different types of gender violence, abuse, mistreatment and rape within the ISKCON community, by some so-called devotees and / or leaders of the Institution. For many years their voices were silenced or ignored, without getting the proper protection they deserved.

Adding to this international context of violence against women, we recently find the case of Afghanistan, a country that has been taken over by Taliban fundamentalists. In recent days, thanks to the mass media, we have been learning about the bases and aberrant religious laws of discrimination against thousands of women and girls living in that country and in response to these facts, the international community is raising its voice repudiating these misogynistic actions and ideologies.

Thus, within the framework of these social exaltations, finally the devout women of the spiritual family of Srila Prabhupada (ISKCON) we find ourselves twinned to raise our claims, elaborating this letter; where we express our pain and shame from others, listening to a video posted on YouTube[1] three weeks ago, in which Ragunatha Swami at the bottom of the video clearly presents the acronym of ISKCON.

In this video, Ragunatha S. expresses an absolute rejection of the leadership and performance of roles and functions of the devout woman within ISKCON, as well as an absolute misuse of the scriptures cited by him. These quotes are taken out of context and devoid of the deep reflection that these texts deserve, exposing the image of ISKCON to people outside the movement and disposing of its position to promote political debates, when talking about the distribution of power and the internal administration of ISKCON, which has nothing to do with its work as a spiritual guide. As an example we reproduce verbatim some of his statements:

"Diksa guru women, temple commanders, women presidents, GBC women, this plague appeared after the departure of Srila Prabhupada, unfortunately our current discernment seems to be below a canistha level. Our scholars, the most well-versed, have been arguing for more than 15 years to decipher whether women are inferior to men or not. they are vaishnavis, they have distributed so many books, we are going to vote, we put them as diksa gurus, yes or no, and they voted as the monkey, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.''

Clearly, it is not our intention to discuss in this letter the scriptures to extract concepts and quotations convenient to the rights, roles and prestige of the devout woman within ISKCON, or even to use resources of hermeneutics, since on countless occasions deep and contextualized reflections have been made on these issues and that are also public knowledge. [2]

"Women in ISKCON in the time of Srila Prabhupada" where he mentions all these misinterpretations about women and explained with the same writings of Srila Prabhupada the reason for them. A brief analysis of Srila Prabhupada's claims reveals that he did not consider his disciples less intelligent or less capable than his disciples."[3]

Those who confuse invariable principles with varying details distort our philosophy and threaten ISKCON with irrelevance and failure. Prabhupada himself often enunciates these principles of preservation and adaptation:

"I have to make arrangements according to the country, according to the circumstances, as far as possible. ... So we have to adopt deśa-kāla-pātra... But we keep our principles as they are, but we make arrangements according to the circumstances. That's mandatory." [4]

"ISKCON should welcome any qualified devout person to serve as a guru, without imposing a bodily test in terms of ethnicity, nationality or gender. Lord Caitanya personally declared, "Whoever knows the science of Krishna is a guru."[5]

Prabhupada himself quoted this verse when he insisted that women can be gurus in the parampara. On June 18, 1976, Professor Joseph O'Connell of the University of Toronto asked Prabhupada:

"Is it possible, Swamiji, for a woman to be a guru in the disciplic line of succession?" Prabhupada replied:

"Yes. ... man or woman... Yei kṛṣṇa-tattva-vettā sei guru haya. The guru's qualification is that he must fully know the science of Kṛṣṇa. Then he or she can become a guru. Yei kṛṣṇa-tattva-vettā, sei guru haya. In the material world, is there any prohibition that a woman cannot become a teacher? If she is qualified, she can become a teacher. What's going on there? She must be qualified. That's the position. Similarly, if a woman perfectly understands Krishna consciousness, she can become a guru." [6]

To our regret, Swami Ragunatha does nothing but directly offend half of the people who take shelter in ISKCON, that is, the women, with his anachronistic, violent and misogynistic sayings:

"The real story is very different. From about 1972 to 1988, women remained virtually silent about the roles assigned to them and how they were treated. At that time, the men leaders of ISKCON cornered them to be located in the back of the temples, prevented them from teaching, leading kirtans, singing japa in the temple, doing service in administrative activities, they gave them less housing facilities or directly did not give them ashramas, they took out the pujari service, such as offering the arati during a ceremony as crowded as the mangala-arati, and implemented other social and devotional restrictions.

For more than a decade, women followed with kindness, humility and dedication the dictates and commands that our brothers imposed on us, even though often those rules were completely opposite to the guidance and example of Srila Prabhupada."

"Women leave ISKCON and we are surprised. To paraphrase Srila Prabhupada, we should better be surprised at the women who stay."[7]

Ragunatha Swami's statements are far from representing the Modality and Mission of our spiritual leader Srila Prabhupada. On the contrary, his unfortunate sayings place us in a similar way to Islamic fundamentalism, so strongly rejected socially.

Swami Ragunatha, with his opinion, logically does not represent the majority of ISKCON members, so we respectfully but urgently request an intervention from the GBC and its local leaders, so that Swami Ragunatha refrains from teaching in our communities, as well as councils and directives as a representative of ISKCON.

In addition to the above, it is also just and necessary a public and open apology from this devotee, to the GBC body, to the devoted disciples of Srila Prabhupada who openly offends, as well as to the entire community of girls and devout women and devout people in general, who have massively expressed their total repudiation of the misused quotes and without any reflection, presented in that video.

Looking forward to your prompt actions with the purpose of prosecuting and inviting to reflection this devotee on the path of Krishna Consciousness, so that he may live in peace and respect for ISKCON as an Institution, which lovingly watches over success in his spiritual life, and also towards this great family of Srila Prabhupada, that constitutes its global community, made up of women and men, all of good will, who day by day, are sincerely struggling to transcend all the material conditioning of ethnicity, color and gender, recognizing ourselves as eternal spiritual souls, under the protection of the loving care and guidance of Parampara and Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu.

We thank you in advance for your attention, willingness and collaboration, as well as a prompt response.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3AEt7gJLZM
[2] https://www.hdgoswami.com/entendiendo-prabhupada/
[3] Article presented by Jyotirmayi in the conference "Vaishnavis at ISKCON", held in Marina Del Rey, California, from December 5 to 7, 1997. Available from the Women's Ministry of North America.
[4] Srimad Bhagavatam Conference 1.2.10 - Delhi, 16 November 1973.
[5] [CC 2.8.128]
[6] [BTG 33-02 1999]
[7] http://vaishnaviministry.org/introduccion/