SRD: The GBC Commissions an Inquiry into the Vrindavana and Mayapur Gurukula
“Keep them in the dark and feed them manure”.
Bhagavan das (ACBSP)
An English Prabhupada disciple told me that on one occasion Bhagavan explained to him what he called the 'mushroom management philosophy'. How do you grow mushrooms? Keep them in the dark and feed them manure!
This sentence encapsulates all the contempt and disrespect that ISKCON leaders have repeatedly demonstrated for the 'peasant, commoner devotees'.
There is something particularly demonic about child abuse, it is a violent rakshasa practice that forcefully robs defenseless children of their innocence. When the abuse takes place in a religious / spiritual setting, then it also destroys the child's faith in God and humanity and too often turns the child itself into a perpetrator.
When the abuse is facilitated or enabled by the actions or inaction of people who occupy positions of spiritual authority, then such acts will destroy the faith of the congregation. Child abuse is the perfect vehicle to advance the agenda of Kaliyuga!
Twisting and misusing the scriptures to try and present such activities or people as being even remotely saintly is the work of the devil, and demonstrates the extent of the bewilderment of the leadership!
In the recent Istagosthi in Mayapur, HH Jayapataka Swami (JPS) announced the introduction of a zero tolerance policy for child abuse in Mayapur Dham!
We have just learned from Dhiragovinda Prabhu that he personally informed JPS about the severe abuse suffered by the children in Mayapur in the late 90s, we also know that JPS was aware of the 1991 investigation report.
The best time to implement this policy would have been 50 years ago, the next best time is today, so in that sense this is good news.
The problem of course is that we've just seen documents from 1991, that describe how already -- way back then -- the GBCs and Temple Presidents had agreed to implement a zero tolerance policy for child abuse in ISKCON. Promises are only good if followed by decisive action, otherwise they are simply a cosmetic fix that may achieve some damage control and crowd pleasing, but won't actually address the root of the problem!
Cosmetic fixes are deeply problematic because they enable the perpetuation of the problem. They offer a deceptive assurance that something meaningful has been done, without actually addressing the root of the issue. Naturally you cannot have zero tolerance with exceptions and preferential treatments for high profile offenders.
I do not believe I will ever understand the rationale that goes into offering a greater degree of protection to the perpetrators of child abuse than to their victims. But this has often been the norm we have witnessed with so many high profile ISKCON offenders.
The list of ISKCON leaders that have known about the abuse perpetrated by AV includes many senior leaders of ISKCON...
The following is not a complete list:
Banu Swami, Prahladananda Swami, Bhaktivikash Swami, Jaya Pataka Swami, Badrinarayana Swami, Sivaram Swami, Indradyumna Swami, Bir Krishna Maharaj, BB Govinda Maharaj, Kavichandra Swami, Tamal Krishna Maharaj, Radhanath Swami, Nareshvara, Dayaram, Bhakti Purushottam Swami, Sesa, Dhanurdara, Bhurijan, Braja Bihari (Vraja Vihari), Romapad Swami and many others. Bear in mind that the 1991 report on the Mayapur Gurukula was sent to the entire GBC body.
During the recent Istagosthi in Mayapur the names of Bhavananda and Satadhanya were brought up. In spite their track record of child abuse in Mayapur Dham itself, they still occupy positions of honor and respect. JPS replied that they are working in the TOVP and that has nothing to do with Mayapur management. He invited concerned devotees to take the matter up with Ambarish. I understand that this is a VERY delicate topic, but the reply given by Maharaj was unsatisfactory at best. Essentially he avoided addressing the elephant in the room!
[PADA: Why hasn't JPS taken this up with Amburish 40 years ago?]
This attempt to separate the TOVP from ISKCON Mayapur Dham is disingenuous at best. Though they may be managerially separate, it is obvious to anyone that the TOVP is an integral part of ISKCON Mayapur.
[PADA: Correct, the TOVP is advertised all over ISKCON as an ISKCON project. To say the TOVP and ISKCON are separate entities is false. JPS already knows that. In Los Angeles not only the TOVP but Jayapataka himself are advertised there, and anyone who opposes is kicked out the door by Svavasa's pedophile messiah's club's goondas.]
The point is not to start a lynch mob that will go and drag Bhavananda and Satadhanya out into the streets with tar and feathers.
[PADA: That would not help because all their sycophants and enablers would remain.]
What is important is that the Mayapur community has an open and honest conversation to establish clearly, what, where and how much engagement, service and fanfare, they are comfortable and happy to offer to devotees with a history of child abuse. This includes Laxmimoni, Bhavananda, Satadhanya and many others.
Is it acceptable to the devotee community that they are treated as honored guests at ISKCON functions and events? This needs to be well thought out and discussed. When there are clear boundaries, it is easier to understand when a line gets crossed.
Recently allegations of sexual abuse of children and young men perpetrated by Bhakti Purushottam Swami (BPS) have re-surfaced, these allegations have been around for many years. He was also accused of participating in the theft of several million dollars from the ISKCON project in Habibpur.
With the Lokanath case the GBC established the precedent that they will compromise principles and purity when faced with sufficient pressure and threats ... when they deem it politically expedient to do so!
Is there any hope that we will see JPS commission a transparent and thorough investigation of the allegations of financial and sexual abuse against BPS and in Mayapur in general? A transparent inquiry into the accounts of the TOVP? Are we going to see another rigged ad-hock panel intended to absolve BPS a-priori as was the case with Lokanath?
The GBC made an exception for Lokanath, why not for BPS? If a riot is what is needed for the GBCs to cower and bend the rules, I promise you that BPS and the local gangsters will deliver you the biggest riot ISKCON has ever seen!
The Vrindavana Gurukula has been directly under the supervision of Gopal Krishna Maharaj since 2008. There have been dozens and dozens of reports of severe child abuse that have come out of that school since he took over. In 2017 presented with extensive evidence of the abuse, the entire GBC body voted to keep the school open, and with the same management!!!
Very recently I was informed that the children in the school continue to get abused and that they have access to pornography. When I released the Cost of Silence, I pointed out that unless ISKCON drastically improves the protection of children in ISKCON boarding schools, the only responsible thing to do is to shut them down.
It is time to find the honesty and courage to acknowledge that the benefits of having these boarding schools open does not justify the tremendous cost in the human lives of our children. At this point I really think that keeping them open is intentionally reckless! Who exactly benefits from these schools?
Surely not the abused children! Certainly not ISKCON, so why and for whom exactly is ISKCON sacrificing all these children? Devotees from around the world wrote public letters to express their concerns and disappointment that Lokanath, though found guilty of child abuse by the GBCs, was allowed to continue to serve as a Sannyasi and authority in ISKCON. Some of these devotees received threatening and intimidating calls to their family members by some of Lokanath's thug followers.
It is reasonable to assume that on account of the recent activism, the physical safety of some of us will be at risk, this is certainly true the next time we visit Vrindavana or Mayapur!
We have to ask ourselves if this is the society we want to live in ... Because this culture of abuse and intimidation is very much a part of ISKCON today and if we do nothing we are directly enabling the perpetuation of this culture.
Just to add to the insanity, there is a flier going around that advertises a youth camp in Pune for the end of 2022 with Lokanath and Gopal Krishna Maharaj as guest speakers! How does any sane and informed person think that they are even remotely qualified to have anything to do with children???
In the last couple of weeks three women have publicly come forward to accuse Keshava Bharati Maharaj of sexually abusing them, one of them was 10 years old at the time! In the recent official statement on AV, the GBC Executive committee sent thoughts and prayers to the victims, but again they made no mention of any decisive actions they intend to take to overhaul child protection...
Abusers are not the problem, they are simply the tip of the iceberg that is the rot that has affected ISKCON's leadership at the very core. As much as getting rid of AV was of paramount importance, removing him is only the beginning of the cleansing that ISKCON desperately needs.
The greater problem is a society where its leaders and members look the other way when children are being abused! What will it take to create an environment where abusive practices cannot thrive? In recent times we have seen a surge in interest in child protection and an outrage at the revelations that followed AV's removal from Mayapur.
Devotees are shocked to discover that so many leaders quietly and knowingly enabled the abuse of so many children! Leaders are running for cover, with most preferring to remain silent, rather than risking to face the understandable bewilderment and wrath of their disciples, hoping and waiting for the storm to blow over.
In this time of unprecedented crisis their silence is deafening and their lack of leadership is conspicuous by its absence and very telling of their own character! If you wait long enough, every storm eventually subsides and things can then go back to 'normal'...
Naturally more of the same 'normal' is not exactly something desirable and beneficial. ISKCON is facing a spiritual and moral crisis of biblical proportions, today more than ever, it is evident that the leadership has neither purity nor bearings.
ISKCON leaders have been busy pursuing and accumulating all the material things that Lord Chaitanya instructed us to avoid. Many have come to value prestige over humility, appearances over the essence, quantity over quality, power, control and money over purity, fancy mantras and straw huts over the precious lives of so many devotee children...
Can ISKCON continue to be relevant as an effective vehicle to transmit the living teachings of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu when so many leaders are ostentatiously materialistic? The Mayapur residents are terrified of the local 'devotees' from the land department, some of these guys are real life gangsters!
They have attacked and threaten those who have challenged their corruption and thievery. A couple of years back (2020?) some photos were circulated on the internet of one of these guys murdered with a volley of bullets. It was something you'd expect to see in a wild west movie!
Another young man died in Mayapur under suspicious circumstances around 2016, he was working for Sadbhuj with the TOVP petty cash department. He was found dead in his room on the roof of the Gadha building, he had a head injury and burns in the lower part of his body. The very next day, the police declared it a fire accident and cremated the body without an autopsy.
A few years back a young Russian Kuli died of a drug overdose near the Ganga. The truth is that a comprehensive investigation of the child abuse and the crimes that have taken place in ISKCON in the last 20 years alone, would make the crimes of New Vrindavana look minor...
Mayapur alone has all the elements of a lawless criminal environment! Child abuse, lots of money and power, an authoritarian regime and violent suppression of those who speak out!
Tackling the heart of the problem, this pervasive corruption, is daunting, it appears impossible, at the same time, however difficult it may be, NOT tackling it will likely result in an increasingly higher degree of degradation and suffering for everyone involved.
As it stands there is a lot of rot in the foundations! There is a need for the leadership to find the courage to come clean and let the chips fall where they will.
ISKCON devotees deserve and need an honest and true account of what has happened. From the ashes it may be possible to build something authentic, on solid foundations. However painful and devastating it will be, it is still better than continuing to live a lie!
It is both poetic and significant that Mahaprabhu has chosen to start by shining the light on the horrendous abuse of the Vaishnava children in Sri Mayapur Dham, His sacred birthplace, at the very heart of ISKCON's headquarters.
His will is unstoppable, the only choice we have is to decide whether we want to grab this opportunity to cleanse our heart of all the dishonesty and anarthas or if we want to continue deceiving ourselves. Each one of us has the responsibility to shape the society we live in.
The GBC just announced that they have commissioned an Inquiry into the Mayapur and Vrindavana Gurukula, headed by Navin Krishna prabhu from London. It appears that they are intending to carry out a 'confidential Inquiry'. Meaning that they are hoping to keep the devotees in the dark of whatever details they do not wish to disclose.
There are a number of problems.
Navin Krishna is a nice and capable devotee, he has done an amazing job with the Krishna Avanti schools, but he is very much a company man! He is not an investigator, what are his qualifications to carry out this Inquiry?
He is certainly not a gun slinger, which is what will be required of whomever hopes to carry out an adequate investigation in Mayapur!
This suggested Inquiry lead by Navin Krishna looks too much like a band-aid to try and plug a dam, it looks an awful lot like the rigged ad-hock panel the GBC set up to make the 'Lokanath problem go away'.
It's a cosmetic fix, more of the 'Keep them in the dark and feed them manure' philosophy! An Inquiry headed by someone like Navin Krishna simply does not offer the necessary assurance of transparency and independence that ISKCON needs right now!
These two gurukulas, though very problematic, they are simply the tip of the iceberg of ISKCON's corruption and child abuse problems. In Mayapur alone there are all manners of problems that need to be addressed.
ISKCON does not even have an up to date number of all its affiliated schools and gurukulas worldwide, let alone know what is happening to all those children! In Russia, recently the police shut down a devotee school and arrested the principal for child sexual abuse. I just spoke to a friend in India who told me of recent allegations of child abuse in Bangladesh. These are by far the most horrific accounts of child abuse I have ever come across! The perpetrators are senior disciples of JPS and he is aware of the problem, but... he isn't fixing it!
It is incredibly naive or dishonest to think that the same system/method that has failed and enabled abuse for the last 50 years can now magically fix itself! A bit of money, another committee or a new resolution are just not going to cut it!
What is required is a Public Inquiry into the child abuse, crimes and corruption that have taken place in ISKCON worldwide. Governments commission Public Inquiries when there is a catastrophic system failure. As the name suggests, such inquiries are public, devotees would be able to participate and submit evidence, but also the findings are made public.
Understanding and acknowledging the extent of the problem is the first necessary step to finding solutions. If we have learned anything from the last 50 years, it is that minimizing and covering up problems does not solve them, but rather enables their perpetuation. Some of the objectives of this Public inquiry would be to establish:
-What is the extent of the child abuse, corruption and criminality problem in ISKCON worldwide.
-What went wrong.
-Who is responsible.
-What measures need to be put in place to ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated.
After this ISKCON will probably need something similar to a large scale Truth and Reconciliation operation
Such Inquiry would only be possible and effective if it was completely and visibly independent of the GBC. It would require a very large budged and both devotee and non devotee professionals, who are suitably qualified for the job and whose reputation is unquestioned and impeccable!
If such Public Inquiry will require 1 million dollars, it would be money very well spent, if it helps stamp out the rot and corruption that has been eating at the core of ISKCON's leadership.
This is a decisive moment, if the GBCs do not take substantive and direct action to address this cancer that has been eating away at the purity of Srila Prabhupada's institution, there will be nothing left to save, ISKCON will become just another one of those dead religious organization that Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur warned us against!
Unless these recent events somehow motivate a fundamental change both individually and socially, a shift in consciousness if you will, to create an environment that is not abuse friendly, then all of this uproar will eventually fizzle out and nothing will actually change.
[PADA: Here is the first problem. The GBC already has made fifty + different "committees" on all sorts of issues, but if you look at the names on all the different committees, it is the mostly the same maybe 35 guys wearing different hats. The guy on the Sannyasa Ministry is the same guy on the Guru Ministry who also is on the same guy on the Health and Welfare Ministry and so on.
The same maybe 35 guys have just been switching hats for 40 years. And they only allow a few second tier folks to participate if they are "yes men" for the core group. That is why nothing substantial gets done in 40 years, there is no new blood and its the same core cadre. And even the people who "resign" like Hrdayananda, Satsvarupa, Ravindra Swarupa and others are still manipulating things from the sidelines.
The core cadre has resisted any substantial changes in 40 years and they are always making some window dressing "new committee" which nearly never comes to positive fruition. This is their standard "new rabbit out of the hat" trick, but it is the same rabbit being recycled.
We just need to continue to expose these people and cut off their resources and ability to accumulate manpower, and convert their manpower over to support us and our cause, that is the best option. And that is happening de facto in any event.
They are losing this battle because, abusing children or even allowing and enabling child abuse is the lowest crime even among criminals in jail. The ISKCON leaders cannot win this one and they are starting to realize that gradually. They are being viewed as the lowest of the lowest of criminals, and therefore their status as gurus and spiritual leaders is being lost and dismantled every day, and it will only get worse for them.
ys pd angel108b@yahoo.com]
PADA: I doubt the GBC will allow anyone to say "criminal child abuse and neglect has been orchestrated here, and this is a list of the people who participated in it, orchestrated it, enabled it, apologized for it, covered for it, and suppressed dissenters who exposed it." My lawyer friend said would be direct or de facto admission to a criminal act, and if we are expecting that to happen, we are dreaming in color. Of course sometimes dreams do come true, but not always. I don't think people realize how severe it could be -- legally -- if they just admit to the facts. They are always consulting a bank of lawyers and they have been coached on what they can and cannot say already IMHO. ys pd
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