Back To Prabhupada, Issue 19, Spring 2008, Quotes, Notes & News
We had mentioned in BTP 16 how the IRM had been extensively profiled in an Encyclopaedia. Now another major academic book on the Hare Krishna Movement has also made reference to the IRM. Hare Krishna Transformed by Prof. E. Burke Rochford cites Back To Prabhupada and The Final Order a number of times as a reference source, and also states:
“The fragility of ISKCON’s institutions of authority offered various pro-change groups the political opportunity needed to push for change. Perhaps the most significant was the emergence of the ritvik movement, discussed in chapter 7, which has challenged the very legitimacy of ISKCON’s guru leadership (Desai et al. 2004; Rochford 1998b). […] A determined minority joined together to form an insurgent organization, the ISKCON Revival Movement, to restore what they considered the “true” ISKCON.”
The reference in brackets here is to the IRM position paper The No Change in ISKCON Paradigm, authored by the editor of BTP and published by Columbia University Press. Then in chapter 7, Prof. Rochford discusses the IRM in more detail noting:
“Estimates by the founder of the IRM suggest that “many hundreds” of devotees worldwide are active IRM supporters. Global interest, if not active support, is suggested by the readership of the IRM’s Back to Prabhupada magazine. In 2005, it had a reported circulation of ten thousand in more than one hundred countries.”
Another academic has commented on Back To Prabhupada being representative of those devotees who wish to stick to an orthodox representation of Srila Prabhupada’s teachings:
“There are also devotees who fear being swallowed up by mainstream Hinduism or secular humanism and who are concerned with strict authenticity of text and ritual. “Back to Prabhupada” is the battle cry of the disillusioned.”
(Professor Anna King, 40 Years of Chant and Change, 2007)
This is indeed accurate, for we are concerned very much that the strict authenticity of Srila Prabhupada’s teachings be maintained, in the face of the diluting forces of secularisation, Hinduisation and commercialisation with which ISKCON has become severely infected, as highlighted by BTP, issue after issue.
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