Back To Prabhupada, Issue 2, Winter 2003/4
October 17th, 2003 marked a significant landmark in ISKCON history, as the ISKCON Revival Movement (IRM) was invited to present its case to the annual meeting of the American Family Foundation (AFF), the world's leading anti-cult organisation.
The IRM's Krishnakant, the author of the famous book The Final Order, was invited to open the proceedings. Over the half-hour allotted to him he delivered a devastating Powerpoint presentation entitled "The Great Guru Hoax: Why ISKCON Is Still A Cult", which was projected on to a large screen. His lecture was both dynamic and comprehensive, and he systematically showed how the GBC-Guru cartel has misappropriated power by defying the directives of ISKCON Founder Srila Prabhupada, installed unqualified leaders, censored critical thinking through intimidation and violence, and thereby turned post-1977 ISKCON into a 'cult', using the AFF's own definitions in that regard.
Krishnakant began with a synopsis of how the bogus, unauthorised Guru system came to exist within ISKCON in the first place (a summary of which appears in the first issue of this magazine). After explaining the history of this unauthorised Guru system, the presentation showed point-by-point how ISKCON continues to use cult tactics to maintain control over ISKCON members. The AFF has a checklist of points to determine whether an organization is a destructive cult, such as 'Leaders are self-appointed', and 'Questioning, doubt and dissent are discouraged or even punished'; and Krishnakant proved using documented evidence how the activities of the present day bogus Gurus fits every one of these characteristics!
He then supplied evidence of the GBC's tactics of thought and speech control, a common cult tactic of psychological intimidation. One particularly chilling example was a letter sent by an ISKCON Guru which stated that one was not allowed to worship Srila Prabhupada as the real Guru of ISKCON even in one's own home, lest they be physically removed by the police the next time they show up at the temple! An even darker side of the GBC-Guru mafia was shown with an internal GBC memo which supported self-confessed child abuser Dhanurdhara Swami.
Next, the GBC's deception over whether they were appointed as Gurus or not was demonstrated with an array of contradictory and self-contradictory quotes.
There then followed an illustration of the censorship employed by the GBC on the reading and distribution of IRM literature - a control of freedom of thought and speech much disdained by academics and anti-cultists alike. The absurd nature of this censorship was highlighted by the fact that the very paper the GBC itself commissioned to be written on the ritvik issue in the first place - The Final Order - is now banned from all ISKCON outlets. This situation becomes doubly absurd when you take into account that one of ISKCON's own leading academic advisors, Professor Kim Knott, recommended in her Foreword to The Final Order that it should be "read carefully and discussed widely"!
Krishnakant then concluded by summarising the IRM's mission and by reiterating that Srila Prabhupada is the real Guru of ISKCON, and by laying down a challenge to the GBC to allow IRM papers to be published freely in ISKCON.
After the IRM's powerful presentation, everyone was waiting eagerly to see how ISKCON's Director of Communications, Anuttama Das, would respond. Unsurprisingly, Anuttama's talk paled into oblivion.
He did not even try to rebut any of the arguments or evidence presented by Krishnakant, neither did he try to defend ISKCON's unauthorised Guru system. Instead, he made a rather canned presentation trying to legitimise the current ISKCON structure, but all he succeeded in doing was proving that ISKCON under the current GBC-Guru system is in meltdown.
At the end of the presentations, the arrival of Back To Prabhupada magazine was announced, and the delegates eagerly snapped up a copy each, with no magazines left at the end! The academics and anti-cult professionals at the conference greatly appreciated the IRM presentation and had some very interesting questions. One of the delegates asked: "I don't see what's wrong with going back to the original system. Why is that so unorthodox?" So just by this one question we can see that even ISKCON outsiders can easily understand what a great hoax was foisted on the movement after Srila Prabhupada's departure.
View the IRM slideshow (Powerpoint) at: www.iskconirm.com/AFF.zip
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