Back To Prabhupada, Issue 29, Autumn 2010
Unable to rebut the contents of BTP, many have instead tried to minimise BTP in different ways. We are told that it is "just one magazine", and therefore of no consequence. Or that no one reads it. Or that even if it is read, it has no effect. Typical of these comments are the following by ISKCON Governing Body Commissioner, and GBC-elected guru hoaxer, HH Sivarama Swami ("SRS"), who stated the following in response to the IRM launching the Hungarian BTP in Hungary:
"No one takes them seriously. […] There's no effect."
(SRS, "Ritvik Istagosthi", 17/7/2008)
Ironically, the statement was made in the context of SRS forbidding the devotees to read the magazine, and his organising for it to be collected back from everyone. Indeed, the following still from a video highlights the violent response of SRS's henchmen at the Budapest Rathayatra festival this year, as they tried to suppress the distribution of BTP through death threats and force:
The video itself can be viewed simply by visiting the IRM homepage. As the video demonstrates, in addition to our distributors being attacked, they are threatened repeatedly by one of SRS's people that they will be "killed" if they try to ever distribute again. And similar scenes have been reported at other ISKCON festivals and temples, where efforts are always made to at least collect the BTPs back from the devotees if violence does not work in stopping us distributing.
These responses raise the obvious question of why so much effort is expended to suppress what is supposedly no more than one tiny little impotent and ineffectual magazine?
One reason which is given, is to stop the "innocent" devotees being "contaminated" and "confused", and that they are being protected for their own good. But why do ISKCON devotees need to be "protected" from what is supposedly a useless magazine which has no effect? If it has no effect, then there is nothing to fear.
The reality is that there are devotees who want to know the truth. They want to know what Srila Prabhupada's orders for ISKCON were. After all, they became attracted to ISKCON because of Srila Prabhupada and a desire to follow him. These devotees do need to be protected from the truth of Srila Prabhupada's orders as presented in BTP, if ISKCON wishes to hold on to them. For they will quickly see that ISKCON today is not adhering to Srila Prabhupada's orders in every sphere – besides the most important issue of guru-tattva (philosophical truths about the guru), they have also deviated into commercialisation, Hinduisation and secularisation. Once all those deviations are added up, there is hardly anything of spiritual substance left! This is why more and more ISKCON has to depend on the type of "devotee" who is not interested in the truth, but is driven by other motives. As GBC member and GBC-elected guru HH Bhakti Charu Swami ("BCS") remarked:
"many of our temples in the West are practically empty and just to maintain the temple activities devotees have to be imported from India and other less opulent countries."
(BCS, Q&A, 25/4/2008)
One of the main reasons people take shelter of Srila Prabhupada's teachings is because they wish to seek a pure alternative to the hypocrisy, double- standards, lies, censorship, cover-ups, cheating and ignorance displayed by society's materialistic leaders. Clearly, therefore, the last thing devotees expect is for ISKCON leaders to display exactly these same traits! Srila Prabhupada spoke of rascal gurus who mislead as follows:
"The whole situation has been spoiled by these so-called rascal gurus who gives his own opinion."
(Srila Prabhupada Lecture, 22/8/1973)
In ISKCON the whole situation has similarly been spoiled, because it also contains rascal gurus who are giving their own opinion. And this misleading is of the worst possible kind because it is claimed to be done in Srila Prabhupada's name. In the quote above, Srila Prabhupada continues on to say what should be done to combat such rascal gurus:
"This is our plain declaration: Let any rascal guru come. We can convince him that he is not guru, because he is speaking differently. We can challenge any rascal."
BTP and our other publications irrefutably document, by using the evidence of the words and actions of the rascal gurus themselves, that they are speaking differently than Srila Prabhupada. In this way, in line with Srila Prabhupada's order above, the IRM is making the same plain declaration, and challenging all these rascal gurus and proving they are not gurus at all.
No wonder, therefore, that they "fear us so".
Please feel free to write to me at the following address: irm@iskconirm.com.
Thank you and Hare Krishna.
Yours in the service of Srila Prabhupada,
Krishnakant