Back To Prabhupada, Issue 33, Autumn 2011
s has been noted previously, the IRM has succeeded in influencing ISKCON to such an extent that the content of BTP is now increasingly featuring how more and more devotees in ISKCON, from the grassroots level to the
highest ranks, are agreeing with our views, rather than BTP having to defend and debate these views! Indeed, we have just read HH Bhakti Vikash Swami’s ringing endorsement of the same points BTP made regarding ISKCON’s
wholesale deviation. This seismic shift has continued to reach official representation as we reveal here. Dayarama Das (“DD”), is a member of ISKCON’s official legal governing body for India, the Indian Bureau, and is also the
Chairman of its legal committee. It was in this official capacity that he appeared on Indian television to represent ISKCON’s Indian leadership in a series of debates with ISKCON Bangalore Temple President Madhu Pandit Das (“MPD”). The excerpts below are taken from these debates and they reveal that not only does DD not agree with ISKCON’s guru system, but that instead he sympathises with the view of the guru system which was put forward by
MPD in a presentation MPD made to the GBC in 1999 (made jointly with the then ISKCON Calcutta Temple President Adridharana Das) - a presentation made due to having been convinced by The Final Order, which is the
IRM’s foundational document.
(The presentation itself was taken from an IRM paper called The No Change in ISKCON Paradigm – available here)
TV anchor: “So till ‘99 there was a big rebellion against these 11 people. So later you took the lead of this Bangalore ISKCON or what?”
MPD: “In 1999 for the first time, those who were having a reform movement within ISKCON, the literature created by them, The Final Order, came to me. I knew that all this was going on, but I had thought that these 11 people were appointed by Prabhupada. With that faith, we went along.”
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TV anchor: “Mr Dayarama Das, I’ll just ask you one question. Did he (MPD) make a presentation in which he questioned the gurus? Did he call them ‘bogus’?”
Dayarama Das: “I sympathise with him. He made some presentation, not to Bombay, to the international body, about the issue of guru. I sympathise with him personally, I sympathise with him on that issue, personally. […] I’m not supporting the gurus, neither I’m a guru, nor I’m the international body member, nor I support their system of gurus.
I’m also one of the vocal opponents of it.”
(29/5/2011, TV9 & News 9)
Thanks to the IRM, support for the guru hoax is crumbling everywhere. When the person selected to officially represent ISKCON India declares publicly on television that, not only does he not support ISKCON’s gurus (which
presumably includes his own guru hoaxer, Jayapataka Swami) or the ISKCON guru system, but rather is a vocal opponent of it, this is a sure sign that the guru hoax is finding it hard to get anyone to defend it!