Goverdhana Das, the ‘Director of Communications, Budapest Temple, has written the letter below to the Hungarian devotees, regarding the magazine ‘Back To Prabhupada’, which was sent to all Hungarian devotees for their interest and education. He is telling everyone what they must think and do. Such ‘mind control’ techniques belong to totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, rather than a society which is supposed to make devotees ‘independently thoughtful’:
“Krishna Consciousness Movement is for training men to be independently thoughtful and competent in all types of departments of knowledge and action, not for making bureaucracy.”
(Letter to Karandhara, 22/12/72)
Clearly it is not possible for devotees to be ‘independently thoughtful and competent in all types of departments of knowledge’, when ISKCON’s national leadership in Hungary is telling them what they must think! If devotees are genuinely ‘disgusted’, they are free to say so. But not trusting devotees to have the intelligence to think for themselves, the national leadership has issued a diktat telling them what they are supposed to think and how they are supposed to react.
Thankfully the Hungarian devotees have resisted such mind-control techniques, with only a handful of devotees writing in this manner to us.
Dear Devotees!!
Please accept my humble obeiscances! all glories to Srila Prabhupada!
Since this ritvik postal and email campaign was organized by Braja, we ask you do to the following:
1. Write him an e-mail describing how disgusted and surprised you are, since he has gone to far with his audacity. So you all are free to express your dissatisfaction, there will be no aparadha.... Let him know that he shouldn’t send anything to your personal postal and email addresses in the future.
2. Undo him from your iwiw (The "hungarian myspace"), and remove him from any e-mail conference.
Thank you for your attention
your servant,
Govardhana das,
Director of Communications