by Bhakta Deepak
A certain Vijaya Kumar has advertised on the 'Hare Krishna Cultural Journal' that he has done a "point for point" rebuttal of “The Final Order” (TFO). I was curious to read it, since it is well-known that all previous attempts to rebut this paper have failed spectacularly, usually due to the papers not answering what TFO actually states, but instead answering phantom ‘straw man’ arguments. A quick perusal at the matrix of defeated challengers to the IRM on the IRM home-page will make this clear: www.iskconirm.com. The use of ‘straw man’ arguments, is a commonly used technique when one is singularly unable to answer the actual arguments of an adversary. One instead answers arguments NOT stated by one’s adversary, because they CAN be answered, and then incorrectly attributes these answered arguments to one’s adversary. This is what the ‘straw man’ technique is. So I was naturally curious to see whether Mr Kumar’s attempt actually does rebut TFO point by point, or if it is too full of ‘straw man’ arguments. I wish to point out that I am no scholar or official representative of the IRM, just as Mr Kumar is no representative or scholar for the GBC. But I CAN read, and I do possess a copy of TFO, and this is the only skill one needs, in order to check if someone is using ‘straw man’ arguments. I shall present all quotes from Mr Kumar’s paper enclosed in parenthesis thus [ ].
Mr Kumar’s paper begins
in section 1 with him outlining what
he thinks “The Final Order advocates”. I say ‘thinks,’ because he does
not
actually quote TFO itself to show what it is TFO states. On reading
further one
understands why this is the case, because he states his first
‘straw-man’
argument when he claims the following:
The above of course is
not stated anywhere in TFO. Not
surprisingly, Mr Kumar then goes onto ‘defeat’ the above ‘straw-man’
argument,
not stated in TFO, which is of course par for the course when using the
‘straw-man’ technique. And if Mr Kumar tries to argue that he did not
mean to
state that the above is explicitly stated in TFO, then why write it in
a
section titled “What The TFO Advocates”?
Next one comes to section
2 of the paper, and one finds
bizarrely that Mr Kumar analyses the appendices used in TFO, rather
than the
actual use TFO makes of these appendices in the main text, which of
course is
what is relevant to a piece purporting to be a ‘point by point’
rebuttal of TFO.
For this we actually need to jump to section 3 of Mr Kumar’s paper,
which I
did. Even here, bizarrely, Mr Kumar tries to rebut the foreword to the
book by
an academic scholar!
Next he begins on TFO’s
Introduction, and in response to
this Mr Kumar states:
Again another ‘straw-man’
argument, since TFO does not state
anywhere that “one wrong action” (fall down of Gurus),” supports its
conclusion. So let’s keep that in
mind!
Next in response to the
following statement from TFO:
Mr Kumar states:
Notice the huge
‘straw-man’ difference. TFO states that the
present ISKCON Guru system should be ‘brought in line’ with Srila
Prabhupada’s
directive; whilst Mr Kumar claims TFO states that the “whole
parampara-system,
has to be based on one letter of Srila Prabhupada”, which of course is
not
stated in TFO.
Next in responding to TFO
quoting the GBC stating:
Mr Kumar responds:
Firstly
since TFO is quoting the GBC, he is attempting to rebut them primarily.
And
secondly, the GBC do not state that ‘logic has super-seeded the
SASTRA”. The
GBC only states that later statements supersede earlier ones. So yet
again Mr Kumar responds to something not stated by TFO, i.e. it is
another
‘straw-man’
argument, while at the same time he also
unwittingly attacks something the
GBC never stated!
Next Mr Kumar states:
But TFO does not state
this. It actually states the
opposite:
It
is at this point, I realised that Mr Kumar probably does
not even have a full grasp of English. For how else can a simple
statement that
the author of TFO deems it unlikely that anyone is deliberately
disobeying
Srila Prabhupada, be translated to mean that the author of TFO is
stating that
anyone not agreeing with him is ‘a conspirer against Prabhupada by
deliberately
disobeying Prabhupada’?! A ‘straw-man’ argument of the highest order.
Next Mr Kumar produces
an even bigger whopper by stating:
TFO does not state this
at all. Mr Kumar even embellishes
his blatant lie by enclosing the word ‘sin’ with quotation marks. But
no such
word or idea is used by TFO in the introduction.
Continuing with this
barrage of mass fabrication, Mr Kumar
next states:
I don’t know if anyone
does, but I do know TFO definitely
does not. The term ‘offense against Prabhupada’ or nothing remotely
like it is
used here in TFO despite Mr Kumar again conjuring up quotation marks
to try
and convince the reader that TFO is stating something which it is not.
Please note, that even
before we begin Mr Kumar’s supposed rebuttal of TFO,
we are almost a quarter
of the way through his lengthy tome, and it is already choc-o-bloc full
of
‘straw-man’ arguments!
And as we shall now see,
Mr Kumar’s attempts to answer the
TFO proper itself do not fare any better. Commenting on the ritvik
arrangement
made by Srila Prabhupada in the July 9th directive, Mr Kumar
states:
But the arrangement made had no connection with any possible incapacity of Srila Prabhupada. It simply delegates to a ritvik the final part of the initiation process which Srila Prabhupada was still performing: acceptance of a disciple via the granting of a spiritual name, an activity which did not depend on Srila Prabhupada’s health as it did not require him to travel at all, but could easily be performed at any time by him as long as he still retained the use of his vocal chords. On the contrary, as the letter makes clear, the physical initiation ceremonies, which would have depended on Srila Prabhupada’s health and him requiring to travel, were ALREADY being conducted by the Temple President:
So the change in
arrangements made by Srila Prabhupada were
to facilitate initiations continuing completely without the physical
involvement of Srila Prabhupada; NOT to facilitate procedures that
Srila
Prabhupada could no longer carry out due to ill-health and being unable
to
travel, since these procedures had already been delegated. Again it
seems
evident that Mr Kumar’s inability to understand even simple sentences
written
in the July 9th directive, stem from his lack of
understanding of
basic English. For Mr Kumar also writes phrases such as “needed time
to do
preach” which make no sense in English.
The key argument of TFO
revolves around the unauthorised
modifications made to the July 9th directive by the GBC.
These
modifications are:
Commenting on these
modifications imposed by the GBC, TFO
states:
In response to this
statement, Mr Kumar writes:
Note again how Mr Kumar
employs
another ‘straw-man’ argument by arguing that TFO states that
“everything should
appear in one letter”. But of course anyone, who has the ability to
read simple
English, will see that TFO does not state anything of the sort. It
simply
states that NEITHER of these modifications appear in ANY policy
document issued
by Srila Prabhupada. Not that “everything” must appear in ONE letter.
Commenting on TFO
presenting a
dictionary definition of the word ‘henceforward’, Mr Kumar states:
This is a blatant
contradiction
and ‘straw-man’ argument, which can only be explained again by Mr Kumar
not
having a basic grasp of English. To state what a word does NOT mean,
cannot by
definition be GIVING a new meaning to the word. E.g. If I state the
word
“begin” does NOT mean “to end”, I am not giving a new meaning to the
word
“begin”. I am simply pointing out, that once the actual meaning of a
word is
given, all other meanings are excluded. So by saying that TFO “adds new
meaning”, when the TFO does not do this, is a ‘straw-man’ argument. And
Mr Kumar stating that for TFO to say what henceforward “does NOT mean”
is
an
example of TFO saying what it DOES mean (adding a new meaning), is a
self-contradiction.
Commenting further on the
fact
that the July 9th directive does not state that the ritvik
arrangement must end on Srila Prabhupada’s physical departure
(Modification A),
Mr Kumar comments:
Mr Kumar’s absurdity now
moves
onto even greater heights. If an instruction is not meant to be
continued in
the absence of an instruction to stop it, then no instruction could
ever be
followed. For we could arbitrarily stop it anytime we felt like it,
because
remember the absence of an order to stop an instruction would not mean
it can
continue. We could have stopped the July 9th directive on
July 10th,
since we cannot assume that the absence of an order to stop it on July
10th,
means for it “to continue”. And for good measure, Mr Kumar claims that
it is
“illogical and insane” to continue an instruction simply because it has
not
been stopped, even though this is the very meaning of “to continue”.
Summarising his objection
to the
July 9th directive, Mr Kumar states:
Again this is another
self-contradiction from Mr Kumar. First he claims that Srila
Prabhupada is
actually “implying” something in the July 9th
directive – “not to
disturb him”. Then he states that Srila Prabhupada “would always make
clear and
complete statements”. Well if this was the case then Srila Prabhupada
would not
be IMPLYING “not to disturb him”, but rather he would have to state it
in the
form of a “clear and complete statement”, which of course Srila
Prabhupada does
not.
And it is true that Srila
Prabhupada is “not implying” that ritvik initiations should continue
after his
departure. He is very clearly STATING in the July 9th
directive, a
system “for
the purpose
of performing initiations, both first initiation and second initiation”
for
ISKCON.
TFO
is structured as follows. The
first 5 pages present the evidence and supporting evidence, for Srila
Prabhupada instituting the ritvik system for ISKCON. The rest of the
document
deals with possible objections to this evidence. However having come to
the end
of Mr Kumar’s supposed ‘rebuttal’ of “The Evidence” section, it is
very clear
that not only has Mr Kumar not rebutted the evidence presented in TFO,
but he
has not even understood what is being presented, presumably due to his
poor
grasp of the English language. Consequently he has presented a litany
of
‘straw-man’ arguments, followed by self-contradiction. It is therefore
not
necessary to read any more of Mr Kumar’s 222 page ramblings, for he
has
demonstrated that he cannot even UNDERSTAND what the TFO states, let
alone
rebut it.
I
would recommend he enrols on an
English course, learns to read and understand accurately, and try to
rebut the
TFO again, in say, a year, when at least he will be able to understand
what it
is he is supposedly rebutting. Others who have read Mr Kumar’s paper, such as Sudama prabhu and other IRM followers to whom Mr Kumar specifically sent his paper to, asking for feedback, agree with my analysis, and have asked that this be the combined feedback of us all to be conveyed to Mr Kumar. |