Battle of Iskcon monks in top court
SAMANWAYA RAUTRAY
New Delhi, Feb. 20: The Supreme Court will next week hear a case concerning two feuding branches of Iskcon, several of whose monks are nowadays seen chanting “Hare Krishna” in the court’s corridors.
The ochre-clad monks, heads shaved but for a tuft, are caught in a long battle of branch supremacy. The feuding sides are the Mumbai and Bangalore branches of Iskcon, the full name for which is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
The Mumbai branch at Juhu was the first society registered under the Iskcon name in 1971. The rival Bangalore branch was established in 1978.
The Bangalore monks have long claimed that the Mumbai branch wanted to control all Iskcon centres and properties in the country. According to the Bangalore society, now worth Rs 39 crore, Iskcon founder Srila Prabhupada had wished that all branches should run as parallel, autonomous units. The Mumbai society was working against the wishes of the deceased founder.
Prabhupada had specifically stated that he did not want a spiritual heir. Instead a group of 12 members, known as the governing body commission (GBC), would loosely oversee Iskcon’s functioning, sources in the Bangalore branch said. In Prabhupada’s lifetime, new branches and temples were opened with the consent of the GBC.
After Prabhupada’s mahasamadhi on November 14, 1977, the GBC, based in the Mumbai centre, took over the responsibility of guiding the Hare Krishna movement.
According to sources in Bangalore Iskcon, a culture clash also played a part in the feud. Bangalore Iskcon felt the Mumbai unit had been taken over by Americans. Bangalore, the sources said, had many more Indian believers.
In 2001, the Bangalore unit moved a civil court seeking to restrain Mumbai from interfering in its temple administration. The case was decreed in favour of Bangalore Iskcon in April 2009 and it got the right to operate the temple independent of Mumbai Iskcon.
But Karnataka High Court reversed the order on May 23, 2011. The Bangalore branch then went to the Supreme Court. In an interim order passed on July 5, 2011, the top court allowed Bangalore Iskcon to operate its temple but restrained its office bearers from taking any policy decisions.
The apex court also said that till it decided the matter, a committee headed by a former Supreme Court judge would be in charge of the Bangalore Iskcon temple administration.
source: Telegraph, Calcutta, India
Hare Krishna. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Politicians do not have the purity of heart and mind to simply and properly decide this struggle. How much kick-back are they taking to prolong this hellish agressiveness of Mumbai? Aren’t there any pure souls left in India higher classes?
On three main issues, ISKCON Bangalore should be freed once and for all from the vicious, greedy attack of the Mumbai gang. Point one, ISKCON Bangalore promotes Srila Prabhupada, the Founder-Acarya of ISKCON as the worshippable Spiritual Masater of Hare Krishna Movement, */as it should be and as it is showing beautiful effect. Mumbai supports the bogus guru cult which to date has seen over 40 so-called gurus fall down due to offending the transcendental position of Srila Prabhupada and poisioning His Divine Grace with arsnic to remove Him from His society so they could take over and enjoy the money, women and power. Currently the society is atempting to take back Srila Prabhupada’s conrol over the society by electing local GBC and abolishing the GBC who have overstayed the three-year limit by many many years to build their wealth and power.
Two. ISKCON Bangalore is thriving due to the bhakti of it’s members, they are feeding thousands of people free meals, despite having had to spend crores of rupies defending their property and practice from the criminals in Mumbai.
Three, it is INDEED Srila Prabhupada’s will and desire that each temple be administered locally. This is recorded in His DOM, directions for management. Bangalore ISKCON is fulfilling this order while Mumbai seeks to take over the entire society, destroy it’s truth and purity through changing all Srila Prabhupada’s instruction and even His Transcendental Divine Books and run it like a global soul-killing enterprise, which some of the members are affiliated with in the larger world. The order of the Spiritual Master is the essential requirement for successful spiritual life. The Mumbai gundas operate on greed, envy and selfishness. The final outcome should be for ISKCON Bangalore.
If Mumbai wants georgeous festivals, free food distribution, happy supportive members like Bangalore, make them do the work and follow their Spiritual Master’s orders… who is stoppiing them?
But their effort to steal the results from the hard work and devotion of ISKCON Bangalore is really a huge sin; those who support is will partake in the terrible sinful reactions when the Yamaduttas come at death and in the court of Lord Yama.
Hare Krishna. All glories to Srila AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada.
pamho agtACBSP
nowadays everyone knows that robbers took over iskcon but these politicians are robbers too therefore they help each other
canakya pandit says don’t trust in politicians and SRILA PRABHUPADA says politics is the last shelter of the rogues.
So everything is corrupt in this iron age – the enemy looks like a friend and the friend looks like an enemy – therefore it is better to not get involved with anybody else than SRILA PRABHUPADA.
To avoid the side effect of guno sanga-sya, we tolerate and forgive the poisoners of our beloved acharya with a heavy breath but we can’t let the Mumbai court with all these corrupt rogues to take over the devotional work of the only bonafide Vaikuntha embassy in iskcon Bangalore temple.
It is better they give up the battle right now – otherwise, stena sa ucyate [BG 3.12] they will meet the servants of Dharmaraj as the devotees already mentioned in previous comments.
ys
haribol