Jul 12 2009, Los Angeles, California: I’ve recently had a heated argument with my friend on the subject of ISKCON’s corruption. He claimed vehemently that the majority of devotees are ‘nice’. He considered my criticism that association with the institution in any of its activities endorses corruption, to be an overstatement. I was a bit baffled to say the least, since he had posted blogs criticizing the bogus gurus and he dotes on the PADA site. How the rash of abuses and deviations that have occurred in the last four decades could be isolated from and not touch the ‘nice majority’ is incomprehensible. Yet his opinion is not uncommon. There are other devotees who remain in ISKCON who rationalize their participation in the same way – that ISKCON is really a majority of sincere people. Ritviks they are not.
Many of them are Narayana Maharaja disciples who infiltrate ISKCON to recruit disciples for him while still retaining a front of institutional complaisance. And these infiltrators are most often Srila Prabhupada disciples. One of them would speak to me of how the New Dwarka devotees are nice – part of the time. The other part of the time, out of the other side of his mouth, he would criticize the temple management for not allowing Narayana Maharaja to preach there. It was disturbing to associate with him while he engaged in this double-speak, on the one hand forbidding ‘fault-finding’ and on the other hand criticizing the Temple President. This group is a prime example of the objection my friend expressed. ‘Let’s keep ISKCON in tow, while we arrange for it to be taken over by my guru (or whatever faction)’. It is also a prime example of the aphorism that we should keep our friends close and our enemies closer.
One group is the senior Prabhupada disciples who bow in silent dissent because they are too old to maintain themselves in the outside world. They are, nevertheless, always in danger of being ousted as deadweight by the materialistic managers.
Another group is the second generation disciples who are completely sold on the GBC party line – the elected gurus, reduced book distribution, institutionalized corporate religiosity, Hinduization etc. These are what my friend calls ‘the sheep’. But are unthinking, acquiescent sheep ‘sincere’? Are they ‘nice’? The corrupt system would have no power without them. They fuel the awful juggernaut with their so-called humble unquestioning service. They are the ‘deltas’ of the Brave New World’ – the bovine workforce, the serfdom that maintains the deviant Lordship. At New Dwaraka they help hold Rukimini/Dwarkadisha hostage.
When the foment of scandal began, one could chalk up the adherence to ignorance of the facts, but by now with as much of the old and current history revealed to anybody who has not taken up residence under a stone, there is no excuse. Ignorance might be an excuse, but stupidity doesn’t qualify. The huge exodus of Prabhupada disciples is the strongest silent testimony to non-association with the deviant anti-ISKCON.
They are the true ISKCON. That sanga being ISKCON, means in fact, ISKCON has not become diseased or fallen, it has simply left its institutional body. It is no longer co-extensive with the material emanations that reflect ISKCON like the lurid phosphorescence that dead bodies have been observed to give off.
Speak Your Mind