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EDITORIAL December 16, 1999 VNN5091 Related VNN Stories Defending Srila Prabhupada BY RAGHUNATHA ANUDASA EDITORIAL, Dec 16 (VNN) — Anudas's Reply to Sri Rama (2 Raghunatha's: one is Anudasa, the other is Stocker) Dear Sri Rama Prabhu, As a friend of yours, I was a bit surprised by your letter. You realize this is Raghunatha Anudasa speaking and not Raghunatha Stocker. Stocker is the reason I'm called Anudasa. He was "Little Raghunatha" and the teacher was Big Raghunatha. I became Anudasa instead of "middle Raghunath." Other's have written thinking me to be Stocker. And yes, he really got some of the worse of Vrindavan Guru-kula as a small child. Its nice to hear from you again Stocker. Write me some time. You may have unwittingly given Raghunatha Stokcer further reason to sue ISKCON. You simply restate the problems of guru-kula that hurt him in the first place before down playing its gravity in your call for respecting the "sincere devotees" who "tried their best." Demands for honoring the sincere devotees was used to deflect much of the criticism of the abusers. Here is one of many reasons why ISKCON proved so ineffective at reform and justice. It happens to also be a primary reason why many guru-kulis are suing—to create the sense of urgency and gravity in a society only too willing to explain why they need to understand all the reasons for their abuse. Guru-kulis want action, not excuses. You failed to provide this in your reign as Minister of Education. I was a little surprised you boldly defended the guru-kula record of the late 80's and early 90's when you where in fact compiling an on-going dossier on active abusers. I know Dhanur Dhara Sw. was one of at least several you where working on. You've always been extremely secretive about this work--to my great disappointment. As we discussed before, I believe a more public record would have rectified things sooner and more effectively. GBC meetings where indeed making proclamations against child abuse as you say. Yet, the '92 closed meetings about the molestation going on right there in Mayapur was swept under the carpet for several more years. I was there passing out my ISKCON Youth Veterans Mag. Every GBC received an issue of my Child Of the Ashram essay and other newsletters that detailed my own childhood abuses. Not one GBC or guru responded. Actually, Tamal Krnsa Sw. pulled me into his room and said that it was going to "make the Robin Goerge case look by peanuts" and told me to cease and desist. Besides this, there was no sense of surprise or shock or sorrow or outrage. This was all old news to them though the "big meeting" in Alachua had not yet taken place. The only reason why anything happened is two fold, 1) Anuttama. He used the occasion to get GBC public commitments. and 2) it was Alachua-an ISKCON affiliate community. This would have never taken place in a GBC run temple. I'm not here to condemn or contest your facts. I'm a friend puzzled why you are taking such a stand and wondering what you hope to accomplish by it. Trying to shift the blame to Prabhuapda is certainly not going to help pacify Raghunatha Stocker. Prabhupada, the books and chanting is one of the few things left in his life to give him solace. It almost seems you are daring him to blame Prabhupada. Why? It seems like one last kick to an otherwise healing spirit. This is also a primary reason why I'm responding. I believe you have shifted too much blame on Prabhupada starting with the quotes from the guru-kula hand book. Urmala was telling me of several passages Jagadish changed so they read children should not stay home when Prabhupada in fact said the opposite. More to the point, I'm not fully convinced that your examples of Prabhupada cited where the primary reasons for guru-kula's problems. I give a detailed summary of those problems in an essay I wrote called Prabhupada's Magic. It's on VNN, but I've edited and added quite a bit since its posting. I'm therefore including its latest edition here. The following is the 2nd part of the essay dealing with Prabhupada specifically. I will also send the 1st part if interested. I present this Prabhpuada Magic to you not so much to contest your ideas, but to provide a starting point of discussion on the issue--if not to have it validated by you. I believe the issue of Prabhupada's responsibility of the guru-kula abuses is a growing and important one to settle. You may have a great deal to offer on this issue. I present Prabhupada's Magic as a frame work from which to start. I would love to touch bases with you personally concerning other matters. I've been off line for a couple months as I completed my massage course. I will be on line now that I've finished. I also hope to hear from Raghunatha Stocker. I remember him with great respect. I was exhausted by our 4 and 5 hour guru-kula walks and swims at the Yamuna. I found it hard to keep up at 15 years old. How he kept pace at 7 years old is a great feat. He had to run most of the way to keep up. As an older kid, I watched out for myself in dealing with other kids, avoiding chores or getting more food and water. Not him or Gauranga. They were cold in the winter and sun-burned in the summer. Chapped lips and cracked feet year around. They didn't know how to dress, bath, brush their teeth or keep track of their bedding. They often slept without bedding of any kind. Just the concrete floor. They were 7 and 8 years old. Hungry, underfed, under-slept and hit with India's colds, wring warm, boils and diarrhea for months at a stretch. They were tough as soldiers, though only 7 and 8 years old. Hardships were taken for granted, but these two had won everyone's respect. It will be an honor to meet him again. I look forward to hearing from both of you. Yours Raghunatha Anudasa Essay: Prabhupada - his policies and philosophies are the cause of guru-kula's abuses. At least, I felt this was inferred by some of the recent articles printed in ISKCON Communications Journal that also cast the GBC as the leading force of change in our childcare reforms. I believe the "professional" view of these experts are wrong on both accounts. I relay how these reforms were in spite of the GBC and then detail the extent of Prabhupada's personal concern for us - children - based upon the sound principles of guru-kula: "apprenticeship." He followed this up with a solid commitment of his best resources and men. I conclude with the "recipe for reform" referred to as "Prabhupada's Magic." I use the success of our youth newsletters and reunions as an example of this formula and how and why it works - as much for us as guru-kulis as for the movement at large. This should not be confused with Yadubar's essay called Prabhupada's Magic II "inspired" as he put, by this essay. "Prabhupada's Magic;Part 2" Cure for ISKCON Child Abuse Raghunatha Anudasa@aol.com Part 2 Calls for this kind of priority to the individual - the real meaning of community spirit - is dismissed as too vague a policy, too sentimental for our standards or unpractical for implementation. I have therefore made such a case out of the success of the newsletters and reunions simply to demonstrate the impact of this approach. I similarly point to guru-kula's abuses as a testament of the worse to happen when the individual is forsaken in the name of a cause or institution. Many devotees seemed stumped by this idea. They assume the movements success was had because the individuals sacrificed themselves for its greater good. Though true, this remains only part of the story. The real story is that we loved Prabhupada because the devotees felt he loved them. The devotees felt that he would do for them what ever they needed most and so did for him what ever he needed most. I realized how strong this sentiment was only after transcribing Sidhanta's "Prabhupada Memory Video Series." Devotees from that era relay story after story how Prabhupada continuously made accommodation for each of their individual needs. Prabhupada made them feel loved and though their lives where austere, they felt better cared for than they had at any other time in their life. It can be hard to understand at times, but it was the magic that made this movement run. It was Prabhupada's magic. My own experience as a small, 11 year old child in guru-kula during Prabhupada's final days in Vrindavan, India, is a telling example to this sense of Prabhupada's loving care. There were the many incidents of personal attention I received from Prabhupada and there was his management that also meant as much. His decision often favored the individual situation of my school friends or parents over that of set policy. For me, it first started in LA '73, where Prabhupada wrote my mother about my "beautiful features" before singling me out 3 days later by handing me cookies from his vyasa-sana throne to pass on to smaller kids that hovered around after his morning class. About a week later, he stopped his Rolls Royce and had me climb in to join him on his daily morning walks which I did every day there after for a week or more. There are many instances where I received this kind of attention from Prabhupada though I was only one small child out of a community of 400 devotees. One day while sitting in his room, "spacing out" as he talked with others, he turned to me and asked, "Are you cold?" The window was open during a December evening. I was shirtless. "No Srila Prabhupada?" "How come?" he asked. "Because I chant Hare Krishna." Prabhupada was very pleased and gave me the name Raghunatha after the saintly Goswami known for his austerity. He took note of my potential discomfort and when I showed my willingness to accept it, he honored my sacrifice. He did not take it lightly - though only a boy of eight. More telling is the fact that he alone noticed I may be cold. This was Srila Prabhupada. And this has been the missing ingredient from much of the movement's operation - especially after Prabhupada's departure in 77. LA - 73, Dallas-75 and then Vrindavan 76-77, all had similar small incidents that left me feeling a personal sense of attention and concern from Srila Prabhupada. I even felt protected and loved at times - odd given the hardships of guru-kula. "Are they getting enough to eat?" he would ask on occasion in Vrindavan. A couple times he asked teasingly because we sang so softly while he rested - as the devotees did for him during his last days. Another time, he asked why we were so skinny. He responded in kind by arranging for better prasadam - meals. He instructed the Krishna Balarama Temple management to give us the remnants of the deities 4:30 am mangala arotic offering of sweets. It was an assortment of 5 different kinds of heavenly milk sweets - some of the best I have ever had. The sweets were previously going to the sanyasis - leaders. Later, Prabhupada found out we were getting significantly less in the name of "Prabhupada's breakfast." He promptly began sending us his breakfast "remnants" - a veritable feast. He even allowed us our own cook, budget and kitchen - a rare luxury of the day. There were other seemingly mundane concerns he made personal issue of; from getting enough play time - 2 hours (against teacher protest), to enough rest time - "eight hours" including 1 hour naps. And it didn't end there: "Why are your cloths so dirty?" he asked me on one occasion from his return palanquin visit to the temple. He had become so weak by then, he could not even walk the 20 feet to see the Deities. But he stopped his palanquin to ask me about my filthy cloths as boys are apt to be. This was the eye of Prabhupada. He noticed a passing detail out of hundreds of devotees - a small boy. I promptly answered before Prabhupada's full entourage of ISKCON leaders. "Because the teachers won't give me powdered soap Srila Prabhupada." My teachers were horrified. I felt as proud about this as I was embarrassed. I felt that Prabhupada found my condition noteworthy enough to make issue though I was just a kid. This kind of personal attention from Prabhupada was the "universal" experience with everyone who ever met Prabhupada. It created a sense that Prabhupada was watching over us as much for me as kid in Vrindavan as for the thousands of devotees throughout the world. It was magic. Prabhupada's magic. Prabhupada intervened a number of times over official set policy whether on guru-kula discipline or over temple devotees sending their kids to guru-kula. Srila Prabhupada for example, rebuffed Jagadish's plea for the need of corporal punishment for such "incorrigible" kids like Jagaman - a 13 year old and one of the first teenagers of the movement. Jagadish was the Minister of Education at the time and was trying to defend the right of teachers to "chastise" the kids with physical punishment after complaints were brought to Prabhupada's attention. Prabhupada said no - repeatedly. Prabhupada saw such on going "misbehavior" as a symptom that the child was "not properly engaged." Prabhupada had Jagaman transferred to a farm in Hydrabad in which he did much better. Another time, Prabhupada intervened on Kirtan's behalf - his mother was Prabhupada's cook. Kirtan was an 8 year old considered to be "a discipline problem." There were other instances as well. In one letter, Prabhupada writes that a teacher "should be beat" if he "slaps" a student. Other times, he instructed parents to personally attend to their child. Anirudha dasa, for example, was living with, being taken care of, and tutored by his mom though living in Vrindavan where our guru-kula was in full swing. This was true of others. He told Arandati devi dasi that tending to her child was her "deity worship" when she wrote him about her personal priority to "deity service" while someone else babysat. Such seemingly "contradictory" instructions are rarely repeated but were common to the devotees of the day when faced with a "unique" situation. Prabhupada often advised and arranged things to meet their individual needs. Perhaps more striking was Prabhupada's managerial involvement with guru-kula though officially "resigned" from all day to day ISKCON management - doctors orders. He formalized Bhagajis involvement with us. Bhagaji was one of Prabhupada's closest, personal friends in Vrindavan. Bhagaji is a great man remembered with the heavy heart of deep affection. Prabhupada also hand picked Yasodanandan to teach us though Yasoda was heading up the biggest fund raising "Sankirtan Party" in the world. He also appointed Dr. Sharma though unnoticed for such a post by everyone else associated with guru-kula - for he did not follow most of the basic requirements from chanting "sixteen rounds" of Hare Krishna to reading Prabhupada's books, or attending most temple functions and classes. Still, Prabhupada appointed him. Dr. Sharma is - in my 30 years of experience - the best principle of any guru-kula, if not gentlemen, I have ever come to know. Someday, we can hopefully give a more detailed list of Prabhupada's personal involvement in "hand-picking" from his best resources - not his worse. His "vision" versus what took place with guru-kula should also be more thoroughly examined. This is important. It will define Prabhupada's responsibility for the "shortcomings" of guru-kula vs the "Western devotees" translations of "Prabhupada's instructions." Example: Prabhupada: "show them the stick" - a finger thick, 2 foot long ruler. Teacher translation: breaking a 1 ½ inch thick, by 3 feet long, "Smaranam (remember) Board" on a 10 year olds back side. Like so many other instances in the movement, this was immediately stopped once brought to Prabhupada's attention. Prabhupada: send a misbehaved child to the "corner." Translation: locked in small, dark, wet bathrooms for hours - sometimes days. Prabhupada: older boys can serve as "monitors" and the peer pressure will influence the younger to behave. Translation: encouraging bully's to beat kids up younger kids out of favor with teachers. And the list of such things goes on, and on, and…. This kind of review of Prabhupada vs. guru-kula will also demonstrates the feasibility of guru-kula. Guru-kula literally means: Master's-Home. In short, guru-kula is the system common to every culture of the world as apprenticeship - the student lives with a teacher who is "master(ed)" in the art of ones interest. This is in contrast to the Western-Catholic style boarding-schools that guru-kula came to resemble for there was really no other master, but Prabhupada. Boarding schools are often more a cattle ranch for housing disadvantaged kids as was the case of many guru-kulas. Reviewing these kinds of considerations will better define the movements single most sensitive area of controversy - Prabhupada's role in the past "mistakes" with, and vision for, women and children. That "vision" may be nicely summarized in this closing story about Vrindavan Guru-kula itself. Prabhupada's original request was for us to go to Mayapur like the Western "older boys" who arrived the year before us - 1975. Our friends told of the hardships they lived in Mayapur. We found Vrindavan far more welcoming. There was just five of us in this 2nd batch of Western kids to India; Deva Deva, Lila Smarana, Dwarkadish, Vrindavan and myself. We were 8 through 10 years of age at the time. We simply decided we wanted to stay in Vrindavan. We loved Vrindavan. Here is the amazing part. Prabhupada said fine and then built this huge school there in Vrindavan for us. There stands today, Vrindavan Guru-kula, 5 stories high and a football field big. Vrindavan Guru-kula is a testament to Prabhupada's commitment of resources to us - our education, our well being - our happiness. It exemplifies his sense of accommodation - a whole school to meet the personal preference of 5 young boys. The fact that Vrindavan Guru-kula became the most abusive of all the schools, personifies the contrast of Prabhupada's sincerest intent and most valiant efforts against the "devotees" translation of that kindness. This is seen all too often throughout the movement - especially in regard to women and children. A whole school for our personal accommodation - this was Srila Prabhupada. This was the Prabhupada I came to love as a child, the Prabhupada I came to know as a devotee and the Prabhupada I came to honor as a man. Prabhupada went the extra mile for us and so we did for him. Here is the formula of Prabhupada's Magic and the recipe for creating true reform whether it be our schools or childcare, the temples, leadership and society, or in our own personal relationships and endeavors. The real break through in all these youth and child protection programs is not so much the institutions themselves as created by the GBC leadership, but the caliber of men that have finally been attracted to run them. Here is the true hope for effective, long term reform and the basis for the movements change. My faith in the Child Protection Agency is only to the extent that Dira Govinda and Yasoda remain to run it. Their commitment to our well being seems solid if not greater then their loyalties to the movements political concerns. It was Dira Govinda who requested my response to Professor Burke's essay knowing full well the cutting voice with which I speak. This is an important testament that Dira Govinda will present even the most discomforting facts to the GBC. He is the first ISKCON representative to request me to make such a public address as well as the first to recognize my contributions to the 2nd generation. The Children of Krishna is similarly only as good as Anutama's involvement and those like him. Anutama is personally committed to making a difference to the youth - both as a father and as a friend. His duties as PR Director are only secondary to his commitment as a family man and so I trust this carries over to his kid as well - a gurukuli. The stands especially true for the Youth Minister, Manu. Manu is himself a veteran of guru-kula. He is overly protective of his "territory" at times and somewhat soft spoken about the concerns of the "older youth," but his passion and commitment to us remains unquestioned. It is also in honoring the parents that have done such a fine job by their own children that we may find the answers and resources to develop the same. Again, it comes down to individuals. The good news is that ISKCON finally has a crew with the competence and passion to affect real change - so long as they are not compromised in their concern for the youth. Their appointment remains to be the most significant act by the GBC to reforming our movements torrid past - as long as these people stay on to finish the job unhindered by the movements politics. Keep in focus the individuals' well being and all other intended goals will automatically be had. This is as true for our schools and child care reform as for the movement at large. I watch with cautious hope, but hope all the same, that we may finally once again see more of this loving care of Prabhupada's Magic. Raghunatha Anudasa@aol.com About the Author  Other Stories by this AuthorRelated VNN Stories Comment on this storyContact VNN about this storySend this story to a friend
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