10/16/1998 - 2366 ...(See Related VNN Stories)

The Rama Parasara Tragedy: Another Perspective

USA (VNN) - by Drutakarma Dasa

I interviewed the temple president Svavasa Prabhuand other LA temple leaders, including Govinda Datta Prabhu (the propertymanager) and Nirantara Prabhu (the temple vice president and lifemembership director), to get their side of the story.

In 1993, Svavasa Prabhu and the other temple leaders welcomed Rama Parasaraand his wife into the Los Angeles temple community. Rama Parasara had aproblematic history in ISKCON. He had been asked to leave his position inISKCON's communication department in New Delhi because of mismanagement.After his departure thousands of dollars worth of computer, communication,and office equipment were missing and were never returned by him toISKCON. Despite this, Svavasa Prabhu and the other LA temple leadersmercifully gave him a chance to render service. Knowing Rama Parasara to bepractically penniless, they authorized him to enroll life members forISKCON through the LA temple membership office and to receive a commissionof thirty percent for every member enrolled. The temple also provided hisfamily with free prasadam (food). Furthermore, the property managers werevery lenient with Rama Parasara on his rent, allowing his family to remainin the apartment even though he was often several months behind in hispayments.

Rama Parasara responded to this generosity with duplicity. While going tothe Indian community as a representative of ISKCON LA, he was also settingup his own private financial organization called the Rama Raja Foundation.Within a short period of time, he stopped enlisting life members throughthe Los Angeles temple membership program and started putting all thedonations he collected into his own bank account. Many innocent peoplethought that their donations were going to ISKCON, specifically the LosAngeles ISKCON community. But in fact their money was going into the bankaccount exclusively controlled by Rama Parasara. This created a lot ofconfusion.

Nirantara Prabhu, the membership director for the Los Angeles ISKCONcommunity, related to me a story of an Indian gentleman who came to hisoffice and said he was a life member of ISKCON. Nirantara Prabhu checkedhis records and found that his listings did not show the man to be a lifemember. When Nirantara Prabhu explained this to the man, the man said thathe had given his membership money to Rama Parasara, thinking he was givingit to ISKCON. Nirantara Prabhu had to explain to the man that although RamaParasara was living in the temple apartments, and conducting his businesson the LA temple properties, he was in fact running his own privateorganization, with his own private bank account. The money the man hadgiven to Rama Parasara did not go to ISKCON. On another occasion, an Indiangentleman who had given a computer to Rama Parasara, thinking he was givingit to ISKCON, later came back and demanded from Rama Parasara the return ofthe computer. The LA temple property manager and treasurer both told methat Rama Parasara would often try to get them to accept for payment of hispersonal debts checks that various Indians had made out to ISKCON. Theyexplained to him that this was improper-he should not be taking for hispersonal purposes checks people had in good faith made out to ISKCON.

Incidents like this resulted in complaints from members of the Indiancommunity, who felt they had been deceived by Rama Parasara. Therefore,Nirantara Prabhu had to put a notice in the LA temple membership newsletterclearly explaining to the Indian members that in his fundraising RamaParasara was not acting on behalf of the LA ISKCON community but on behalfof his own private organization.

Rama Parasara has sometimes represented himself as a disciple of SrilaPrabhupada, when in fact he was not initiated by Prabhupada. In fact, RamaParasara has not been initiated by anyone. The very first principle ofdevotional service given by Rupa Goswami in the Nectar of Devotion is thatone should seek out a spiritual master and take shelter of him byinitiation. ISKCON was organized by Srila Prabhupada to enable people tocarry out this very important instruction to be connected to the disciplicsuccession through initiation. Rama Parasara is not connected to SrilaPrabhupada by initiation, either as a disciple or granddisciple. Indeed, heis a supporter of the rtvik heresy, officially rejected by ISKCON in 1990.To function as a brahmana in ISKCON, one must have the first initiation(harinama initiation) and second initiation (brahminical initiation). RamaParasara has neither, and he also discourages people from acceptinginitiation from Prabhupada's disciples.

For years, the LA temple management tolerated the mischievous andduplicitous behavior of Rama Parasara. They also gave him manyopportunities to bring his independent activities within the circle of theISKCON family. Rama Parasara likes to style himself as an ISKCON man, butSrila Prabhupada did not want ISKCON to be a free-for-all. He created asystem of management. This system of management was meant to encourage bothindividual initiative and accountability. Rama Parasara wanted to have hisindividual initiative but he was not willing to accept the principle ofaccountability established by Srila Prabhupada. ISKCON members are supposedto exercise their individual initiative in such a way that they areaccountable to the management structure that Srila Prabhupada set up-theTemple president and GBC. This means that there has to be some kind offinancial accountability. From 1995 to 1998, the LA temple management andlocal GBCs (Virabahu Prabhu and Badrinarayan Prabhu) made many attempts toinduce Rama Parasara to accept some kind of accountability to the ISKCONmanagement system. They did not want to stop his individual initiative.They simply told him that if he wished to be considered part of ISKCON,then he would have to be accountable to the ISKCON management system insome way. For example, it was proposed that he put one of the GBC memberson the board of his Rama Rajya Foundation. This is a standard practice forISKCON related projects. Rama Parasara angrily rejected all such proposals.He steadfastly refused to make himself accountable to ISKCON's managementsystem but at the same time brazenly continued to take full advantage ofall of ISKCON's facilities to collect money for his private bank account,which had no ISKCON oversight.

Many Indian people like to come to Los Angeles for the darshan of thebeautiful Deities Sri Sri Rukmini Dvarakadisha. Whenever he saw any Indianperson enter the temple grounds, Rama Parasara would immediately rush up tothem to enlist them in his private program. Rama Parasara's advocacy of thertvik heresy combined with his refusal to accept any ISKCON oversight ofhis private fundraising activities caused continued strain with templeadministration.

In January 1998, when it had become clear to the property managers thatRama Parasara was never going to accept any oversight of his privatefundraising activities and that he was overtly committed to the rtvikheresy, in violation of ISKCON law, they verbally asked him to voluntarilyleave the temple apartment that had so generously been provided to him.This step was deemed necessary because of Rama Parasara's contemptuousrefusal to accept the reasonable proposals for accommodation that had beenpresented to him over the course of the previous three years. At thispoint, Rama Parasara's wife was not pregnant. In any case, the templeauthorities were simply suggesting to Rama Parasara that if he was goingto refuse to make himself accountable to the ISKCON system of managementthen he should set himself up independently so as not to confuse people whomight think he was acting officially on behalf of ISKCON. He was not beingbanned from the temple or from ISKCON. He was just being asked to move toan apartment somewhere else in the neighborhood.

The initial verbal requests by the property management board were followedby many months of written requests for Rama Parasara to voluntarily leaveand find another place to live in the neighborhood. Rama Parasara ignoredthese repeated requests. Instead he made threats to attack ISKCON withvindictive lawsuits and publicity campaigns designed to smear ISKCON.Finally, after tolerating years of Rama Parasara's refusal to accept anykind of financial accountability, and years of his advocacy of a philosophyofficially rejected by ISKCON, the property management board in June of1998 informed Rama Parasara that if he would not leave voluntarily thenthey would go through the proper legal channels. Rama Parasara then linkedup with an attorney who has dedicated himself to attacking theBhaktivedanta Book Trust.

At this point, Svavasa Prabhu offered Rama Parasara through his attorney afinancial settlement, to cover moving to a new apartment and relatedexpenses. Instead of saving himself and his pregnant wife a lot of stress,he chose to reject this offer and continue his attempt to legally harassthe LA temple. As part of this effort, he has tried to turn the Indiancommunity, in Los Angeles, and around the world, against ISKCON.

In the face of Rama Parasara' s vicious propaganda war against ISKCON, theLA temple continued pursuing the legal means at its disposal to compel himto take the action he should have taken voluntarily moving somewhere elsein the neighborhood. The court rejected all the attempts by Rama Parasara'sattorney to force ISKCON to continue to provide him with a temple apartmentfrom which to conduct his questionable fundraising activities.

Lately, Rama Parasara has tried to use the untimely death of his unbornchild as a political weapon against ISKCON. He blames the LA temple forthis unfortunate occurrence. But there are several points that need to beconsidered here.

1. There are reports that four months into her pregnancy, Rama Parasara'swife told women in the LA community that she was losing amniotic fluid andthat a doctor had advised her to terminate the pregnancy by abortionbecause it appeared the child could not be carried to term. This happenedweeks before the legal eviction proceedings began. There are also reportsthat Rama Parasara's wife told friends in the weeks before the miscarriagethat she was suffering from a urinary tract infection, which she tried toself-treat with prescription antibiotic drugs obtained without a doctor'sprescription (obviously a dangerous thing to do). So there is every reasonto believe that the death of the child was the result of physiologicalcauses not related at all to the eviction proceedings.

2. Rama Parasara accuses others of not caring about his wife. But whatabout him? Why did Rama Parasara precipitate the whole crisis by refusingall reasonable requests to establish some kind of fiscal accountability forhis unauthorized fundraising activities?

3. If Rama Parasara was so concerned for his pregnant wife, why did he notaccept the LA temple's offer to assist him financially in finding asuitable apartment near the temple months ago?

4. If he was so concerned about his pregnant wife, why did he desert herin her last week of pregnancy to go to an ISKCON-bashing rtvik politicalmeeting in Florida? A woman naturally wants her husband to be close by atsuch a time.

Many ISKCON parents have had the misfortune of having miscarriages andstillborn children. But they have not responded to these unfortunate eventsby vowing to take vengeance on the devotees serving in Srila Prabhupada'sISKCON. Somehow or other, they have tried to understand these sorrowfulevents in the context of Vaisnava philosophy. In his saner moments, RamaParasara has also done this. When he returned to Los Angeles after thedeath of his child, he told Sura Prabhu of the BBT, "It is all my karma forbeing a sinful rascal." Sura, whose wife had also lost a child bymiscarriage, tried to console him, explaining that sometimes these thingshappen. But soon thereafter Rama Parasara began a new campaign to punishISKCON. In so doing, he has shamelessly exploited the death of his ownchild for his selfish political purposes. He and his attorney have launcheda legal attack designed to destroy the ISKCON community that SrilaPrabhupada personally established in Los Angeles, by getting the governmentto deprive the community of its tax exempt status. This is an attack on allthe sincere disciples and granddisciples of Srila Prabhupada who areworshiping the Deities in the LA temple, distributing Srila Prabhupada'sbooks in Los Angeles, running the LA temple restaurant and gift shop,teaching the children in the temple day school, and so on. Prabhupada oncesaid that ISKCON is his body, so Rama Parasara's attack on ISKCON is alsonothing less than an attack on Prabhupada himself.

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