03/07/98 - 1676

Intolerance

Slovenia (VNN) - by Sadbuj Gour das

Dear Vaishnavas,
please accept my humble obeisances.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Sri Guru Gouranga jayatah!

In November of the last year the following letter was forwarded to me, it made me thinking a lot, and still today I cannot forget about it, and I would like to share my thoughts with you. I hope I am not standing alone with my opinion about how intolerant some people are towards children, women and other Vaishnava groups.

Bhadrinarayana das wrote:

<<<Dear Maharajs and prabhus:

Hare Krsna. I am sending the following, in case you didn't see it the first time, or thought it didn't impact your area of service. Sadly, if not for moral or spiritual reasons, then at least for financial ones, the following article gives some hint of what is potentially looming out there if we don't clean up the toxic pond of child abuse we have in ISKCON.

Imagine a class action with all our child abuse laundry in a court of law? What angered the jury in the following article the most was that the church knew and did not move strongly enough to prevent future abuse or care for the victims.

Get a judgment like this and we can say goodbye to the big Mayapur temple and everything else in between at least in N. America, for our lifetime. (Who can estimate the ramifications with the European governments who are already antagonistic?)

Sorry if this seems like scare tactics, that is not really my intent, but the danger is out there and being forewarned is being forearmed. We have a window of opportunity to fix this before the lid blows. Are we using it.....are you as temple presidents and GBC making sure that you have trained child protection teams in place, qualified teachers for academics and ashrams, carefully screening newly arrived devotees for any dark chapters in their closet, when in doubt restricting their access to children and to the temple in general?

For more information on how to set up child protection teams and what else you can do to fight abuse and deal with it when it happens in North America contact Muralivadaka prabhu at: <afn09663@freenet5.afn.org> or Jahnavi dasi at <afn56839@afn.org>

For the rest of the world: Dharmaraj prabhu at: <dharmaraja.hks@com.bbt.se>

Just to point out that are far from having this all worked out and behind us, yes, we have a GBC appointed task force working on this....as the chair, I think it is my duty to let you know that I cannot even get funding for the one conference call our committee had...or an e-mail responded to from the GBC executive committee members (to his credit, Bir Krsna Maharaj did get back with me, but he was obliged to say that he was at a loss as to where to get any funding for the project...although it was voted on and approved by all of us.)

(I regret airing this in public, but I do so as a last resort; this is my notice that I fear losing the other members of the committee and the effort unraveling.)



Your servant, Badrinarayan dasa

---------- Forwarded Message ----------

From: INTERNET:soj100@aol.com, INTERNET:soj100@aol.com
DATE: 7/25/97 11:21 AM
$120 Million Damage Award for Sexual Abuse by Priest

By PETER STEINFELS


A Dallas jury awarded nearly $120 million in damages on
Thursday after finding that the local Roman Catholic
diocese had ignored evidence that a priest was sexually
abusing boys and that it had then tried to cover up the
scandal....... >>>

Now Sadbhuj Gour das is writing again:

I was very much shocked reading this letter, seeing the children
should be protected from abuse, because OUR TEMPLES WOULD BE SOLD,
etc.

>Get a judgement like this and we can say goodbye to
>the big Mayapur temple and everything else in between
>at least in N. America, for our lifetime.

Maybe what I will say now will sound naughty and harsh, but I think if we do have such attitude, Krishna has already left our temples, and we should give them up, because there is no more reason to maintain them. We protect our dear children, because we fear to lose our good money, not for the sake of child protection. What use of our temples, if these temples only represent money, prestige, members, movement, but our children are not worth to be protected for their own sake, but for the sake of above mentioned points? And then we want to convince the people to take up Krishna consciousness, and that we are spreading Lord Caitanya's mission.

But not only children suffer this materialistic way of thinking, but also women, which, like the children, are dangerous for the money of our big temples. They are presented in a inferior way, because they pull working and collecting "brahmacaris" into the grihasta-asrama. Officialy women have equal rights, but intenally a strange, and fanatical philosophy about women is spread amongst the "brahmacaris". Women and children became an unwelcome minority, which eats the money and workers of the movement.

But not only women and children are unwanted minorities, but also Vaishnavas groups which do not belong to the movement. I heard that in London a Vaishnava group was reported to police and public medias to be a dangerous group tending to suicide. Because of this the program of a wonderful Vaishnava had to be canceled in the last minute. The Vaishnava group which made that report feared to lose its members.

Isn't it sad to hear that the children are protected, because we fear to lose our temples or money by legal proceedings. Isn't it sad that women are not protected and respected because we again fear to lose our good money.

Intolerance towards other Vaishnava groups is more and more often seen, and only because some are fearing to lose their followers and money. But before we fear to lose our external temples which are built of stone and wood, we rather should fear to lose the temples in our hearts. The external temples can be rebuilt and rebought, but if we once lose the bhakti in our hearts, it cannot be replaced, rebuilt or rebought. What use of all the temples Bhadrinarayana Prabhu fears about, if they are not used to develop bhakti in our hearts? We may have thousands of temples, millions of followers, we may be authorities in spirituality, but if we do not develop bhakti then it is of no worth for Sri Krishna.

And as long as we do not possess the humanity to protect women and children for their own sake, as we forget the charity, as long as we cannot develop love and devotion towards other Vaishnavas, we cannot care for spiritual life, because this is the basis for it.

Please forgive the offenses I may have committed, and please tell me if you do agree with my points. I would be very grateful!

Your servant Sadbuj Gour das
Sadbhuja.GaudyaMath@comtron.si
Loncar.of.Cvetkovitch@comtron.si