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WORLD May 31, 2000 VNN5977 Related VNN Stories Letter to the GBC USA, May 31 (VNN) — In a message dated 00/05/22 10:09:40 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Jayadvaita Swami writes: Dear GBC members, Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. Since I am a member of ISKCON and since I have three disciples, I assume the GBC regards me as belonging to the category "ISKCON guru. " And I therefore suppose that, in accordance with your "Action Order" 616, passed this year, I am expected to contribute US $500 towards ISKCON'scourt battle with "the ritviks. " The purpose of the present letter is to inform you that I respectfully decline to conform to this order. And I also mean to explain why. Before you decided to "expell the ritviks," Bhima Prabhu,Yasomatinanda Prabhu, and several other senior devotees with many years of serving ISKCON in India warned you emphatically that such amove would be disastrous. Embarking on such a course would prove ineffectual, divisive, harmful to ISKCON's reputation, ghastly expensive, and enormously wasteful of the time and energy of ISKCON's seniormost spiritual leaders. In terms of years spent in India, I may have been the juniormost of the devotees who thus advised you. (I was not, however, silent. ) Anyway, you refused our contribution. Thereafter, practically at once you were forced to retract yourexpulsion order, which had proven ineffectual. And now (should we be suprised?) you are caught in a battle that is divisive, harmful to ISKCON'sreputation, ghastly expensive, and enormously wasteful of the time and energy of ISKCON's seniormost spiritual leaders. And now--shall we add insult to injury?--you are ordering me to help payfor it. I shall not. Whatever money I personally receive or hold I regard to be Srila Prabhupada's personal money. And I cannot in good conscience hand any of it over to you to be thus expended on fighting with our godbrothers. For that cause, I shall not give you even a penny, a paisa, a centavo. When the time was right, I stood among those who offered you advice that could have saved you-- Well, let's see. There are 33 GBC members and 25 gurus more, at the least, and you're looking for $500 from each. That's 29,000 US dollars. Plus you want to pull an unspecified sum from every ISKCON temple in India (that is, from the Deities, from Krsna). That's just your budget for Year One. And for how many years do you expect this war to go on? As I was starting to say: When the time was right, I was among those who offered you advice that--aside from saving you time, sparing you stress, and sparing ISKCON from divisiveness, legal jeopardy, and the public airing of dirty laundry--could have saved big heaps of Srila Prabhupada's cash. You chose to turn down our offering, our humble contribution. Now I shall contribute nothing more. You're caught in a war? You need money? Let the hawks pay. Thank you. Hare Krsna. Hoping this finds you in good health, Yours in Srila Prabhupada's service, Jayadvaita Swami From: Jayapataka@...com Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2000, 10:46 PM To: (removed), gbc.discussions@tattva.net Subject: Re: Letter to the GBC My Dear Godbrother Jayadvaita Swami, Please accept my obeisances humbly offered to your feet. All glories to Srila Prabhupada! I got your letter and immediately wrote the GBC giving them an option that if you would again this year spend a week or more at the Bangalore temple that should be considered a better contribution then your paying of any war chest donation. I hope you will be able to do this in the next few months since it is crucial they get your association early before they go more and more radical and polarized. Your visit had remarkable effects on many of the devotees although it might not have shown when you were there. Some people left Madhu Pandit dasa's camp after your visit. I feel this is a greater contribution then the money the GBC has asked for. Having said that I wanted to say that I don't agree with the details of your letter or that the GBC had expelled anyone. A scope for the EC to expell them was done and in retrospect it was not strategically a necessary nor constructive move. Still they weren't expelled and certainly over the months and years that have passed it has become evident that even if these persons initially appeared to have some kind of reason for reacting the way they did by now the GBC is redeemed insofar as they refused all peace offers and revealed they have misused yours and the other leaders like Bhimas sentiments for their own political agenda. You seem locked into some time warp of two years ago and how things appeared. Maybe the GBC played into their trap and passed a resolution allowing the EC to expell them which was subsequently removed before the deadline. Still they have gone to court, have established a counter movement, have been preaching their poisonous doctrine, been doing anti-ISKCON and anti-GBC propaganda, have been controlling the lives of innocent devotees for their own political agenda and power greed, and countless other misuse of their position. To still consider them innocent victims of GBC agression seems ironic from a person as pragmatic as yourself. This time we are seeing a sentimental side of you that seems locked into a time warp which denies reality. Do you still really believe the GBC pushed them over the cliff and everything they are doing is only because of one possibly premature resolution. Even if the GBC hadn't passed that resolutin the GBC had all the power in the world to expell them at any point and they knew that. It seems you forget that upto now the GBC has done absolutely nothing in response to their aggression which can be considered aggressive. If one threat of action if they refuse to stop propagating their deviant philosophy somehow legitimizes their actions then maybe you can kindly explain how that is possible as it fails to convince me and mostly everyone. Even without that EC empowerment the GBC resolutions in 1990 and later says that propagating rtivikism is cause for expulsion from ISKCON so it is already on our books. And you never objected previously. The GBC thought that during the year in case something had to be done then the EC should be given the power. Tha twas the difference. In the end nothing was done against them even to this date. Sometime in the future maybe something will have to be done according to ISKCON Laws. So I am not able to really consider your letter as very relevant considering all the water that has passed under the ritvik bridges. In fact you may be sheltering these people by taking this attitude. As far as you paying a donation I don't think your excuse is really reasonable, but as I have offered if you would visit Bangalore again it would be more valuable in any case and your wouldn't have to contribute to the court case (unasked for by the GBC). As far as just allowing them to file cases against us and win court decisions which would declare your initiations of your disciples as invalid (and all other ISKCON guru's initiations), which is basicly what Adri had applied for and all the other crazy things they are applying for like de-recognizing all ISKCON gurus, like making themselves for all practical purposes independent of following the GBC in philosophical issues, and many other things which do affect ISKCON and even you and your disciples--it doesn't seem reasonable. I personally don't want to spend money on these court cases but it is they who believe they can achieve something and it would make our lives more complicated if police came in and raided our initiation ceremonies on Gaura Purnima arresting the gurus and disciples for breaking high court contempt orders. I have no doubt that Adri is upto doing all these things and that is his agenda as given in court. It has nothing to do with the so-called expulsion order. That is his excuse and you are also apparently falling for it. If you could get the matter out of the courts then we could deal with it as you said simply by preaching. I prefer that indeed. They are the ones who think they will gain something by being in court, not the GBC. But not defending doesn't seem to be a viable option either. Thankyou for expressing yourself. I hope I haven't offended you in any way by also expressing what I have understood in some of these issues. It may be academic to consider what would have happened if we hadn't passed the EC empowerment resolution, but it seems to me it wouldn't have made much difference. They apparently already had their agenda and plan as even after we withdrew the EC empowerment to expell resolution they went ahead anyway with their court cases and have never withdrewn an inch. Did Srila Prabhupada want his disciples to fight out such issues in court? Certainly not. Please convince the plaintiffs to withdraw their plaints and we will certainly not be filing any plaints against them in court on these issues. your servant, Jayapataka Swami Related VNN Stories  Comment on this storyContact VNN about this storySend this story to a friend
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