Ramesvara wants back in
April 01, 2013 (VNN) by Bhima das HKM
Looks like Ramesvara is making his way back into the BBT.
Recently Ramesvara responded to Brhatasloka’s statement that Ramesvara was never a BBT trustee and that Ramesvara had created a shell of the BBT, never authorized by Srila Prabhupada. Ramesvara claims he was appointed BBT trustee by Srila Prabhupada publicly in Mayapur, 1976, and says he was following orders from Srila Prabhupada pertaining to BBT structure, orders given to him personally and to which Hansadutta (BBT trustee) was not privy. He further says no one besides him had anything to do with the BBT North America from 1975, and that Srila Prabhupada no longer consulted Hansadutta about BBT affairs after rejecting Hansadutta’s proposal for an umbrella corporation with BBT as a satellite.
But Hansadutta has replied that Ramesvara was never a BBT trustee. When the BBT court case was going on, the court did not allow Ramesvara’s testimony as BBT trustee, because neither he nor ISKCON/BBTI legal team could produce any record of his appointment. Thus it was decided that he had no legal standing, that he was not a legal BBT trustee.
Ramesvara was head of the BBT operations in North America from 1975, and while under his management, the BBT expanded rapidly and produced the 17-vol Chaitanya-charitamrita in record time, a phenomenal task. However, few devotees are aware of his role in the bypassing and takeover of Srila Prabhupada’s actual Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, how he blocked the BBT trustee from performing his duties, and that the changing of Srila Prabhupada’s books began under his watch. See “Just what was Ramesvara’s role in the BBT?“.
With the copyright license with MacMillan due to expire in 1982, Hansadutta published the 1972 MacMillan edition of Bhagavad-gita As It Is in 3 different covers: vinyl, paper and hard. The books came off the press and we set up a table at the Mayapur festival, 1982 to display and sell. Ramesvara was unhappy that Hansadutta had acted on his own – never mind that Ramesvara had refused to cooperate with Hansadutta – and ISKCON GBC banned the books. The devotees had to pack up the books and table, and were not permitted to sell. ISKCON boycotted the Bhagavad-gitas printed by Hansadutta, as well as the 30-volume Srimad-Bhagavatam sets, and one-volume Srimad-Bhagavatam also printed by Hansadutta later that same year. As it happened, Ramesvara had his own Bhagavad-gita in the wings, but he had miscalculated the date of expiration of the MacMillan copyright license by one year. So finally in 1983, BBT North America came out with what was billed as the first BBT edition of Bhagavad-gita As It Is, BUT IT WAS THE REVISED EDITION. Under Ramesvara, BBT and later BBT International never did reprint the 1972 MacMillan edition, the original full edition bearing Srila Prabhupada’s signature. Since Hansadutta’s printing in 1982, only after the BBT court case was settled in 1998 was the 1972 MacMillan edition reprinted, under license agreement with BBT International, Inc., and that is only because Hansadutta stood up for Srila Prabhupada’s original BBT in the BBT courtcase. So the changes to Srila Prabhupada’s books began with Ramesvara.
Some devotees might not remember or perhaps are not aware that for several years, from the time when Hansadutta and then other ISKCON gurus were expelled from the Society, their disciples who did not accept to be reinitiated by other ISKCON gurus or who did not submit to ISKCON GBC or who challenged the GBC were blacklisted and could not purchase books from the BBT in any part of the world. Not only that, Jayadvaita stated his intentions to edit all of Srila Prabhupada’s books, and neither BBT nor BBT International, Inc. were printing any of the original books. Stocks of the original books were running out. Devotees outside ISKCON became greatly concerned that Srila Prabhupada’s books were not being made available. In Singapore, I went ahead to print for our distribution, under Hansadutta’s authority as BBT trustee. In 1991, BBT International, Inc. filed a legal action against me there for copyright infringement. Eventually they had to withdraw, because they could not show how the copyrights were transferred from Srila Prabhupada’s trust to BBT International, Inc. Then ISKCON and BBT International, Inc. sued Hansadutta and petitioned the court to declare that Srila Prabhupada’s BBT never existed and that Hansadutta was never a trustee and that the copyrights never belonged to the BBT. I put up the financing for defending both court cases, because Hansadutta opened my eyes to the danger that Srila Prabhupada’s unadulterated books might be lost altogether. Devotees have Hansadutta to thank for defending Srila Prabhupada’s BBT and winning a settlement that gave a license for printing all of Srila Prabhupada’s original books (pre-1978). Another outcome of the court case was that BBT International, Inc. agreed to sell to devotees, regardless of their affiliation. If not for Hansadutta’s action as trustee to save Srila Prabhupada’s legacy and make it available, Srila Prabhupada’s original books would have disappeared, because BBT International, Inc. is dedicated to printing only those adulterated books.
As for Ramesvara’s claim to have been a BBT trustee, there is no record of any BBT resolution appointing him as such.
• In September, 1974, Jayatirtha recommended Ramesvara to Srila Prabhupada for BBT trustee, but Srila Prabhupada allowed that he could be BBT secretary (Letter to Jayatirtha, 74-09-14), and the very next day, September 15, 1974, Srila Prabhupada appointed Hansadutta as BBT trustee to replace Karandhara.
• GBC resolutions for the annual meeting in Mayapur, 1975, March 29th, read: “1) Resolved: Ramesvara das is appointed a trustee of BBT.” But by whom? GBC had no legal authority to appoint BBT trustees.
• Contradicting the 1975 GBC resolutions, Ramesvara himself says he was publicly appointed by Srila Prabhupada at the Mayapur festival in 1976. Hansadutta was there, and one would think that he might have seen, or at least as BBT trustee he would have been informed. There is no BBT resolution confirming Ramesvara’s appointment. There is also no mention of it in the GBC resolutions for the annual meeting from that year. Instead, the 1976 resolutions read: “5) BBT Trustees: Jayatirtha is appointed BBT Trustee for Europe, Tamal Krsna Maharaj is a BBT Trustee in U.S.A., Hridayananda Maharaj is BBT Trustee for S.A., Gopal Krsna is Manager for BBT in India.” Again, GBC had no authority to appoint any BBT trustees, so what was happening here is unclear. It is also not possible for all these persons to have been trustees, because the BBT Agreement allows only 5 trustees at any time, and there were already 3: Srila Prabhupada, Bali Mardan and Hansadutta. So how could these persons have been legal trustees?
Ramesvara has replied Hansadutta’s response, “Here is one of many examples: Srila Prabhupada wrote a letter to me dated May 26, 1976. In the last paragraph His Divine Grace wrote: ‘I am sending a copy of this letter to Jayatirtha and Bhagavan to discuss this matter. Since you are all BBT Trustees, you can discuss and come up with some idea how this can be done. I hope this meets you in good health. Your ever well wisher, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami’ I suppose this was just Prabhupada giving us ‘honorary titles’?”
Count up the BBT trustees according to all these versions: Srila Prabhupada, Bali Mardan, Hansadutta make 3, and if we can believe the GBC resolutions for 1975 and 1976, there were 5 additional BBT trustees: Ramesvara, Jayatirtha, Tamal Krsna, Hridayananda, Gopal Krsna, and then the letter Ramesvara refers to mentions also Bhagavan, so altogether 9 trustees. Not possible, not according to the terms of the BBT Agreement.
Did Srila Prabhupada make a mistake? Assuredly not. We know he was exceedingly thorough and meticulous when it came to business and legal matters. So what was up with the number of so-called trustees? One plausible explanation is that on the one hand there were the legal trustees, and on the other, persons who headed up BBT operations in various zones might have been called trustees, but without legal authority. This was the practice (even now) within BBT International, Inc., which is a corporation and not a trust at all and has no legal trustees. The word “trustee” has been used very loosely without any connection to the actual trust.
So not only was Ramesvara not a legal BBT trustee; Ramesvara also ran BBT as ISKCON of America or ISKCON LA, using BBT as a fictitious business name. It was a shell. And along with the GBC, he planned for the incorporation of BBT, which happened in 1988, two years after Ramesvara left the Society in disgrace, having been caught out by his own disciples having illicit relations with a 14- or 15-year-old female disciple. Pedophile. So we have fake BBT, fake trustees, and the real BBT was set aside and taken over by ISKCON – completely illegally (see <a href=”http://namhatta.com/2013/03/29/what-happened-to-the-bbt/“>”What happened to the BBT”</a>).
If Ramesvara wants back his BBT job, he should have to answer for these developments and endeavor to put things back the way Srila Prabhupada set them up. Just like Srila Prabhupada ordered that Ramesvara should <a href=”http://www.hansadutta.com/ART_NAMHATTA/changes.html“>put things back to the original</a> in his books when he learned that changes were being introduced under Ramesvara’s supervision. Ramesvara has come back, some say, but a real comeback would involve public apology to Srila Prabhupada and to the devotees, and an accounting for his mistakes and an effort to remedy them, with respect for Srila Prabhupada’s arrangements with regard to BBT, with respect to the BBT trustee Hansadutta, and by decommissioning Jayadvaita & Co, putting a stop to the ongoing changes to the books, and making only Srila Prabhupada’s original books available. If he is not willing to serve the actual BBT, not willing to acknowledge and cooperate with the legitimate BBT trustee, not willing to safeguard the integrity of the siddhanta by chasing Jayadvaita out, and not willing to stand up to the GBC and tell them hands off the BBT, then he has no business reclaiming any position. If his ambition is to be readmitted to the good old boys’ club (GBC) and steer BBT International, Inc. on its present course without correction, it will be a sorry affair for everyone.
