ISKCON Bangalore fights back allegations
Jan 14 2011 | Express Buzz | BANGALORE | ISKCON Bangalore President Madhu Pandith Dasa on Wednesday said after the house committee of the Legislative Assembly cleared the Akshaya Patra Foundation (APF) of all the baseless allegations levied against it in the ongoing Assembly session, they would continue with their good work.
Speaking to reporters, Dasa said, “Congress MLA DK Shivakumar started his tirade against the foundation after Mumbai ISKCON, which is run by some American Gurus, lost its case against us. In fact we are fighting injustice that is done to the great movement started by our spiritual master.”
Dasa also furnished a copy of the report submitted by the house committee, according to which, all the allegations levelled against ISKCON Bangalore were false.
“American gurus” phrase used in this report sounds dangerously inflicted with that kind spirit of sectarianism which the last all three great acaryas of the Brahma Madhva Gaudiya Sampradaya were solely fighting against. It obviously stresses the bodily consideration, birth place, and doing so goes against the pure teachings of the acaryas! Any good will come from cooking milions of tons of food for people if we reintroduce such apasampradaic vision again into so call “vaishnavism”. This is clear sign of sectarianism. Bodily considerations, even in regard to so fallen devotees like “ISKCON gurus”goes against the pure teachings of our present Acarya and His whole Glorious Western Adventure in spreading the Holly Name of Lord Sri Krishna to every town and village of the whole world. It is better to be humble and not to go on fighting and creating new divisions clearly based on material designations and considerations. Doing this we will never make an end to further disgracing our Acaryas mission prabhus!
When “Gurus” constantly instigate their innocent followers to fight ritviks by any means such as ransacking their temples in Calcutta, advise their followers to “go shop to shop and tell the shop owners about the evil ritviks”, instruct their followers to foil false criminal cases against ritvik devotees in good-standing, then such “Gurus” are certainly in bodily concept of life and their followers cannot and do not advance beyond such bodily conception either. Their spirituality is shallow.
Will a real Guru engage a disciple to waste his precious human life in fighting other devotees who hold a different view point? If they do, then they are fit to be called “American Gurus” and such “Gurus” are certainly in bodily concept of life.
You right about them Prabhu no question, yet the point is whether we are better while calling them names pointing on them as “american gurus”instead of bogus gurus, or simply gundas perhaps. H.D.G. was nonetheless very much thankful to His wonderful western disciples and rather critical about the Indians who mostly rejected to help Him in Lord Caitanyas mission been spread to the entire world. I am not for ISKCON or for ritviks, I am rather for the truth and the truth is, that if a second class men argues with a third class man, he becomes a fourth class man. The are no “american gurus”, or “Indian gurus”. Guru is above any sort and kind of material designations, this is an axsiomatic truth, and if we call them bad because americans, than what kind of testimony do we give to the whole preaching of Srila Prabhupada. A few days ago a rascal was on this website offending the Acarya as to allegedly being unsuccesful in educating His disciples, and we have to remember that most of them were in fact westerners, and it was so due to His mercy but also their exalted position and willingness to cooperate with the great acarya. Maya is extremely strong, things went wrong, in fact very bad, but we should not step back into the smarta sectarian mentality and destroy everything what the Acaryas were so strongly fighting for, and it was the world wide mission of chanting the Holly Name, and this can’t be established with the mentality based on rase, nationality or othe sectarian references. Constant fight in courts will also not help the cause, it proves only that both sides are bereft of proper understanding and spiritual power to spread the Sankirtan Movement, both sides are captured by the snare of maya thinking “I am Indian”, or “I am white”, “I am ISKCON”, or “I am ritivk”, whereas all this only destroyes more and more the chances of the suffering population for the only solution to our problems, which still is and will remain the pure nonsectarian message of the current and forever ISKCON Founder and Acarya, H.D.G. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada
y.s. Jd