From: GBC Central Committee and All Related Ministries
To: All ISKCON Centers and Prabhupada's disciples
April 30, 2011
Dear Prabhus,
We fall at your feet and beg you to accept our apologies for our innumerable offenses committed towards each one of you. Over the forty-three years since Srila Prabhupada's departure, our collective body the GBC has been more than willing to accept the respectful obeisances humbly offered by each of you on thousands of occasions. On occasion we have even returned the act with some show of pompous sentiment. But this time we mean it. We know that we must offer each one of you our respectful obeisances with whatever genuine sincerity we are capable of mustering. After all, no one is a leader unless he has someone to lead. Therefore your position in ISKCON is just as important as is ours. We cannot exist without you. Krishna consciousness is absolute and therefore it has been our great offense to consider ourselves above you.
Rather than acting in a courteous manner, we have conducted ourselves as tyrants blinded by a false sense of power. But power over who or what? We have been very concerned about our status, our profiles and our neatly ironed dhotis, but have cared not a bit for any of you. We have been the unfortunate architects of devastating policies that have literally decimated the ranks of the Hare Krishna Movement. Our blunders have become all too obvious and our grave mistakes can no longer be swept under our silken carpets. We have become the laughing stock of innumerable websites and cartoons due to our base pomposity. Our error was to judge the success of ISKCON by the Society's accumulation of bank balances, buildings and real estate, and to a lesser extent an impersonal head count. We have finally come to our senses and have realized that a successful Society means having spiritually prosperous devotees who are each cared for properly. We fall at your feet with a sincere hope that each one you exalted mahatmas will forgive us for treating you like disposable rubbish as we have in the past.
Initially, it was due to our GBC collective propagation of brainless Zonalism that many of you would no longer feel a part of a movement you had spent years sacrificing your lives for. And who could blame you for feeling disenfranchised? An acarya must be an acarya throughout every corner of the universe; no spiritual leader can be limited to a whimsically-drawn region. One who considers himself an acarya only within the boundaries of a certain zone is a ludicrous fraud and cannot by definition be an acarya. Each one of you mahatmas quickly saw through our ruse of posing ordinary men as paramhamsas. You were not fooled by our motivated misuse of the philosophy of Krishna consciousness. But we could not even see what an insane mockery we had created by our King Paundraka-like positions because we were blinded by avarice and pride. Therefore, guided by the Supreme Lord and your good common sense, you intelligently ran from us as one quickly departs a field of stool.
We who are factually unqualified to be the servants of your servant's servant unceremoniously dismissed each of you, although you were accepted as exalted sudurlabha mahatmas by Srila Prabhupada himself. We chased you out the door, and along with you went your valuable services, which were so much appreciated by the Founder-Acarya. As soon as you exalted devotees abandoned us, street sankirtan also closed down. We had mistreated each and every one of you because we felt it was necessary to promote ourselves all the way to top by being heartless bullies. We do not know how to make it up to you, but we beg you Vaishnavas to give us the chance.
We have not set any kind of admirable example by personally joining the sankirtan parties of book distributors, as Srila Prabhupada wished. In this way we have purposefully given the impression by our very example that ordinary management is superior to the performance of Sri Chaitanya's sankirtan yagna. We have played the "I'm too important" charade when it came to street preaching. But even if we really were too occupied and needed to remain behind in our exclusive offices, then we should have at least answered your letters. This we also did not do. Even when we were arrogantly ensconced at our fancy desks we did not preach, though your unanswered letters gave us every opportunity to serve Srila Prabhupada by glorifying his message among our fellow devotees. But now the joke is on us and we realize that we have acted like a pack of fools.
One by one, the false acaryas who arose from within our dubious ranks came tumbling down. Like gamblers at the racetrack who bet on the wrong horse only to see his money lost, we watched them fall like dead birds from the sky on a scorching day. It is sure and certain that each and every one of us impelled by a fate we have created will follow Jayatirtha or Hansadutta or Rameswar to our own chopping blocks of destiny if you do not bless us by accepting our apologies here and now.
True, some of those hot air balloon acaryas we rubber-stamped still hang around like mad men and guilt-ridden perverts, and we are sorry for that, too. We know that these walking embarrassments who are mere surviving fossils of a despotic era will doubtlessly soon be decapitated by their own bad karmas. You are not to blame because the destruction of these false prophets is due to their own crimes against each of you and most of all, against Srila Prabhupada. We freely admit our cowardliness for not having the gumption to escort these terrible liabilities in the form of disgraced vomit-eating sannyasis like Vishnupada and Gurupad out the rear door, as we did to you.
It is our grave misfortune that we never gave any heed to the instructions of Mahaprabhu in His Sri Sikshastaka, although we made a big show of officiously reciting His verses in the temples. We posed as leaders, but had none of the qualities of leadership because a leader leads people and does not lead material assets. It is quite evident why Mahaprabhu left behind only eight verses; yet even these eight holy verses of simple and pure instruction are too much for our covetous, dull brains to understand. Rather than heed the teachings of Lord Chaitanya, we propagated arrogance and anger instead of love; intimidation instead of caring instruction; pompousness instead of humility. We even had the audacity to stand between yourselves and Srila Prabhupada, your eternal spiritual master unto whom you have tried your level best to dedicate your lives. We thought of you as liabilities, when we should have begged you for support and input in an atmosphere of loving trust a way that would have pleased Srila Prabhupada.
Then, once we had unceremoniously escorted each of you to the door, we attempted to fill the void created by the exit of so many devoted Godbrothers and Godsisters with unqualified yes-men and salaried flatterers posing as our faithful disciples. We knew that they were as motivated as we ourselves, because who else could be attracted to us, considering our arrogance? We based their qualifications upon college credentials, material talents, items they donated, their job position, or anything else beside a mood of full loving surrender. We actually had as little care for the spiritual well-being of our sycophants as we showed for you. The hoax of symbiotic relationships masked by a veneer of service attitude lasted for a few years. So we found big donors to pay for our trips to Mayapur and Bombay every six months and declared ISKCON a Hindu religion. Since our personal desires and ego-gratification were met, we by and large abandoned the notion of sankirtan and book distribution and gave support to Gurukuli Melas.
We confess that we have created a cheap following by bribing newcomers with initiations and artificial positions. Through flattery, we have stooped to create a "youth movement" out of middle-aged twenty-five and thirty-year olds, a "movement within a movement" that by our misguided blessings feels exempt from following most of the regulative principles. We have awarded ministerial posts and even the danda of renunciation to those who could praise us most adroitly. We have chosen bootlicking minions to perform our dirty work for us so that we need not directly soil our hands when issuing orders of probation. In this way we have posed as pure devotees, yet have fooled no one but our unfortunate selves.
By encouraging unqualified men in the dress of renunciates, we barred genuinely qualified preachers from accepting the sannyasa ashram. We thereby curtailed the preaching of Bhagavad-gita As It Is all over the world. Rather than preachers of Krishna consciousness, we have emerged as the enemies of Krishna consciousness. We understand now that Srila Prabhupada wasn't talking about some brahmachary who overeats or a brahmacharini who wants to get married when he mentioned that demons were infiltrating his temples. No, His Divine Grace was talking about motivated persons at the top like us, who seek to hijack the Society for their own personal gain. We gladly showed each one of you the door when you objected to our minimization of Srila Prabhupada and before we get what we deserve, we beg your pardon.
We have also realized that Srila Prabhupada's criticism of his avaricious Godbrothers was meant for us. We fit exactly the following description from CC Adi 12.8: "The members of the self-appointed acharya's party who occupied the property of the Gaudiya Matha are satisfied, but they could make no progress in preaching. Therefore by the result of their actions one should know that they are asara, or useless." We useless fools and rascals are the best example of a missed opportunity and this is a great cause of regret to each one of us. But here and now we do not wish to miss this opportunity to express our regrets for our heedless actions.
We allowed the Bhaktivedanta Institute to become a jet-setting dancing circus with Srila Shripada advocating his own message of "world peace." Defeated by the Maya of college degrees, we abandoned preaching to the materialistic scientists upon whom we used to fawn all over. Not that our gala conferences with Nobel Laureates were ever a success. We thoughtlessly spent the money you collected and did not make one devotee at those Bhaktivedanta Institute conferences. Our "preaching" at such conferences went only so far as we could flatter demons who came over for their free lunch. The world knows what a gang of science-worshipping blockheads we are, and now we truly regret our stupidity.
Even our own lap dogs were laughing at us, albeit silently, because their positions were based upon keeping us pleased, fat and well fed. We have covered up our spiritual crimes by making a show of spineless New Age festivals that no self-respecting Mayavadi would even attend. We have posed as great humanitarians by flashing around the money of others, though our charade only fooled ourselves. We have a Sannyasa Minister who dresses in yoga clothes and teaches yoga to ladies, while denying qualified candidates entry into the fourth order. We encouraged an ordinary buffoon on our body to take the name 'Acharyadeva' and had his name gold-stamped on the cover of Srila Prabhupada's Bhagavatam project.
We sponsor interfaith conferences at Lord Chaitanya's birthplace and never preach the essence of Gaudiya Vaishnavism to the interfaith freeloaders who show up. We have destroyed the grihasta ashram and varnashram dharma with it by arranging forced marriages that did not have a prayer of lasting a few months. We have turned the Lord's temples into havens for green card beggars from India with bed bugs. We do not know where we will be sent for our sins, but before we are dragged off to our unwholesome destinies, we hope we can obtain your kind forgiveness.
How can we make it up to each one of you? There is no way, and we are so terribly sorry for our offences. We have misled the entire movement of Mahaprabhu by misleading the individual members of this movement. The only reason that sankirtan survives at all today is because of the divine blessings of Srila Prabhupada and the previous Sampradaya Acaryas. Considering our awful track record we do not deserve any credit for spreading Krishna consciousness, though we have seized every opportunity to purloin the false tinseled glory.
After condemning each of you to a life without devotee association, we tried to fool the public at large that we are devoted sages by putting on Pope-like airs befitting altar boys, but we ourselves have been proven to be the greatest fools. Finally we have looked into the mirror and our bleak reflection is not a pretty one. History will either laugh at our folly or condemn us as a band of black-hearted rascals as we deserve, but we will not be remembered as pure devotees, even as we commission our own samadhis. We have been a band of hypocrites of the first order and now that we are nearing death's door, we find that we have become lost in a world of remorse.
The creation of the Narayana Maharaja faction of several thousand devotees which split ISKCON in two was strictly caused by us. Had we cared for you properly, as was our sworn duty to Srila Prabhupada, not a single one of you would have felt impelled to leave our association. We created the worldwide Gaudiya Math sanghas that grew out of ISKCON in two ways. First, we set the unfortunate example by being the first to run to the members of Gaudiya Math in defiance of Srila Prabhupada's instructions. We went straight to them to find out how to strengthen our positions as trumped up and hopeful Zonal Acaryas, when actually they, too, were ridiculing us behind our backs. We opportunistically latched onto whatever instructions from the Gaudiya Math we found convenient towards setting up our tiny dictatorships. Secondly, we caused further defection to the Narayana camp through cold-hearted and uncompassionate policies that caused the mass exodus of whatever Prabhupada disciples remained. The talented artist, Srimati Jadurani devi had been personally trained in preaching by Srila Prabhupada. So we had her and others like Kulashekhar severely beaten when she truthfully criticized our divisive Zonalistic policy. As a woman needing shelter, she took her preaching talent to B.V. Narayana Maharaja and demonstrated to us what a bunch of inept and unlettered fools we all are. Thousands followed her example, which we could have prevented if we had heeded her wise counsel. But we did not care for truth, we cared for false positions.
It is we who are also directly and indirectly responsible for the ascent of Rtvik-ism. Though we may have opposed it, we caused it. Had we not instituted policies that allowed incompetent men to posture and parade around as acaryas, it is safe to say that Rtvik-ism would never have raised its hollow head. We are therefore sending copies of this letter to all Gaudiya Math centers as well as to the Rtvik temples to beg forgiveness of those members as well. We hope that this letter will be displayed prominently in each of those centers, as in each and every ISKCON temple where even casual guests can read it.
History verifies that those who tried to criticize our absolute dictatorship were ostracized, beaten or even murdered. Like potentates sitting above the law, we have never bothered to answer any charges leveled against us. Members of the GBC who were involved in heinous crimes like the murder of Sulocana das Prabhu now enjoy a sort of immunity from prosecution due to their money, power and influence. We have squandered the Society's funds on lawsuits and have paid hush money to abused children when they grew to age. All the while we sheltered the abusers of children; criminal pedophiles that still remain skulking within the shadows of our ranks to this day. When dissidents from among our own private politburo were ever to arise, we were quick to buy off their silence with fantastic sums of money. In this way we have sent our fellow cronies like Harikesa off to buy new houses in fringe communities with our blessings. We have behaved as though we were members of an exclusive country club with a set of rules that applies to us and not to you.
We have severely penalized devotees whose only crime was to offer counsel when our activities were obviously in opposition to the orders of Srila Prabhupada. We have clung onto our posts like petty tyrants and little Ravanas, even when our GBC position was meant to be a revolving one, elected by the votes of temple presidents. We decimated temples by destroying local management, when we should have left local hands-on decisions to the temple presidents. We have neglected to see if the devotees in the temples are chanting their prescribed rounds, are attending the morning programme or are suitably engaged, each according to his or her propensity. On the other side of the coin, we have purposely allowed some other temples to crumble when we could have stepped in and offered support. We have commissioned public relations flatterers to glorify us on ISKCON websites like Dandavats and ISKCON News, which perpetuate our myth of infallibility. We have thus placed self-centered party politics above spiritual management. We have even made unauthorized changes to Srila Prabhupada's writings, setting the worst conceivable precedent and encouragement for future rascal editors to arise. We cannot imagine what the future will hold for us, but here at your feet, all we beg for now is your kind forgiveness.
In a vainglorious attempt to fool you with an appearance of humility towards those whose spiritual lives we have ruined, we have tried to offer free rooms to our Godbrothers and sisters at the Mayapur festival, a free seat on the tour bus, or a page in the special Vyasa Puja books. We are supporting old age homes and hospices for dying Prabhus without addressing the problem of how we helped kill your spiritual lives along your way to old age. We have tried to renovate our Kamsa-like image by offering hundreds of thousands of free plates of food daily to Delhi school children. But we did not care when many deathly ill or injured Godbrothers were hospitalized, or even when innocent Godbrothers were jailed for years on end for the crime of preaching Krishna consciousness. We never lifted a finger to help our suffering Prabhus; we merrily left them to rot or die. We are guilty of having thrown Prabhupada's disciples to the winds without lifting a finger, while we feasted like Maharajas off giant plates. Is there any atonement in all the three worlds for our crimes?
We have allowed the offensive publication of mayavada literature by one of the very editors of Back to Godhead, and have supported the glorification of Mayavadis in publications of the BBT. We publish open contradictions of Srila Prabhupada on the site Dandavats. We have allowed criticism of the Founder-Acarya to raise its ugly head in ISKCON ashrams. We dance on YouTube videos with Mayavadis, while the genuine yuga dharma of sankirtan has been curtailed in every town and village. Everyone knows about our faults, and we can live in denial no longer. Now it is high time we came forward to face the music at your lotus feet.
With such a bleak portfolio behind us, how can we ever talk of liberation in the Supreme? Sinners like us who have defiled Srila Prabhupada's true servants can never hope for going back to home, back to Godhead. We hope that you will print out this letter and place it in every temple so that others can realize that we have finally come to our senses. As far as rectifying our innumerable grievous offenses, please let us know how we can make it up to each one of you. Death grows more immanent by the day. We close by placing our heads at the dust of your lotus feet, dear Prabhus.
Your humble servants,
The GBC
NB: This letter, which reflects a far better understanding of Krishna consciousness than what we have seen amongst the GBC in the 44 years since the departure of Srila Prabhupada, has been prepared by the God Brother Council. It was not written by the Governing Body Committee of ISKCON.
To: All ISKCON Centers and Prabhupada's disciples
April 30, 2011
Dear Prabhus,
We fall at your feet and beg you to accept our apologies for our innumerable offenses committed towards each one of you. Over the forty-three years since Srila Prabhupada's departure, our collective body the GBC has been more than willing to accept the respectful obeisances humbly offered by each of you on thousands of occasions. On occasion we have even returned the act with some show of pompous sentiment. But this time we mean it. We know that we must offer each one of you our respectful obeisances with whatever genuine sincerity we are capable of mustering. After all, no one is a leader unless he has someone to lead. Therefore your position in ISKCON is just as important as is ours. We cannot exist without you. Krishna consciousness is absolute and therefore it has been our great offense to consider ourselves above you.
Rather than acting in a courteous manner, we have conducted ourselves as tyrants blinded by a false sense of power. But power over who or what? We have been very concerned about our status, our profiles and our neatly ironed dhotis, but have cared not a bit for any of you. We have been the unfortunate architects of devastating policies that have literally decimated the ranks of the Hare Krishna Movement. Our blunders have become all too obvious and our grave mistakes can no longer be swept under our silken carpets. We have become the laughing stock of innumerable websites and cartoons due to our base pomposity. Our error was to judge the success of ISKCON by the Society's accumulation of bank balances, buildings and real estate, and to a lesser extent an impersonal head count. We have finally come to our senses and have realized that a successful Society means having spiritually prosperous devotees who are each cared for properly. We fall at your feet with a sincere hope that each one you exalted mahatmas will forgive us for treating you like disposable rubbish as we have in the past.
Initially, it was due to our GBC collective propagation of brainless Zonalism that many of you would no longer feel a part of a movement you had spent years sacrificing your lives for. And who could blame you for feeling disenfranchised? An acarya must be an acarya throughout every corner of the universe; no spiritual leader can be limited to a whimsically-drawn region. One who considers himself an acarya only within the boundaries of a certain zone is a ludicrous fraud and cannot by definition be an acarya. Each one of you mahatmas quickly saw through our ruse of posing ordinary men as paramhamsas. You were not fooled by our motivated misuse of the philosophy of Krishna consciousness. But we could not even see what an insane mockery we had created by our King Paundraka-like positions because we were blinded by avarice and pride. Therefore, guided by the Supreme Lord and your good common sense, you intelligently ran from us as one quickly departs a field of stool.
We who are factually unqualified to be the servants of your servant's servant unceremoniously dismissed each of you, although you were accepted as exalted sudurlabha mahatmas by Srila Prabhupada himself. We chased you out the door, and along with you went your valuable services, which were so much appreciated by the Founder-Acarya. As soon as you exalted devotees abandoned us, street sankirtan also closed down. We had mistreated each and every one of you because we felt it was necessary to promote ourselves all the way to top by being heartless bullies. We do not know how to make it up to you, but we beg you Vaishnavas to give us the chance.
We have not set any kind of admirable example by personally joining the sankirtan parties of book distributors, as Srila Prabhupada wished. In this way we have purposefully given the impression by our very example that ordinary management is superior to the performance of Sri Chaitanya's sankirtan yagna. We have played the "I'm too important" charade when it came to street preaching. But even if we really were too occupied and needed to remain behind in our exclusive offices, then we should have at least answered your letters. This we also did not do. Even when we were arrogantly ensconced at our fancy desks we did not preach, though your unanswered letters gave us every opportunity to serve Srila Prabhupada by glorifying his message among our fellow devotees. But now the joke is on us and we realize that we have acted like a pack of fools.
One by one, the false acaryas who arose from within our dubious ranks came tumbling down. Like gamblers at the racetrack who bet on the wrong horse only to see his money lost, we watched them fall like dead birds from the sky on a scorching day. It is sure and certain that each and every one of us impelled by a fate we have created will follow Jayatirtha or Hansadutta or Rameswar to our own chopping blocks of destiny if you do not bless us by accepting our apologies here and now.
True, some of those hot air balloon acaryas we rubber-stamped still hang around like mad men and guilt-ridden perverts, and we are sorry for that, too. We know that these walking embarrassments who are mere surviving fossils of a despotic era will doubtlessly soon be decapitated by their own bad karmas. You are not to blame because the destruction of these false prophets is due to their own crimes against each of you and most of all, against Srila Prabhupada. We freely admit our cowardliness for not having the gumption to escort these terrible liabilities in the form of disgraced vomit-eating sannyasis like Vishnupada and Gurupad out the rear door, as we did to you.
It is our grave misfortune that we never gave any heed to the instructions of Mahaprabhu in His Sri Sikshastaka, although we made a big show of officiously reciting His verses in the temples. We posed as leaders, but had none of the qualities of leadership because a leader leads people and does not lead material assets. It is quite evident why Mahaprabhu left behind only eight verses; yet even these eight holy verses of simple and pure instruction are too much for our covetous, dull brains to understand. Rather than heed the teachings of Lord Chaitanya, we propagated arrogance and anger instead of love; intimidation instead of caring instruction; pompousness instead of humility. We even had the audacity to stand between yourselves and Srila Prabhupada, your eternal spiritual master unto whom you have tried your level best to dedicate your lives. We thought of you as liabilities, when we should have begged you for support and input in an atmosphere of loving trust a way that would have pleased Srila Prabhupada.
Then, once we had unceremoniously escorted each of you to the door, we attempted to fill the void created by the exit of so many devoted Godbrothers and Godsisters with unqualified yes-men and salaried flatterers posing as our faithful disciples. We knew that they were as motivated as we ourselves, because who else could be attracted to us, considering our arrogance? We based their qualifications upon college credentials, material talents, items they donated, their job position, or anything else beside a mood of full loving surrender. We actually had as little care for the spiritual well-being of our sycophants as we showed for you. The hoax of symbiotic relationships masked by a veneer of service attitude lasted for a few years. So we found big donors to pay for our trips to Mayapur and Bombay every six months and declared ISKCON a Hindu religion. Since our personal desires and ego-gratification were met, we by and large abandoned the notion of sankirtan and book distribution and gave support to Gurukuli Melas.
We confess that we have created a cheap following by bribing newcomers with initiations and artificial positions. Through flattery, we have stooped to create a "youth movement" out of middle-aged twenty-five and thirty-year olds, a "movement within a movement" that by our misguided blessings feels exempt from following most of the regulative principles. We have awarded ministerial posts and even the danda of renunciation to those who could praise us most adroitly. We have chosen bootlicking minions to perform our dirty work for us so that we need not directly soil our hands when issuing orders of probation. In this way we have posed as pure devotees, yet have fooled no one but our unfortunate selves.
By encouraging unqualified men in the dress of renunciates, we barred genuinely qualified preachers from accepting the sannyasa ashram. We thereby curtailed the preaching of Bhagavad-gita As It Is all over the world. Rather than preachers of Krishna consciousness, we have emerged as the enemies of Krishna consciousness. We understand now that Srila Prabhupada wasn't talking about some brahmachary who overeats or a brahmacharini who wants to get married when he mentioned that demons were infiltrating his temples. No, His Divine Grace was talking about motivated persons at the top like us, who seek to hijack the Society for their own personal gain. We gladly showed each one of you the door when you objected to our minimization of Srila Prabhupada and before we get what we deserve, we beg your pardon.
We have also realized that Srila Prabhupada's criticism of his avaricious Godbrothers was meant for us. We fit exactly the following description from CC Adi 12.8: "The members of the self-appointed acharya's party who occupied the property of the Gaudiya Matha are satisfied, but they could make no progress in preaching. Therefore by the result of their actions one should know that they are asara, or useless." We useless fools and rascals are the best example of a missed opportunity and this is a great cause of regret to each one of us. But here and now we do not wish to miss this opportunity to express our regrets for our heedless actions.
We allowed the Bhaktivedanta Institute to become a jet-setting dancing circus with Srila Shripada advocating his own message of "world peace." Defeated by the Maya of college degrees, we abandoned preaching to the materialistic scientists upon whom we used to fawn all over. Not that our gala conferences with Nobel Laureates were ever a success. We thoughtlessly spent the money you collected and did not make one devotee at those Bhaktivedanta Institute conferences. Our "preaching" at such conferences went only so far as we could flatter demons who came over for their free lunch. The world knows what a gang of science-worshipping blockheads we are, and now we truly regret our stupidity.
Even our own lap dogs were laughing at us, albeit silently, because their positions were based upon keeping us pleased, fat and well fed. We have covered up our spiritual crimes by making a show of spineless New Age festivals that no self-respecting Mayavadi would even attend. We have posed as great humanitarians by flashing around the money of others, though our charade only fooled ourselves. We have a Sannyasa Minister who dresses in yoga clothes and teaches yoga to ladies, while denying qualified candidates entry into the fourth order. We encouraged an ordinary buffoon on our body to take the name 'Acharyadeva' and had his name gold-stamped on the cover of Srila Prabhupada's Bhagavatam project.
We sponsor interfaith conferences at Lord Chaitanya's birthplace and never preach the essence of Gaudiya Vaishnavism to the interfaith freeloaders who show up. We have destroyed the grihasta ashram and varnashram dharma with it by arranging forced marriages that did not have a prayer of lasting a few months. We have turned the Lord's temples into havens for green card beggars from India with bed bugs. We do not know where we will be sent for our sins, but before we are dragged off to our unwholesome destinies, we hope we can obtain your kind forgiveness.
How can we make it up to each one of you? There is no way, and we are so terribly sorry for our offences. We have misled the entire movement of Mahaprabhu by misleading the individual members of this movement. The only reason that sankirtan survives at all today is because of the divine blessings of Srila Prabhupada and the previous Sampradaya Acaryas. Considering our awful track record we do not deserve any credit for spreading Krishna consciousness, though we have seized every opportunity to purloin the false tinseled glory.
After condemning each of you to a life without devotee association, we tried to fool the public at large that we are devoted sages by putting on Pope-like airs befitting altar boys, but we ourselves have been proven to be the greatest fools. Finally we have looked into the mirror and our bleak reflection is not a pretty one. History will either laugh at our folly or condemn us as a band of black-hearted rascals as we deserve, but we will not be remembered as pure devotees, even as we commission our own samadhis. We have been a band of hypocrites of the first order and now that we are nearing death's door, we find that we have become lost in a world of remorse.
The creation of the Narayana Maharaja faction of several thousand devotees which split ISKCON in two was strictly caused by us. Had we cared for you properly, as was our sworn duty to Srila Prabhupada, not a single one of you would have felt impelled to leave our association. We created the worldwide Gaudiya Math sanghas that grew out of ISKCON in two ways. First, we set the unfortunate example by being the first to run to the members of Gaudiya Math in defiance of Srila Prabhupada's instructions. We went straight to them to find out how to strengthen our positions as trumped up and hopeful Zonal Acaryas, when actually they, too, were ridiculing us behind our backs. We opportunistically latched onto whatever instructions from the Gaudiya Math we found convenient towards setting up our tiny dictatorships. Secondly, we caused further defection to the Narayana camp through cold-hearted and uncompassionate policies that caused the mass exodus of whatever Prabhupada disciples remained. The talented artist, Srimati Jadurani devi had been personally trained in preaching by Srila Prabhupada. So we had her and others like Kulashekhar severely beaten when she truthfully criticized our divisive Zonalistic policy. As a woman needing shelter, she took her preaching talent to B.V. Narayana Maharaja and demonstrated to us what a bunch of inept and unlettered fools we all are. Thousands followed her example, which we could have prevented if we had heeded her wise counsel. But we did not care for truth, we cared for false positions.
It is we who are also directly and indirectly responsible for the ascent of Rtvik-ism. Though we may have opposed it, we caused it. Had we not instituted policies that allowed incompetent men to posture and parade around as acaryas, it is safe to say that Rtvik-ism would never have raised its hollow head. We are therefore sending copies of this letter to all Gaudiya Math centers as well as to the Rtvik temples to beg forgiveness of those members as well. We hope that this letter will be displayed prominently in each of those centers, as in each and every ISKCON temple where even casual guests can read it.
History verifies that those who tried to criticize our absolute dictatorship were ostracized, beaten or even murdered. Like potentates sitting above the law, we have never bothered to answer any charges leveled against us. Members of the GBC who were involved in heinous crimes like the murder of Sulocana das Prabhu now enjoy a sort of immunity from prosecution due to their money, power and influence. We have squandered the Society's funds on lawsuits and have paid hush money to abused children when they grew to age. All the while we sheltered the abusers of children; criminal pedophiles that still remain skulking within the shadows of our ranks to this day. When dissidents from among our own private politburo were ever to arise, we were quick to buy off their silence with fantastic sums of money. In this way we have sent our fellow cronies like Harikesa off to buy new houses in fringe communities with our blessings. We have behaved as though we were members of an exclusive country club with a set of rules that applies to us and not to you.
We have severely penalized devotees whose only crime was to offer counsel when our activities were obviously in opposition to the orders of Srila Prabhupada. We have clung onto our posts like petty tyrants and little Ravanas, even when our GBC position was meant to be a revolving one, elected by the votes of temple presidents. We decimated temples by destroying local management, when we should have left local hands-on decisions to the temple presidents. We have neglected to see if the devotees in the temples are chanting their prescribed rounds, are attending the morning programme or are suitably engaged, each according to his or her propensity. On the other side of the coin, we have purposely allowed some other temples to crumble when we could have stepped in and offered support. We have commissioned public relations flatterers to glorify us on ISKCON websites like Dandavats and ISKCON News, which perpetuate our myth of infallibility. We have thus placed self-centered party politics above spiritual management. We have even made unauthorized changes to Srila Prabhupada's writings, setting the worst conceivable precedent and encouragement for future rascal editors to arise. We cannot imagine what the future will hold for us, but here at your feet, all we beg for now is your kind forgiveness.
In a vainglorious attempt to fool you with an appearance of humility towards those whose spiritual lives we have ruined, we have tried to offer free rooms to our Godbrothers and sisters at the Mayapur festival, a free seat on the tour bus, or a page in the special Vyasa Puja books. We are supporting old age homes and hospices for dying Prabhus without addressing the problem of how we helped kill your spiritual lives along your way to old age. We have tried to renovate our Kamsa-like image by offering hundreds of thousands of free plates of food daily to Delhi school children. But we did not care when many deathly ill or injured Godbrothers were hospitalized, or even when innocent Godbrothers were jailed for years on end for the crime of preaching Krishna consciousness. We never lifted a finger to help our suffering Prabhus; we merrily left them to rot or die. We are guilty of having thrown Prabhupada's disciples to the winds without lifting a finger, while we feasted like Maharajas off giant plates. Is there any atonement in all the three worlds for our crimes?
We have allowed the offensive publication of mayavada literature by one of the very editors of Back to Godhead, and have supported the glorification of Mayavadis in publications of the BBT. We publish open contradictions of Srila Prabhupada on the site Dandavats. We have allowed criticism of the Founder-Acarya to raise its ugly head in ISKCON ashrams. We dance on YouTube videos with Mayavadis, while the genuine yuga dharma of sankirtan has been curtailed in every town and village. Everyone knows about our faults, and we can live in denial no longer. Now it is high time we came forward to face the music at your lotus feet.
With such a bleak portfolio behind us, how can we ever talk of liberation in the Supreme? Sinners like us who have defiled Srila Prabhupada's true servants can never hope for going back to home, back to Godhead. We hope that you will print out this letter and place it in every temple so that others can realize that we have finally come to our senses. As far as rectifying our innumerable grievous offenses, please let us know how we can make it up to each one of you. Death grows more immanent by the day. We close by placing our heads at the dust of your lotus feet, dear Prabhus.
Your humble servants,
The GBC
NB: This letter, which reflects a far better understanding of Krishna consciousness than what we have seen amongst the GBC in the 44 years since the departure of Srila Prabhupada, has been prepared by the God Brother Council. It was not written by the Governing Body Committee of ISKCON.
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