Jagat

Rediscovered this verse today. <center>SoDazyAs tvam uDor vimuJca sahasA nAmApi vAmAçaye tasyA durvinayair muner api manaH zAntAtmanaH kupyati | dhig goSThendra-sute samasta-guNinAM maulau vrajAbhyarcite pAdAnte patite’pi naiva kurute bhrU-kSepam apy atra yA ||</center> "O Padma, don't even mention the name of that woman. To speak of her is to destroy your intelligence. She is so badly behaved that even the sages would break their vow of silence to speak of her faults. Just look, Krishna, the son of Nanda Maharaj, is the fountainhead of all virtue. He is worshiped by all the residents of Vrindavan, human, animal or other. He has fallen down at her feet, begging her to forgive him, and she won't even glance at him!!" (Ujjvala-nIlamaNi, 9.49)

zuzrUSoH zraddadhAnasya Though reduplication is present in both the above words, it is not being used in the same way in both examples. Reduplication takes many different forms and is used in the imperfect tense (as in vavande), in the desiderative, in the third conjugation in the present tense (and in some irregular verbs), and in the intensive (which is quite rare outside of kavya literature. zuzrUSu <-- derived from /zru, "to hear"; desiderative form, "one who desires to hear." The noun meaning "desire to hear" is zuzrUSA (feminine). This has come to mean "service" and "servant," since one who wishes to hear from the guru must serve him. The -oH ending is either ablative ("from, than") or genitive ("of"). So "of one who wishes to hear." zraddadhAnasya <-- You will recognize that this word is related to the familiar zraddhA, "faith." This word is unusual in that it is a combination of a rare prefix "zrad" and the verb root "dhA", which has many, many derivatives in various forms including most words that have dhi in them (though not "buddhi"). The dhA root is in the third conjugation, which reduplicates the root in the present tense. The third person singular is dadhAti. So if you want to say, "I have faith in him," you would say, "tasmin zraddadhAmi." Another verb of this class is dA (dadAti, dadAmi buddhi-yogaM tam). zraddadhAna is a present participle "having faith". the -asya ending is genitive. So zuzrUSoH zraddadhAnasya means "of one who is serving (with the desire to hear) and has faith."

This seems like a worthwhile endeavor, so I will indeed try to get back to it, Tarunji. The -au ending is masculine dual in nominative and accusative. The form here is interesting as Srinivas Acharya divides the six goswamis into three pairs, and then makes all the adjectives agree with the dual form. There are two kinds of alankaras, sabdalankara and arthalankara, sound and meaning. The way things sound is very important in Sanskrit--you get a lot more alliteration and internal rhyme (usually based on inflection) in Sanskrit poetry than you do in English, though line-end rhyme is rarer. Jagat

Dear friends, I was reminded of some work I did a few years back. I made a tape explaining how to recognize different Sanskrit metres and how to chant according to the different metres. It is accompanied by an explanatory text telling how to recognize long and short syllables, what caesura is, and gives numerous examples of the principal metres used in the Bhagavatam and Goswami writings, like Anusthubh, Tristubh, Jagati, Malini, Vasanta-tilaka, Prithvi, Mandakranta, Sikharini, Sardula-vikridita, and Sragdhara. My original intention was to sell the tape, but I wasn't totally happy with it (mostly the sound of my own voice). If anyone is interested, however, I could make it available for a nominal fee. Address your email to jankbrz@. Thanks, Jagat

There is a recently published study in the International Journal of Neuroscience that documents effects of reading Sanskrit (according to this study, some of the effects are similar to those experienced during the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique). For more, see: http://www.mum.edu/TheReview --

<h2>Adjusting to life in Hong Kong</h2> Our main difficulty in adjusting to life in Hong Kong was the noise. At the time, it seemed that major construction was taking place almost everywhere. A new railway line was being put in next to the old one directly behind the building that housed our temple. A new bridge also being built almost directly behind the temple apartment, for which many pilings were being put into the ground with huge machines that hammered them into the earth. Bam! and the ground would shake for a few seconds. Then bam! again and then bam! once more, all day every day from seven in the morning till dark. As soon as the bridge was completed, another construction site began, and then another, with the same noise. Sometimes it seemed that many of them were all going on at the same time. We had to take recourse to earplugs to help us tolerate the situation. Then there were the smells. Each day at noon, pigs being transported by train from China would pass underneath our windows.The smell of one of these trains would knock you out. All of a sudden, a blast of contaminated air would come rushing into the temple and we would run to close up all the windows until the odour passed. Sometimes we managed to get our timing right and close the windows before the damage was done, but since we kep them open all the time because of the heat, we usually got a dose of pig perfume each day. Then there were the smells in the street of the vendors cooking their products. Grilled squid, cho dou fu, which is translated as “stinky tofu,” smelled almost as bad as the pig manure. It was fried in rancid oil and sold to people “addicted to its fine taste,” as I was told by the Chinese. When our leader returned from Mayapur, he was very pleased to hear that Jayatirtha Prabhu had donated ten thousand dollars to cover some of the cost of printing the Chinese Bhagavad Gita. One day, he suddenly ordered us to learn Chinese at once. “The Mormon preachers who come here learn Chinese in three months and so can you,” he declared to us. He told us that he would also begin Chinese lessons, but though this was often stated, it never happened. I had also heard him tell the devotees in Bombay that he would be learning Marathi (the local language of Maharastra state in which Bombay was a part) as well as Hindi, the national language. That made the whole temple then cheer, but I never saw him make any effort to learn those languages. This time, however, Ram and I didn’t cheer. Rather, we gave him a kind of “dah” look, as we doubted that we could ever learn Chinese, especially not the local Cantonese variety, which is spoken in nine different tones. Our leader next informed us that one of us would be appointed temple president. Since he usually spoke with Ramasuran on the phone in order to get up to date on happenings while he was outside of Hong Kong, he was given this post. One new devotee, an older, middle-aged Indian gentleman named Rasaporna Prabhu, had just arrived from Calcutta temple. So now there were three of us living in the temple. I was made temple teasurer and Rasaporna put in charge of making lifemenbers in the Indian community. I remember our leader saying, "This temple president thing actually means nothing. There only three of you, so don’t let it go to your head." But as soon as he left, Ram became a completely different person. Ram refused to wash dishes or do any of the other less desirable duties. He seemed to become an island unto himself, which began a little storm in a teacup. We were very immature and quarreled over very petty things. Ram wouldn’t allow me to count the money, and I was supposed to be the temple treasurer! Then, when the leader returned, Ram told him that I refused to act as the treasurer. I was called into his room and he said, "I hear you refused to act as the teasurer while I was away!" When I began to tell my side of the story, he just said, "I don’t want to hear it. You refused, and I refuse to hear your explanation." He was very strict he told me. “I will never be criticized for being a lax devotee. They may criticise me for being too strict, but never for being lax.” When Hamsaduta was in Hong Kong, he would refer to our leader as "Hot Tamali" and he was hot, most always hot. He was also very funny at times, in his very own kind of wry humor. But this side he didn’t often show. He also was in exile or just out of it, but had this new weight which he had tried to resist for such a long while, this preaching in China Mission which, if one takes seriously, is certainly an endeavor that could take many lifetimes. Our leader had become friendly with an Indian gentleman named Mr Arjun, who had started coming daily to our lunch programs. He had been in Hong Kong since the partition of India and Pakistan and was from the portion that is now Pakistan. He was in the textile business and had factories producing knit shirts. He was about to investigate opening a factory in mainland China, in Guangzhou, the city where Jagat Guru had lived. Mr Arjun invited our leader to go with him to China on this trip, which was to be the first time our leader would visit the People’s Republic. As Mr Arjun was quite a rich businessman, our leader felt he needed to get nice clothes for the trip. He went and had two suits made, one in dark blue and one in light tan. He also bought two pairs of very expensive shoes, one of which I remember was made of alligator skin. As he dressed up, he asked me, “How do I look?” "The dark suit is for the serious business and the light one is for casual dress," he said. He was wearing the light tan suit as he said this. "So what do you think? Is this casual enough?" To me he looked like a Calvin Kline model and I told him, "Casual? A casual tycoon maybe." He just laughed and repeated, “casual tycoon.” Mr Arjun and our leader then went on the train to China, which is no more than a three hour journey from our door. When he got back, he told us stories that seemed beyond the outer limits of our small realities. It was 1981, when China was just coming out of the Cultural Revoultion, but all of the resrictions of the Mao regime were still firmly in place. When you took the train into Guangzhou, you could see endless fields of rice and fruit and vegetables being grown, but when you arrived at the train station, there was nothing to eat for sale. We didn’t know at the time that all the people ate at their place of work and private business didn’t exist. These fruits were for the leaders and for export, mostly to Hong Kong. When our leader returned, he told us that the party officals had used their visit to their own benefit to prepare big feasts for themselves, which he and Mr Arjun had to attend. These feasts took place three times a day and it was quite impossible to refuse them. Our two ISKCON representatives were fully introduced to the Cantonese manner of eating. All these meals were non-vegetarian and many varieties of meats were served. As both Mr Arjun and of course our GBC man were vegetarians, some purely vegetarian dishes were prepared for them, but they hardly dared eat any of it. He told us, "The only safe thing to eat was bowls and bowls of steamed rice. As we ate our rice, they stuffed tiny song birds into their mouths and spit out the bones." Song bird is a delicacy in China, as are bear claws, old cats, young dogs, and poisonous snakes. And of all the Chinese, the Cantonese will eat anything. There is a Chinese saying: <center>"The Pekinese (Beijing) people will say anything; People from Shanghai will wear anything; The Cantonese will eat anything."</center> At these meals it is also the custom to drink mao tai, a fire-like liquor. To show its quality, it is poured onto a glass table and set on fire, burning with a blue flame. Then they will tell you the alcohol content, which is about 60% at its highest finest degree. Our GBC man told us that their hosts got very drunk. Mr Arjun set up some arrangements to have a factory built and they looked at land in a park where they were told a vegetarian restaurant could also be built. Despite getting authorization, Mr Arjun’s subsequent business operation ultimately failed. He imported bulldozers and other heavy equipment to build his factory, but they were all taken by the goverment and never returned. He retired from business soon afterwards. It was still too early for such things to be done in China. Another thing our leader and Mr Arjun did while in Guangzhou was to visit a Buddhist temple of Maitreya, “the Buddha to come.” Many Westerns will have seen figurines or pictures of this Buddha, who is the fat, seated one with a huge, exposed belly. It is interesting to note that in the Buddhist religion there is mention of this coming Buddha Maitreya, who when he appears will change the Dharma that was set down by Sakya Muni. As our leader and Mr Arjun approached the Buddha, the old lady in charge of the temple yelled at them to leave because they were disturbing the Buddha. Mr Arjun was fluent in Cantonese so he translated. “Here, though, were the first two representatives of Shree Chaitanya Mahaprabhu entering his temple, so we weren’t really disturbing him,” our leader declared.

<h2>Adjusting to life in Hong Kong</h2> Our main difficulty in adjusting to life in Hong Kong was the noise. At the time, it seemed that major construction was taking place almost everywhere. A new railway line was being put in next to the old one directly behind the building that housed our temple. A new bridge also being built almost directly behind the temple apartment, for which many pilings were being put into the ground with huge machines that hammered them into the earth. Bam! and the ground would shake for a few seconds. Then bam! again and then bam! once more, all day every day from seven in the morning till dark. As soon as the bridge was completed, another construction site began, and then another, with the same noise. Sometimes it seemed that many of them were all going on at the same time. We had to take recourse to earplugs to help us tolerate the situation. Then there were the smells. Each day at noon, pigs being transported by train from China would pass underneath our windows.The smell of one of these trains would knock you out. All of a sudden, a blast of contaminated air would come rushing into the temple and we would run to close up all the windows until the odour passed. Sometimes we managed to get our timing right and close the windows before the damage was done, but since we kep them open all the time because of the heat, we usually got a dose of pig perfume each day. Then there were the smells in the street of the vendors cooking their products. Grilled squid, cho dou fu, which is translated as “stinky tofu,” smelled almost as bad as the pig manure. It was fried in rancid oil and sold to people “addicted to its fine taste,” as I was told by the Chinese. When our leader returned from Mayapur, he was very pleased to hear that Jayatirtha Prabhu had donated ten thousand dollars to cover some of the cost of printing the Chinese Bhagavad Gita. One day, he suddenly ordered us to learn Chinese at once. “The Mormon preachers who come here learn Chinese in three months and so can you,” he declared to us. He told us that he would also begin Chinese lessons, but though this was often stated, it never happened. I had also heard him tell the devotees in Bombay that he would be learning Marathi (the local language of Maharastra state in which Bombay was a part) as well as Hindi, the national language. That made the whole temple then cheer, but I never saw him make any effort to learn those languages. This time, however, Ram and I didn’t cheer. Rather, we gave him a kind of “dah” look, as we doubted that we could ever learn Chinese, especially not the local Cantonese variety, which is spoken in nine different tones. Our leader next informed us that one of us would be appointed temple president. Since he usually spoke with Ramasuran on the phone in order to get up to date on happenings while he was outside of Hong Kong, he was given this post. One new devotee, an older, middle-aged Indian gentleman named Rasaporna Prabhu, had just arrived from Calcutta temple. So now there were three of us living in the temple. I was made temple teasurer and Rasaporna put in charge of making lifemenbers in the Indian community. I remember our leader saying, "This temple president thing actually means nothing. There only three of you, so don’t let it go to your head." But as soon as he left, Ram became a completely different person. Ram refused to wash dishes or do any of the other less desirable duties. He seemed to become an island unto himself, which began a little storm in a teacup. We were very immature and quarreled over very petty things. Ram wouldn’t allow me to count the money, and I was supposed to be the temple treasurer! Then, when the leader returned, Ram told him that I refused to act as the treasurer. I was called into his room and he said, "I hear you refused to act as the teasurer while I was away!" When I began to tell my side of the story, he just said, "I don’t want to hear it. You refused, and I refuse to hear your explanation." He was very strict he told me. “I will never be criticized for being a lax devotee. They may criticise me for being too strict, but never for being lax.” When Hamsaduta was in Hong Kong, he would refer to our leader as "Hot Tamali" and he was hot, most always hot. He was also very funny at times, in his very own kind of wry humor. But this side he didn’t often show. He also was in exile or just out of it, but had this new weight which he had tried to resist for such a long while, this preaching in China Mission which, if one takes seriously, is certainly an endeavor that could take many lifetimes. Our leader had become friendly with an Indian gentleman named Mr Arjun, who had started coming daily to our lunch programs. He had been in Hong Kong since the partition of India and Pakistan and was from the portion that is now Pakistan. He was in the textile business and had factories producing knit shirts. He was about to investigate opening a factory in mainland China, in Guangzhou, the city where Jagat Guru had lived. Mr Arjun invited our leader to go with him to China on this trip, which was to be the first time our leader would visit the People’s Republic. As Mr Arjun was quite a rich businessman, our leader felt he needed to get nice clothes for the trip. He went and had two suits made, one in dark blue and one in light tan. He also bought two pairs of very expensive shoes, one of which I remember was made of alligator skin. As he dressed up, he asked me, “How do I look?” "The dark suit is for the serious business and the light one is for casual dress," he said. He was wearing the light tan suit as he said this. "So what do you think? Is this casual enough?" To me he looked like a Calvin Kline model and I told him, "Casual? A casual tycoon maybe." He just laughed and repeated, “casual tycoon.” Mr Arjun and our leader then went on the train to China, which is no more than a three hour journey from our door. When he got back, he told us stories that seemed beyond the outer limits of our small realities. It was 1981, when China was just coming out of the Cultural Revoultion, but all of the resrictions of the Mao regime were still firmly in place. When you took the train into Guangzhou, you could see endless fields of rice and fruit and vegetables being grown, but when you arrived at the train station, there was nothing to eat for sale. We didn’t know at the time that all the people ate at their place of work and private business didn’t exist. These fruits were for the leaders and for export, mostly to Hong Kong. When our leader returned, he told us that the party officals had used their visit to their own benefit to prepare big feasts for themselves, which he and Mr Arjun had to attend. These feasts took place three times a day and it was quite impossible to refuse them. Our two ISKCON representatives were fully introduced to the Cantonese manner of eating. All these meals were non-vegetarian and many varieties of meats were served. As both Mr Arjun and of course our GBC man were vegetarians, some purely vegetarian dishes were prepared for them, but they hardly dared eat any of it. He told us, "The only safe thing to eat was bowls and bowls of steamed rice. As we ate our rice, they stuffed tiny song birds into their mouths and spit out the bones." Song bird is a delicacy in China, as are bear claws, old cats, young dogs, and poisonous snakes. And of all the Chinese, the Cantonese will eat anything. There is a Chinese saying: <center>"The Pekinese (Beijing) people will say anything; People from Shanghai will wear anything; The Cantonese will eat anything."</center> At these meals it is also the custom to drink mao tai, a fire-like liquor. To show its quality, it is poured onto a glass table and set on fire, burning with a blue flame. Then they will tell you the alcohol content, which is about 60% at its highest finest degree. Our GBC man told us that their hosts got very drunk. Mr Arjun set up some arrangements to have a factory built and they looked at land in a park where they were told a vegetarian restaurant could also be built. Despite getting authorization, Mr Arjun’s subsequent business operation ultimately failed. He imported bulldozers and other heavy equipment to build his factory, but they were all taken by the goverment and never returned. He retired from business soon afterwards. It was still too early for such things to be done in China. Another thing our leader and Mr Arjun did while in Guangzhou was to visit a Buddhist temple of Maitreya, “the Buddha to come.” Many Westerns will have seen figurines or pictures of this Buddha, who is the fat, seated one with a huge, exposed belly. It is interesting to note that in the Buddhist religion there is mention of this coming Buddha Maitreya, who when he appears will change the Dharma that was set down by Sakya Muni. As our leader and Mr Arjun approached the Buddha, the old lady in charge of the temple yelled at them to leave because they were disturbing the Buddha. Mr Arjun was fluent in Cantonese so he translated. “Here, though, were the first two representatives of Shree Chaitanya Mahaprabhu entering his temple, so we weren’t really disturbing him,” our leader declared.

You forgot "Of Love and Separation" by Bhakti Promode Puri Maharaj, also available from Mandala Media. Jagat

It's my pleasure, Pitaji. It's fascinating. Actually, if you want to send things to me first, before posting, feel free to write to jankbrz@. Jagat

<small> [This message has been edited by Jagat (edited 01-23-2002).]

<h3>Arriving in Hong Kong</h3> One day, when our GBC leader was on a quick visit to Houston temple, he asked me, “Do you still want to go to Hong Kong?" I had previously asked him what he was doing there, as he had been made co-GBC of Hong Kong with Guru Kripa. He had then told me "Nothing." In the meantime, however, he had been exiled from Houston, where Bhagavan was now the acting GBC, and ordered to make his home exclusively in eastern Asia and the Fiji Islands. He told me he wasn’t sure if I would be sent to Hong Kong or Fiji, but within a few weeks I received a letter telling me to start collecting for a ticket to Hong Kong. Our GBC leader’s new zone was all of China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan and Korea. Hamsaduta was also still in the Philippines as GBC, but he too had been censured by the main GBC body. That was late 1980. When I arrived in Hong Kong, as I flew in over the endless mildewed housing estates, I was thinking that it was a lot like I had imagined it would be, a mass of humanity crushed together. The airport was a makeshift one at best in those days. The main and only runway was on reclaimed land jutting out into the harbor and the airport building was small and only partially air-conditioned. As I walked into that waiting room, I was hit by the first blast of the hot, humid, noisy and very strongly odored Hong Kong air. I was met by at the airport my godbrother Ramasuran Prabhu, who had been with us on the Indian BBT library party and also in Houston temple. Being very jet lagged, I was thankful to see a familiar face. Ram told the taxi driver "uuuump ho man tin guy" in the local language, which mean 5 Ho Man Tin Street, and "ummm goy" for thank you. We made way to the temple, stopping in front of a light green apartment house, and Ram announced, "We’re here." I think it was on the 8th floor where the temple had two apartments. One was the temple and ashram, the other contained the offices of Jitarati Prabhu, a Canadian devotee who had already been in Hong Kong for a very long time. Jitarati was an importer and exporter of jewellery clasps, mostly to the Philippines. With the profits from his business he single-handedly supported both missions, the one in Hong Kong and the two temples in the Philippines. Upon entering the living room of the temple apartment, I saw a full sized Vyasasan with Hamsaduta's picture on it and a small chest of drawers with a small murti of Srila Prabhupada. At Srila Prabhupada’s lotus feet were these very highly fragrant ginger flowers, which gave off a fragrance, similar to gardenias, but even stronger. The altar was a poster of the Pancha Tattva behind a curtain with a wooden shelf beneath it to hold the arati trays and vases of flowers. The temple apartment was a three room flat with a small kitchen and one and a half bathrooms, with the half never being used as its distance from the Lord’s kitchen was only a matter of feet. It was thus used as a storage room. One room was for the GBC leader and another was the brahmachari ashram. Both of these were 10x10 feet, no more. The temple office was in an even smaller room. The one bathroom was shared by all. “Here it is,” Ram told me, “home. Back to home, back to Godhead by way of Hong Kong!” After some time, I made it over to the other apartment where I saw one very meek, thin and heavily spectacled Chinese fellow sitting behind a desk. This was Sriman Yasomati Suta Prabhu, Srila Prabhupada’s Chinese translator. Through Yaso, the Chinese people would hear Srila Prabhupada’s descriptions of Lord Chaitanya’s advent. “Hare Krishna!” Yaso greeted me with “All glories to Srila Prabhupada! Please accept my humble obeisances!” all spoken in very good English with a heavy Hong Kong Cantonese accent. I was very pleased to meet Yaso and he was very happy something was finally going to happen for our movement in Hong Kong. Yaso had almost finished the translation of the Bhagavad Gita "As It Is" and it was almost ready to be sent to the printer. Yaso told me that he had been working for a few years alone on the Gita while still working as accountant. I assured him that very soon the BBT would be able to engage him full time and he hoped it was to be true. All Yaso ever seemed to want was to be left alone to translate and to be able to send a little money to his son. We had no choice but to become accustomed to this very uncomfortably close and extremely loud environment. Ram, Yaso and I followed our usual ISKCON program of Mangala Arati, though here it began at 5 a.m., chanting our rounds, hearing Srimad Bhagavatam class and Guru Puja. We were told to have another Vyasasan made for our GBC leader to be placed next to Hamsaduta’s. I’m not sure if there were three guru pujas or two in those days, or if they were all done at the same time. One travelling devotee once sang a song, "Three gurus' charana padma" when he came and saw our crazy set up. But that’s was the way it was, what can I say? Our temple room was no bigger than 10 feet by 15 feet, with the vyasasanas taking up at least a third of the room! There was another devotee in Hong Kong at the time, whose name was Tota Gopinath. He lived in his office and brought oil paintings and supplied Hamsaduta’s temples. Tota only visited the temple occasionally to pay respects to Hamsaduta’s shrine on his Vyasasan. Another Chinese devotee from mainland China was Jagat Guru Das, a former Red Guard. Jagat Guru’s story was a very colorful one. This is how he told it: “When I was about fourteen years old, I joined the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the Red Guards of Chairman Mao. For about ten years in Guangzhou (a large southern city capital of Guandong Province north of Hong Kong by about sixty miles), I never saw a street light without a body hanging from it upside down, with a sign attached to it and a stick under it. The sign would read, "Beat this person because he is the enemy of the people" After about an hour these people would die anyway whether they were beaten or not. (Jagat Guru recounted all these grisly details nonchalantly.) “In those days, I always carried a gun and it was my ticket for whatever I wanted. If anyone asked me to pay for something, I would pull out my gun and say, “Here my money. Want it?” “Many times my friends came to my house and said, “Come with us tonight because we are going to this Christian church to burn it down and strangle the priests.” I would go with them. Then they came and said they wanted to do the same to the Buddhist temples, but I refused. I would never harm a Buddhist temple.” Jagat Guru led his life in this way for ten years, but when the Cultural Revolution began to turn against even the Red Guards, he fled China for Hong Kong. His older brother and he decided to try to swim to Macau (then still a Portuguese colony) off the cost of China just below Hong Kong. His brother gave up after a short time and swam back, but Jagat Guru had no choice but to continue on, crossing the body of water that is maybe five to ten mile wide. "As I swam, the fog became thick and I didn’t know where I was swimming to, out to sea or back to China. I stopped and I remembered a Daoist mantra my mother would chant to me when I was a child. I chanted this mantra and when a short time the fog lifted and I saw that Macau was just a short swim away. "When I got to Macau I saw a monk walking about. It was Hamsaduta. I asked him to become my Guru and here I am. I am so sorry about my life before I met my Prabhu that I still have nightmares every night." Jagad Guru Prabhu soon started to work with Jitarati in his office and I have no doubt that he is still with him today. Every time I see Jitarati I ask him how Jagat Guru is doing and he always says, “the same.” Later on, Jagat Guru’s brother also became a devotee and helped in the adoption of Chinese character reform in Hong Kong. [Mainland China started a simplification of the characters used in writing Chinese in 1951. In Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, the traditional characters were still being used. (See http://www.advancelit.com/albase/characters.htm .)] After some time, our GBC leader arrived in Hong Kong. He was basically good association, due to having spent so much time with Srila Prabhupada. He often related tales of his experiences with His Divine Grace, which we all appreciated so much. In Hong Kong, he was also very expert at understanding how to go and get our society re-registered as a tax-free religious institution, which he did at once. One day he asked us to print a flyer, which we handed out to the hordes of people flowing on all the streets of Hong Kong. It had three questions on it: 1) Why can’t I always be happy, when that is what I want? 2) Why do I have to accept suffering? 3) How can I always be free to enjoy my life fully? For answers to these questions, please come to 5 Ho Man Tin Street, 8th floor, apt A. I’m not actually sure if these were the actual questions, but they were certainly along these lines. To our great surprise this small action started the Chinese coming to our temple. So many came, in fact, that we soon started a lunch program and many young men and ladies would come each day, some of whom later became devotees. This lunch program has now turned into a regular preaching tool of the Hong Kong temple, and continues to this day. Our GBC leader was expert in drawing new people in. His drawback has always been maintaining long-term relationships. The first young boy to join the temple was to be named Hanuman. His mother was very opposed to him taking to a vegetarian diet and visiting us so much. She went to see a fortune-teller for advice. As soon as she entered the fortune-teller’s shop, however, she was told, “Your son wants to be a monk! In his last life, he was a cripple and begged on the streets. If you stop him, he will be a beggar and cripple again in his next life.” Bang! From that moment on she had no oppostion and actually cooked completely vegetarian meals for him until he moved into the temple full time. As Hamsaduta was also in the general area of the Philippines, he came one day for a short visit. When you personally meet Hamsaduta, you have to like him. He is a very charismatic, magnetic personality to say the least. When he came, a group of his men came with him, and when he left, they stayed on. It seemed that they were there simply to compete with us at getting the new men from our lunch programs to take initiation from Hamsaduta instead of from our GBC leader. As petty as it seems now, that was their program. This uncomfortable situation didn’t last long, though, as Hamsaduta was on his way to Mayapur to hear from His Divine Grace Srila Sridhar Maharaj, who at that time was assisting and giving advice to the whole GBC body. Srila Sridhar Maharaj told the GBC that they could not change what Srila Prabhupada had put in place, namely allowing Hamsaduta to initiate disciples. So he was reinstated. When our leader heard this news, he also went running off to Mayapur hoping to be reinstated as well. He returned to Hong Kong not long afterward with his whole USA zone back, saying that Srila Sridhar Maharaj was the greatest living Vaishnava on the planet. “The men Sridhar Maharaj is giving sannyas to are bona fide sannyasis,” he said, “and our Society has to learn to understand how to accomodate this.” Just before he left for Mayapur, he asked me to go with him to the printers where the Bhagavad Gita in Chinese was about to go to press. I had no idea of why I had been asked to accompany him and wasn’t really paying much attention to the discussion he was having with the printer. On the day he left Hong Kong for Mayapur, however, he told me that I had to oversee the printing. I did so and on the appearance day of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Prabhupada, I spent the entire day watching the Gita’s pages roll off the press. I was only told that if I wasn’t there, they would speed up the presses and the quality of the printing would suffer. So I sat and watched and sometimes checked the pages to see if the registration was clear in the color work of the printing. Our next goal was how to get the Bhagavad Gita into China. The printer told us he could us help with this task, but warned us that it was almost impossible, which in those days was quite true. [This message has been edited by Jagat (edited 01-22-2002).]

<h3>Arriving in Hong Kong</h3> One day, when our GBC leader was on a quick visit to Houston temple, he asked me, “Do you still want to go to Hong Kong?" I had previously asked him what he was doing there, as he had been made co-GBC of Hong Kong with Guru Kripa. He had then told me "Nothing." In the meantime, however, he had been exiled from Houston, where Bhagavan was now the acting GBC, and ordered to make his home exclusively in eastern Asia and the Fiji Islands. He told me he wasn’t sure if I would be sent to Hong Kong or Fiji, but within a few weeks I received a letter telling me to start collecting for a ticket to Hong Kong. Our GBC leader’s new zone was all of China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan and Korea. Hamsaduta was also still in the Philippines as GBC, but he too had been censured by the main GBC body. That was late 1980. When I arrived in Hong Kong, as I flew in over the endless mildewed housing estates, I was thinking that it was a lot like I had imagined it would be, a mass of humanity crushed together. The airport was a makeshift one at best in those days. The main and only runway was on reclaimed land jutting out into the harbor and the airport building was small and only partially air-conditioned. As I walked into that waiting room, I was hit by the first blast of the hot, humid, noisy and very strongly odored Hong Kong air. I was met by at the airport my godbrother Ramasuran Prabhu, who had been with us on the Indian BBT library party and also in Houston temple. Being very jet lagged, I was thankful to see a familiar face. Ram told the taxi driver "uuuump ho man tin guy" in the local language, which mean 5 Ho Man Tin Street, and "ummm goy" for thank you. We made way to the temple, stopping in front of a light green apartment house, and Ram announced, "We’re here." I think it was on the 8th floor where the temple had two apartments. One was the temple and ashram, the other contained the offices of Jitarati Prabhu, a Canadian devotee who had already been in Hong Kong for a very long time. Jitarati was an importer and exporter of jewellery clasps, mostly to the Philippines. With the profits from his business he single-handedly supported both missions, the one in Hong Kong and the two temples in the Philippines. Upon entering the living room of the temple apartment, I saw a full sized Vyasasan with Hamsaduta's picture on it and a small chest of drawers with a small murti of Srila Prabhupada. At Srila Prabhupada’s lotus feet were these very highly fragrant ginger flowers, which gave off a fragrance, similar to gardenias, but even stronger. The altar was a poster of the Pancha Tattva behind a curtain with a wooden shelf beneath it to hold the arati trays and vases of flowers. The temple apartment was a three room flat with a small kitchen and one and a half bathrooms, with the half never being used as its distance from the Lord’s kitchen was only a matter of feet. It was thus used as a storage room. One room was for the GBC leader and another was the brahmachari ashram. Both of these were 10x10 feet, no more. The temple office was in an even smaller room. The one bathroom was shared by all. “Here it is,” Ram told me, “home. Back to home, back to Godhead by way of Hong Kong!” After some time, I made it over to the other apartment where I saw one very meek, thin and heavily spectacled Chinese fellow sitting behind a desk. This was Sriman Yasomati Suta Prabhu, Srila Prabhupada’s Chinese translator. Through Yaso, the Chinese people would hear Srila Prabhupada’s descriptions of Lord Chaitanya’s advent. “Hare Krishna!” Yaso greeted me with “All glories to Srila Prabhupada! Please accept my humble obeisances!” all spoken in very good English with a heavy Hong Kong Cantonese accent. I was very pleased to meet Yaso and he was very happy something was finally going to happen for our movement in Hong Kong. Yaso had almost finished the translation of the Bhagavad Gita "As It Is" and it was almost ready to be sent to the printer. Yaso told me that he had been working for a few years alone on the Gita while still working as accountant. I assured him that very soon the BBT would be able to engage him full time and he hoped it was to be true. All Yaso ever seemed to want was to be left alone to translate and to be able to send a little money to his son. We had no choice but to become accustomed to this very uncomfortably close and extremely loud environment. Ram, Yaso and I followed our usual ISKCON program of Mangala Arati, though here it began at 5 a.m., chanting our rounds, hearing Srimad Bhagavatam class and Guru Puja. We were told to have another Vyasasan made for our GBC leader to be placed next to Hamsaduta’s. I’m not sure if there were three guru pujas or two in those days, or if they were all done at the same time. One travelling devotee once sang a song, "Three gurus' charana padma" when he came and saw our crazy set up. But that’s was the way it was, what can I say? Our temple room was no bigger than 10 feet by 15 feet, with the vyasasanas taking up at least a third of the room! There was another devotee in Hong Kong at the time, whose name was Tota Gopinath. He lived in his office and brought oil paintings and supplied Hamsaduta’s temples. Tota only visited the temple occasionally to pay respects to Hamsaduta’s shrine on his Vyasasan. Another Chinese devotee from mainland China was Jagat Guru Das, a former Red Guard. Jagat Guru’s story was a very colorful one. This is how he told it: “When I was about fourteen years old, I joined the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the Red Guards of Chairman Mao. For about ten years in Guangzhou (a large southern city capital of Guandong Province north of Hong Kong by about sixty miles), I never saw a street light without a body hanging from it upside down, with a sign attached to it and a stick under it. The sign would read, "Beat this person because he is the enemy of the people" After about an hour these people would die anyway whether they were beaten or not. (Jagat Guru recounted all these grisly details nonchalantly.) “In those days, I always carried a gun and it was my ticket for whatever I wanted. If anyone asked me to pay for something, I would pull out my gun and say, “Here my money. Want it?” “Many times my friends came to my house and said, “Come with us tonight because we are going to this Christian church to burn it down and strangle the priests.” I would go with them. Then they came and said they wanted to do the same to the Buddhist temples, but I refused. I would never harm a Buddhist temple.” Jagat Guru led his life in this way for ten years, but when the Cultural Revolution began to turn against even the Red Guards, he fled China for Hong Kong. His older brother and he decided to try to swim to Macau (then still a Portuguese colony) off the cost of China just below Hong Kong. His brother gave up after a short time and swam back, but Jagat Guru had no choice but to continue on, crossing the body of water that is maybe five to ten mile wide. "As I swam, the fog became thick and I didn’t know where I was swimming to, out to sea or back to China. I stopped and I remembered a Daoist mantra my mother would chant to me when I was a child. I chanted this mantra and when a short time the fog lifted and I saw that Macau was just a short swim away. "When I got to Macau I saw a monk walking about. It was Hamsaduta. I asked him to become my Guru and here I am. I am so sorry about my life before I met my Prabhu that I still have nightmares every night." Jagad Guru Prabhu soon started to work with Jitarati in his office and I have no doubt that he is still with him today. Every time I see Jitarati I ask him how Jagat Guru is doing and he always says, “the same.” Later on, Jagat Guru’s brother also became a devotee and helped in the adoption of Chinese character reform in Hong Kong. [Mainland China started a simplification of the characters used in writing Chinese in 1951. In Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, the traditional characters were still being used. (See http://www.advancelit.com/albase/characters.htm .)] After some time, our GBC leader arrived in Hong Kong. He was basically good association, due to having spent so much time with Srila Prabhupada. He often related tales of his experiences with His Divine Grace, which we all appreciated so much. In Hong Kong, he was also very expert at understanding how to go and get our society re-registered as a tax-free religious institution, which he did at once. One day he asked us to print a flyer, which we handed out to the hordes of people flowing on all the streets of Hong Kong. It had three questions on it: 1) Why can’t I always be happy, when that is what I want? 2) Why do I have to accept suffering? 3) How can I always be free to enjoy my life fully? For answers to these questions, please come to 5 Ho Man Tin Street, 8th floor, apt A. I’m not actually sure if these were the actual questions, but they were certainly along these lines. To our great surprise this small action started the Chinese coming to our temple. So many came, in fact, that we soon started a lunch program and many young men and ladies would come each day, some of whom later became devotees. This lunch program has now turned into a regular preaching tool of the Hong Kong temple, and continues to this day. Our GBC leader was expert in drawing new people in. His drawback has always been maintaining long-term relationships. The first young boy to join the temple was to be named Hanuman. His mother was very opposed to him taking to a vegetarian diet and visiting us so much. She went to see a fortune-teller for advice. As soon as she entered the fortune-teller’s shop, however, she was told, “Your son wants to be a monk! In his last life, he was a cripple and begged on the streets. If you stop him, he will be a beggar and cripple again in his next life.” Bang! From that moment on she had no oppostion and actually cooked completely vegetarian meals for him until he moved into the temple full time. As Hamsaduta was also in the general area of the Philippines, he came one day for a short visit. When you personally meet Hamsaduta, you have to like him. He is a very charismatic, magnetic personality to say the least. When he came, a group of his men came with him, and when he left, they stayed on. It seemed that they were there simply to compete with us at getting the new men from our lunch programs to take initiation from Hamsaduta instead of from our GBC leader. As petty as it seems now, that was their program. This uncomfortable situation didn’t last long, though, as Hamsaduta was on his way to Mayapur to hear from His Divine Grace Srila Sridhar Maharaj, who at that time was assisting and giving advice to the whole GBC body. Srila Sridhar Maharaj told the GBC that they could not change what Srila Prabhupada had put in place, namely allowing Hamsaduta to initiate disciples. So he was reinstated. When our leader heard this news, he also went running off to Mayapur hoping to be reinstated as well. He returned to Hong Kong not long afterward with his whole USA zone back, saying that Srila Sridhar Maharaj was the greatest living Vaishnava on the planet. “The men Sridhar Maharaj is giving sannyas to are bona fide sannyasis,” he said, “and our Society has to learn to understand how to accomodate this.” Just before he left for Mayapur, he asked me to go with him to the printers where the Bhagavad Gita in Chinese was about to go to press. I had no idea of why I had been asked to accompany him and wasn’t really paying much attention to the discussion he was having with the printer. On the day he left Hong Kong for Mayapur, however, he told me that I had to oversee the printing. I did so and on the appearance day of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Prabhupada, I spent the entire day watching the Gita’s pages roll off the press. I was only told that if I wasn’t there, they would speed up the presses and the quality of the printing would suffer. So I sat and watched and sometimes checked the pages to see if the registration was clear in the color work of the printing. Our next goal was how to get the Bhagavad Gita into China. The printer told us he could us help with this task, but warned us that it was almost impossible, which in those days was quite true. [This message has been edited by Jagat (edited 01-22-2002).]

I came across the "Cults and Society" Internet Journal and notice that their first edition focused on Iskcon. Some of you may find it interesting. <A href=http://cultsandsociety.com/csissueidx/toc2001.1/grprept2001.1_harekrishna/grprept_hk_newsarticles/idx_news_CO_hk94-99.htm>Cults and Society</A>

<h1>Do the clothes make the monk?</h1> Friars defend tunics as useful update of plain brown gown By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press Thursday, December 27, 2001 ASSISI, ITALY -- St. Francis founded his order of "poor friars" in this hillside town nearly 800 years ago, dedicating himself to a life of poverty that was defined by the plain brown robe he chose to wear. Today, Franciscan monks in similar outfits are recognizable around the world. But one branch has decided to buy some fancy new habits, and not everyone is pleased. The Third Order Regular in Assisi, a small order compared to the three main branches of Franciscan monks, has commissioned the habits from a Milan fashion designer to update their look. "We needed a new gown, in style with the principles of our founding father, but more practical to face our everyday needs," said Rev. Lino Temperini, head of the 50-member Third Order Regular here. He turned to Elisabetta Bianchetti, a 39-year-old designer of religious garments, who after months of research and trial fittings produced two prototypes for the monks. Made of fine, grey wool, they cost $220 apiece. The lightweight, 100-per-cent wool habits come with two front pockets -- for cellphones or anything else -- as well as the traditional rope belt tied at the waist and knotted three times to symbolize the three vocational rules of the order: poverty, obedience and chastity. The purchase has struck a nerve with some Italians, as well as some members of the order who feel the new look betrays the simple aesthetic envisioned by St. Francis. "Many don't agree with the experiment to change the habit," Rev. Waldemar Barszcz, a top official of the order, told the newspaper Il Giornale. "That's why the order to Miss Bianchetti will be 30, not 3,000!" The Vatican has not commented, but the Italian media have weighed in. "Even the Franciscans have given in to the fascination with ready-to-wear," the Milan daily Corriere della Sera wrote. Father Temperini argues the designs are perfectly in line with what St. Francis intended for his followers, and he has published a booklet to make his case. It documents the varied dress of Franciscans through the ages in sketches, diagrams, photos and footnotes. It quotes St. Francis himself as having said monks could dress as circumstances and climate require. Father Temperini hopes that once the order's approximately 50 monks in Assisi are outfitted, the look will catch on with its few hundred members elsewhere in Italy and other countries. There's no indication the 25,000 monks in other Franciscan orders around the world are about to change. Rev. Enzo Fortunato, a spokesman for the Conventual Franciscans, one of the larger three Franciscan orders, said the decision was the Third Order Regular's alone. But, he added, "It certainly doesn't mean they are abandoning our message of poverty and simplicity." Some residents of Assisi are not so sure. They say the monks' new clothes -- commissioned from a European fashion capital -- are another indication the order is straying from its spiritual foundation. Some cited the booming business that Franciscan friars conduct at the souvenir shop attached to the Basilica of St. Francis, a pilgrimage site for Roman Catholics. On a recent rainy day, when the rest of Assisi was nearly deserted, the little shop overflowed with tour groups. "I'm a Catholic, but these people think more about commercial things than spiritual things," said Valentina Castagnoli, a shopkeeper who herself sells carved wood St. Francis figurines -- in brown habits -- and other religious souvenirs. Titti Bufalini, a mother of two, said she understands monks have to earn a living and need new clothes as everyone else does. But she said St. Francis founded the order for monks to live a life of complete poverty, as a way to return to the primitive beginnings of Christianity. "The spirit of St. Francis is like this. Either you follow it or you don't," she said. Monks are supposed to be examples for the faithful, so "they should be the first to sacrifice," she said. Father Temperini bristles at such criticism. He said the new robes are hardly indulgent and are based on a 15th-century version of the Franciscan habit. "We really don't understand where all the fuss came from," he said. "People accuse us of being too aesthetic-conscious. It is ridiculous."

<center><h1>Seven modern-day wonders of the world</h1> David Boyd Globe&Mail, Saturday, Dec. 29, 2001</center> And now for something completely different -- a year-end article that focuses on progress and opportunity instead of the problems of terrorism, war, disease, recession and environmental degradation. Lost in the year-end teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing about the difficulties of 2001 was a whole bunch of genuinely good news. I am not suggesting the world's problems are solved. Humans face huge and daunting challenges -- not only in distant lands such as Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, but in Canada as well. One billion people lack access to clean water; 1.2 billion live on $1 a day; climate changes threaten to wreak ecological havoc; 25 per cent of the world's population consume 75 per cent of the resources; and 30,000 children under 5 die daily from preventable causes. This bad news is no secret. Good news, on the other hand, seems to slip beneath the radar screen. Occasionally, there is a human-interest story about local folks doing good things. But what about the big picture? What about progress in tackling some of the challenges facing humanity? Here is some eyebrow-raising good news in seven areas in which we are accustomed to being bombarded with doom and gloom. This news is so good, it may strike some people as unbelievable. For the record, all of the following facts come from the United Nations, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Meteorological Organization. These are reliable sources, not Pollyannas. Democracy: One of the linchpins of a secure future, democracy has made rapid strides in the past decade. Since 1990, more than 100 nations cast aside military dictatorships or one-party rule and chose elected governments. Many of these nations also ratified the world's major human-rights treaties during the '90s. Population: Although the world's population doubled between 1960 and 2000, the rate of growth is now declining. Thanks to efforts to empower women and encourage family planning, families on every continent are now having fewer children. Globally, the average fertility rate has fallen from six children per woman to 2.8 children per woman in the past 30 years. In industrialized nations, such as Canada, the fertility rate is below replacement levels, meaning that our population would decline unless bolstered by immigration. Food: Dire predictions of widespread famine have not come true. Despite the addition of three billion humans to the world's population since 1960, fewer people in total are malnourished today than in 1970. Remarkably, global food production has grown at a faster rate than the population. Literacy: Like democracy, literacy is a cornerstone of a healthy, prosperous society. The literacy rate in the developing world has jumped from 47 per cent to 73 per cent since 1970, meaning that many more people have the tools to improve their standard of living. Environment: In the late 1980s, scientists discovered conclusive evidence that industrial chemicals were destroying the ozone layer. A ground-breaking international agreement was reached in Montreal in 1987 to address the problem. Since then, global production of ozone-depleting chemicals has dropped more than 80 per cent, and Canadian production of such chemicals is down 95 per cent. Health: In developing countries, a child born today will live, on average, eight years longer than a child born 30 years ago. Life expectancy in Canada also continues to rise, reaching an average of 81 years for women and 75 years for men. Poverty: The world's poor are not getting poorer. Between 1975 and 1998, average per capita income in developing countries, adjusted for inflation, doubled. In other words, people in the world's have-not nations have twice the buying power they had 25 years ago. These seven signs of progress, like the seven human-made wonders of the world, symbolize the extraordinary potential and ingenuity of human beings. Whereas bad news induces depression and cynicism, good news provides us with hope. From the audacity of building a multicultural society in this vast and forbidding land, to our international peacekeeping missions and Terry Fox's mind-boggling Marathon of Hope, ours is a society defined by optimism and hope. As Canadians reflect on the year that was and the year that will be, it soothes the soul to know that progress is not a pipe dream but a genuine possibility when people put their hearts and minds into making the world a better place. As Terry Fox said, "I just wish people would realize that anything is possible if you try, dreams are made if people try." David R. Boyd is senior associate at the University of Victoria's Eco-Research Chair in Environmental Law and Policy, and an adjunct professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University.

Saiva Siddhanta Church <gurudeva.list@hindu.org> Tue, 13 Nov 2001 03:59:19 -1000 <gurudeva_list@hindu.org> (Saiva Siddhanta Church) Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami Attains Mahasamadhi Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, World Hindu Leader, Passes Away at 74 KAUAI, HAWAII, USA, November 13, 2001: Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, one of Hinduism's foremost and globally prominent spiritual teachers, a prolific author and publisher of Hinduism Today magazine, attained Maha Samadhi, "Great Union," today at age 74 at his ashram home on the tropical island of Kauai, Hawaii, USA. A spokesperson for the ashram said the Hindu master discovered on October 9, soon after he returned from a 30-day pilgrimage to Europe with 72 devotees, that he had advanced intestinal cancer. The disease was diagnosed when Subramuniyaswami was hospitalized for severe anemia. A battery of tests revealed the cancer and that it had metastasized to other parts of his body. Three medical teams of radiologists and oncologists in Hawaii, Washington State and California all concurred that even the most aggressive treatment regimens would prove ineffective, and estimated he had just a few months to live. The popular Satguru went into seclusion and after several days of meditation declared he would accept no treatment beyond palliative measures. He also made the decision to follow the Indian yogic practice, called Prayopavesa in Sanskrit scripture, to abstain from nourishment and take water only from that day on. His doctors endorsed and fully supported his decision. He died on the 32nd day of his self-declared fast, passing on quietly at 11:54 pm on November 12, 2001, surrounded by his 23 monastics. News of his impending passage was first released to the Hindu world on October 16. Immediately temples, ashrams and devotees around the world began the "Mrityunjaya Yajna," a worship ceremony traditionally offered prior to the passing of a great saint. The yajna was performed across the USA, Europe, India, Malaysia, Australia, Fiji and New Zealand. In the Hindu tradition, a saint's passing is considered an extremely auspicious and exalted event, signalling the completion of his mission on Earth and his return to the great inner heaven worlds whence he was sent by God and the Gods to help mankind. Nearly a hundred devotees from all over the world flew to the remote island of Kauai to be nearby during the passage. The suddenness of the events stunned the 2.5 million Tamils of Sri Lanka, for whom Subramuniyaswami, the successor of Lanka's great guru Yogaswami, is their hereditary spiritual leader. An outpouring of appreciation came from the local Kauai island residents who, though not Hindus, had over the decades of his residence there developed a fondness and profound appreciation of Subramuniyaswami, whom they called "Gurudeva," the affectionate title he was most known by. They valued his spiritual presence and his generously given guidance and advice on local island matters. Before his passing, Subramuniyaswami consoled his sorrowful monks, telling them, "Don't be sad, soon I will be with you 24 hours a day, working with you all from the inner planes." Bereaved devotees arriving at the island ashram heard the same message, and by the time of the Great Departure, a profound peace had descended upon the ashram and all connected with it. At Subramuniyaswami's request, he was cremated the same day, at Borthwick Kauai Mortuary in Koloa, Kauai, where a simple memorial service was held. In accordance with his directions, his ashes will be ceremonially interred tomorrow morning in a meditation crypt behind the sanctum sanctorum of the ashram's Siva Nataraja temple. His designated successor, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, 59, was installed immediately as guru of the ashram, formally known as Kauai Aadheenam. As is traditional, the passage of a saint is not accompanied by the Hindu rituals of mourning. The release from the mortal coils at the time of the saint's choosing is regarded as an auspicious event, one to be met with gratitude for his life and not sorrow for his passage. When notified of the Satguru's passing, Sita Ram Goel, one of India's most influential Hindu writers and thinkers, wrote, "He has done great work for Hinduism, and the recent reawakening of the Hindu mind carries his stamp." Ma Yoga Shakti, renowned teacher and Hinduism Today's Hindu of the Year for 2000, said, "For more than five decades, Subramuniyaswami, a highly enlightened soul of the West -- a Hanuman of today, a reincarnation of Siva Himself -- has watered the roots of Hinduism with great zeal, faith, enthusiasm and whole-heartedness." Sri Shivarudra Balayogi Maharaj of India said, "By his life and by his teaching, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami has helped make Hinduism an even greater gift to humanity." Swami Agnivesh of the Arya Samaj wrote, "Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, our Gurudev, is a great spiritual asset for humankind. I still carry with me the warmth of his affectionate hug and his very kind words." The American Swami Few in the Hindu world would not recognize the tall, white-haired American who had gained prominence over the decades for his practical and clear-minded books replete with explanations of everything Hindu, from the most basic beliefs and daily practices to the loftiest refined philosophy and yoga techniques. He was equally famous as founder and publisher of Hinduism Today, which evolved over 21 years from a simple newsletter to an award-winning, international, full-color magazine, respected for its authoritative reporting on Hindu events, institutions, personalities, issues and controversies around the world. Among his innovative projects are the creation of Iraivan Temple on Kauai, the first all-stone, hand-carved granite Agamic temple ever built in the West, the founding of Hindu Heritage Endowment to perpetually fund worthy Hindu institutions and his participation in numerous international conferences on religion, peace and interfaith harmony. In 1986, the World Religious Parliament in New Delhi honored him as one of the five Hindu spiritual leaders outside of India who had most dynamically promoted Hinduism in the past 25 years. Among his other honors are being named one of 25 "presidents" of religion at the 1996 Parliament of the World Religions held in Chicago, and receiving the U Thant Peace Award while attending the Millennium Peace Summit of World Religious and Spiritual Leaders held at the United Nations in August, 2000. This award was previously given to the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pope John Paul and Mother Teresa. On August 25, 2000, he addressed 1,200 spiritual leaders during the UN events in New York. Subramuniyaswami was a study in elegance, grace and radiant spirituality. People would instinctively make way when he walked through a public area, immediately conscious that a saint was present. Total strangers who had no idea who he was would approach him with reverence, anxious to meet this unusual being with the silken white hair. He was a large man, six-foot two inches tall, with deep hazel eyes. He maintained throughout much of his life the chiseled body he had developed in his youth as an accomplished ballet dancer. Even in his seventies he would occasionally dance for devotees, who would be astounded by his strength and grace of movement. He had a keen yet unpretentious sense of presentation, and when moving about in public was always impeccably groomed and fashionably dressed. His devotees loved his sense of fun, maintained even upon his death bed, for when asked by a monk if they could get anything for him, he replied, "Well, yes, a new body." A Mystic's Life, Decade by Decade Subramuniyaswami as born on January 5, 1927, in Oakland, California, and grew up near Lake Tahoe. He was orphaned by age 11 and raised by a family with deep connections to India. In his teenage years he was trained in classical Eastern and Western dance and in the disciplines of yoga, becoming the premier danseur of the San Francisco Ballet by age 19. Increasingly drawn to a spiritual life, he renounced his career at its height and sailed to India and Sri Lanka in 1947, on the first ship to sail to India following World War II. There he intensified his spiritual training under renowned yogis. In 1948, in the mountain caves of Jalani in central Sri Lanka, he fasted and meditated until he burst into enlightenment. Soon after that God Realization at just 21 years old, he met his satguru, Sage Yogaswami, in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. This was the single most respected Saivite Hindu guru for the people of Sri Lanka. The 72-year-old sage gave him his Hindu name, Subramuniya, and initiated him into the holy orders of sannyasa, or renunciate monasticism. Yogaswami then ordained the young mystic into his lineage with a tremendous slap on the back, saying, "This will be heard in America! Now go 'round the world and roar like a lion. You will build palaces (e.g., temples) and feed thousands." While still in Sri Lanka, Gurudeva introduced the nation to the circular saw, worked with leading Buddhist elders and founded Saiva Siddhanta Church, the world's first Hindu church, now active in many nations, and the Sri Subramuniya Ashram in the township of Alaveddy, just north of Jaffna. Occasionally people inquired about the spelling of his name, which differs slightly from the South Indian form. He explained that the name Subramuniya is a Tamil spelling of the Sanskrit Subhramunya (not be be confused with Subramanya). It is formed from subhra meaning, "light; intuition," and muni, "silent sage." Ya means "restraint; religious meditation." Thus Subramuniya means a self-restrained soul who remains silent, or when he speaks, speaks out from intuition. Gurudeva returned to America in 1950 where he went into a reclusive phase of deep contemplation and developed the spiritual techniques imparted to him in Sri Lanka, from which he wrote his first book, "Raja Yoga." This profound masterpiece remains the core of his teachings. Yogaswami had told him not to teach until he reached the age of 30, so it was in 1957 that he founded Himalayan Academy, now with thousands of students, and opened America's first Hindu temple, on Sacramento Street in San Francisco. In 1960 he initiated his first monastic disciples and opened centers in Reno and Virginia City, Nevada, and other areas of California. During this time he welcomed Hindu swamis coming for the first time to America, including Swami Chinmayananda, whom he extensively assisted in setting up his Chinmaya Mission in California. Subramuniyaswami developed an effective method of teaching through "Innersearch" travel-study programs, which he conducted periodically to different parts of the world until two months before his passing. Among the most outstanding of these programs was his 1969 pilgrimage to India with 65 devotees, then the largest group from America ever to come to India. Similar spiritual journeys took him and hundreds of devotees to dozens of nations, where he would typically meet with political and spiritual leaders, master craftsmen, Zen and Hindu abbots and yogis. In recent years his Innersearch tours focused on connecting with the Tamil Saivite communities around the globe, which he nurtured from Kauai. In the 1970s he brought his followers and organization entirely into Hinduism, and established Kauai Aadheenam, a monastery-temple complex in the South Indian tradition on Kauai, Hawaii, USA. His was the first major Saivite Hindu theological center outside the Indian subcontinent. In 1975 he founded the San Marga Iraivan Temple, and in 1979 he began publishing his famed Hinduism Today magazine. He developed a large printing facility in Virginia City, Nevada, and produced tens of thousands of his books and courses for the general market, writing about Indian spiritual practices long before they became popular. It was during this decade that large numbers of Hindus began to emigrate from India to the United States and Europe, encouraged by new immigration laws passed by President John F. Kennedy. Once here, they often found themselves cut off from the guidance of Hindu leaders in India. Subramuniyaswami sought to fill the gap by inspiring dozens of groups to build temples and perpetuate Hinduism in their new countries. Often he would gift the temple founders an icon of Lord Ganesha, the Hindu God invoked at the start of any project, with instructions to immediately begin His worship. He made himself available to the founders when they encountered difficulties, and counseled them on how to integrate with the local American community. He helped major institutions like the Chinmaya Mission and Sringeri Peetham to put roots down in America, and lent his monks and legal staff to the Hindu cause. In many cases, he would assign one of his own devotees to work closely with the temple until it was firmly established. Thus were dozens of temples built under his direct guidance or indirect influence in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Canada, England, Germany, Denmark, Australia, Fiji, New Zealand and elsewhere. In the 80s, often as part of his Innersearch programs, he conducted Hindu renaissance tours, meeting hundreds of thousands of Hindus in India and Sri Lanka, to whom he spread a message of courage, regenerating pride of heritage. In 1983 he traveled throughout Sri Lanka with a few of his monastics, visiting hundreds of villages, giving powerful talks in all parts of the country, even the remote tea plantations of central Lanka. Over 300,000 Hindus came to his discourses, which called for Hindus to have pride in their heritage and to cling to their faith despite efforts of other religions to make inroads and converts. During that Innersearch, Gurudeva was paraded through towns and villages in the ancient way, seldom seen today. White hand-woven cloth was laid before him to form a path on which he would walk to each meeting, each temple rite, each lecture. Sometimes these would go for miles, with devotees crowded on both sides of the roadway, chanting and offering flower petals beneath his long-striding feet. In Tuticorin, deep in the south of India, city elder and staunch Saiva Siddhantin, A. P. C. Veerabhagu, lead Gurudeva and his 50-plus devotees from the West through the streets in a marvelous procession of chariots and horse-drawn carriages that could have happened a thousand years ago. Hundreds of thousands of Saivites turned out that morning to welcome the sage from America, and he was led for miles through the city streets with hundreds of women with baskets full of flowers standing on the tops of each building raining tons of flowers on the great guru below who had given Saivite Hinduism back its pride of place among the religions of the world. During this same journey, he was given awards from all the major spiritual centers in South India, which he visited in person. He also arranged for India's greatest Bharata Natyam dancer, Kumari Swarnamukhi, to dance in the 1,000-pillared hall at Chidambaram Temple in Tamil Nadu. Her performance was the first in hundreds of years and marked the return of the sacred dancers to the temples from which they had been banned for so long. Also in the 1980s Gurudeva founded a branch monastery in Mauritius, whose government had invited him to revive a languishing Hindu faith. "Please come to our country," wrote one Mauritian at the time, "but do not just feed us rice. Teach us how to grow rice. Teach us our ancient heritage." Always an accomplished publisher, Subramuniyaswami came in on the ground floor with desktop publishing, adopting the Apple computer in 1985, then in its infancy, and instructing his monks to create a state-of-the-art system. Engineers from Apple came to Kauai to marvel at the setup. Apple even sent a team of documentary filmmakers to the monastery to show their employees the world's first functional publishing network, amazingly created by Gurudeva's monastics. He enjoyed the technology and proficiently used it for his work. This super-efficient system supercharged his prolific outreach through scriptures, books, pamphlets, art, lessons and later through CDs and the world's foremost Hindu websites. Subramuniyaswami had come by this time to be well-known throughout the world as an articulate, insightful and forceful exponent of the Hindu faith. In the late 1980s and the 1990s, in historic gatherings of spiritual and parliamentary leaders, he represented Hinduism to discuss mankind's future at the seminal Global Forum of Political and Spiritual Leaders 1988, Moscow in 1990, and Brazil in 1992. In 1986, the World Religious Parliament in New Delhi honored him as one of the five Hindu spiritual leaders outside of India who had most dynamically promoted Hinduism in the past 25 years. In 1993 he was elected one of three Presidents of Hinduism at the 100th anniversary of the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago. It was in 1994 that he founded Hindu Heritage Endowment to provide permanent income for Hindu swamis, temples and orphanages worldwide and created a stunning 3,000-page illustrated trilogy of sourcebooks on Saivism. The last volume, titled Living with Siva, Hinduism's Contemporary Culture, arrived from the printers in Malaysia shortly before his passing. What He Taught Subramuniyaswami taught the traditional Saivite Hindu path to enlightenment, a path that leads the soul from simple service to worshipful devotion to God, from the disciplines of meditation and yoga to the direct knowing of Divinity within. His insights into the nature of consciousness provide a key for quieting the external mind and revealing to aspirants their deeper states of being, which are eternally perfect, full of light, love, serenity and wisdom. He urges all seekers to live a life of ahimsa, nonhurtfulness towards nature, people and creatures, an ethic which includes vegetarianism. From his ashram in Hawaii, Subramuniyaswami continued to follow his own guru's instruction to bring Saivism to the Western world by teaching others to "know thy Self by thyself" and thus "see God Siva everywhere." His Monastic Order and the Future Foundational to all of his work is the Kauai Aadheenam and its resident Saiva Siddhanta Yoga Order. This group of 14 initiated swamis with lifetime vows and ten brahmachari, celibate monks in training, come from six countries and include both men born into the Hindu religion and those who converted or adopted Hinduism, Asians and Westerners. Made strong by decades of Subramuniyaswami's strict and hands-on personal guidance, all of his work will be carried forward and flourish in the future under the guidance of his senior-most swami and designated successor, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, age 59, a disciple for 35 years. This is an advaitic (non-dualist) Saiva Siddhanta order, a living stream of the ancient Nandinatha Sampradaya. This lineage is bound by certain common elements of philosophy including a belief in both the transcendent and immanent nature of God, the value of temple worship and the need to work through all karmas before liberation from rebirth may be obtained. It teaches the principle philosophical doctrines of the Hindu religion, including reincarnation, karma and dharma, vegetarianism, noninjury toward all beings, the importance of the yamas and niyamas, the need for purity and personal encounter with the Divine, gained through the several yogas and through penance, pilgrimage and daily worship. Natha gurus refuse to recognize caste distinctions in spiritual pursuits and initiate from the lowest to the highest, according to spiritual worthiness. Swamis of the Nandinatha lineage are often known as "market-place swamis," for they have historically lived among the people, rather than in remote areas, and interacted freely with all regardless of social status. Publications Throughout his life, Subramuniyaswami sought to establish, stabilize and advance Hinduism throughout the world. Leading swamis of India marveled at his ability to explain the most complex principles in a uniquely lucid and straightforward English, perhaps the central part of his written legacy, for until him the English representations of Hinduism were mostly Victorian in style or academic and awkward. Swami Chidananda Saraswati, President of the Divine Life Society, Rishikesh, India, said, "All the Hindus of our global Hindu brotherhood are verily indebted to Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami for his super compendium of books on Hinduism so carefully compiled, classified, carefully arranged, edited and published. Today it can be unhesitatingly proclaimed that he is a genius of Hinduism. He has put millions under a deep debt of gratitude by his unprecedented literary work." His trilogy, "Dancing with Siva,Living with Siva" and "Merging with Siva" are his foremost books. Each has been through several printings. All three are popular around the world for their easy readability, and are used in American universities for Hindu courses of study and comparative religion classes. "Dancing with Siva" is a modern Hindu catechism and resource book in question and answer format on the basics of Hinduism. Central to "Living with Siva" are his lengthy explanations of the traditional restraints and observances of Hinduism and his 365 guidelines for Hindu living, of which 115-year-old Swami Bua of New York recently commented, "These guidelines unfold one after the other with stunning simplicity. There are instructions for everybody, for every situation -- for men, women, parents, husbands, wives, businessmen, politicians, scientists -- none is forgotten or left out." In the 365 sutras, Subramuniyaswami addressed many controversial issues of our day, one of which came into play at the end of his own life. Hindu tradition has always provided for fasting under strict community regulation as a means of accelerating one's departure from the body in the case of terminal illness. Upon hearing his medical prognosis, he meditated upon the path ahead and considering the severity of his condition decided to fast to death, a practice called prayopavesa in Sanskrit. He explained this tradition in his final book, printed just days before his Mahasamadhi, Living with Siva: "To leave the body in the right frame of mind, in the right consciousness, through the highest possible chakra, is a key to spiritual progress. The seers did not want unrelenting pain and hopelessness to be the only possibilities facing a soul whose body was failing, whose only experience was pain without reprieve. So they prescribed a kindly way, a reasonable way, especially for the pain-riddled, disabled elderly and the terminally diseased, to choose a righteous release. What wonderful wisdom. No killer drugs. No violence. No involvement of another human being, with all the karmic entanglements that inevitably produces. No life-support systems. No loss of the family wealth for prolonged health care or into the hands of unscrupulous doctors. No lapsing into unconscious coma. No loss of dignity. No unbearable anguish. And no sudden or impulsive decision a quiet, slow, natural exit from the body, coupled with spiritual practices, with mantras and tantras, with scriptural readings, deep meditation, reflection and listening to favorite religious songs, with joyous release, with all affairs settled, with full self-awareness and with recognition and support from friends and relations." The third book, "Merging with Siva," is on mystical Hinduism, Subramuniyaswami's speciality. It is a summation of his yogic and metaphysical insights gained through over 50 years of meditation and inner practices. This master work, which is a kind of handbook for seekers of light and serious aspirants wishing to follow the path toward illumination and spiritual liberation, covers a wide range of subjects including karma, the aura, the fourteen chakras or psychic force centers of the body, understanding and transcending the various states of mind and the methods to attain samadhi, or God Realization. In addition to the trilogy, Subramuniyaswami produced "Loving Ganesha," a work on Hinduism's favorite God; "Lemurian Scrolls," which explores the origins of mankind on Earth; "Weaver's Wisdom," the best English translation of the ancient Tamil ethical scripture, "Tirukural;Saiva Dharma Sastras," an administrative manual on his organization which has served to guide other Hindu organizations in their efforts to transplant Hinduism on Western soil; as well as dozens of pamphlets, posters and handouts. In response to a request from the Hindus of Fiji, he prepared a children's course, Saivite Hindu Religion, now taught to thousands of children around the world. One book in particular, "How to Become a Hindu," published in 2000, encapsulated one entire aspect of Subramuniyaswami's mission: clear and ethical religious conversion. Unlike many other Hindu teachers in America, he was adverse to hiding or minimizing the Hindu origins of his teachings. He insisted that his devotees be boldly and proudly Hindus, and if they were not born into the faith, that they sincerely convert to Hinduism if they wanted to follow him, including legally changing their name to a Hindu name. The book was well received in India, where people referred to it as "How to Become a Better Hindu." The Shankaracharya of Puri, one of Hinduism's foremost leaders, said it "will provide immense help to those who wish to enter the Hindu fold, and also to the younger generation of Hindus." The book also has greatly assisted with intermarriage of Hindus with those outside their faith. Subramuniyaswami enjoyed promoting his books, and in the course of his travels for other events he would take time out to have book signings at local book stores such as Borders and Barnes and Noble. These were always wonderfully entertaining and informal events which allowed people genuinely interested in his teachings an opportunity for a personal encounter with the famed guru. The store would turn into a temporary temple as devotees and readers piled flowers at Gurudeva's feet. His helpers quickly learned that bookstores rarely stocked enough books for the relatively large numbers who would come, and compensated by bringing dozens of extra copies. At the end of the evening, Subramuniyaswami would joke with the store's staff, "Well, do I get the job?" Subramuniyaswami founded Hinduism Today magazine in 1979 to fulfill six purposes: 1) To foster Hindu solidarity as a unity in diversity among all sects and lineages; 2) To inform and inspire Hindus worldwide and people interested in Hinduism; 3) To dispel myths, illusions and misinformation about Hinduism; 4) To protect, preserve and promote the sacred Vedas and the Hindu religion; 5) To nurture and monitor the ongoing spiritual Hindu renaissance; 6) To publish a resource for Hindu leaders and educators who promote Sanatana Dharma. The magazine is supplemented with a daily e-mailed summary of Hindu news appearing in the world press called Hindu Press International. The magazine is by far the most sophisticated Hindu periodical and the only one which deals with all denominations of Hinduism and all countries in which Hindus live. With a studied aversion to politics, the magazine has successfully kept Hindus and non-Hindus alike appraised of a wide range of issues, people and institutions. Its website, along with that for Subramuniyaswami's teachings and a section for general Hindu information, is by far the largest resource on Hinduism on the Internet (start at www.himalayanacademy.com). A unique part of his website is "A Daily Chronicle of Kauai's Hindu Monstery," at which his answers to questions sent in by e-mail were posted in both audio and transcriptions. Hundreds of such sessions are archived there (see http://www.gurudeva.org/) Ma Yoga Shakti, renowned teacher and Hinduism Today's Hindu of the Year for 2000, said, "We are very proud of Hinduism Today. For more than three decades, Subramuniyaswami, a highly enlightened soul of the West -- a Hanuman of today, a reincarnation of Siva Himself -- has watered the roots of Hinduism with great zeal, faith, enthusiasm and whole-heartedness." Sri Chinmoy, famed for his peace efforts worldwide, said, "a uniquely powerful and beautiful international magazine. Gurudeva has energized, inspired and united Hindus throughout the world with his dynamic approach to an ancient faith." Ram Swarup, perhaps India's most outstanding Hindu thinker, wrote, "Hinduism Today presents Hinduism's new global face. It takes a strategic lead in the effort to overcome the problem of self-alienation and growing illiteracy among the Hindus of their heritage. It is easily the best magazine Hindus have." Iraivan Temple The Iraivan Temple, now under construction at Kauai Aadheenam, was conceived shortly after Subramuniyaswami had a powerful vision of God Siva walking on the Aadheenam land in 1975. To permanently capture the power of this great vision, he commissioned the construction of a large temple to be entirely made of hand-carved granite. The land was prepared for fifteen years, money raised, and India's greatest living architect, V. Ganapathi Sthapati, was hired to design the edifice in the thousand-year-old Chola style. The actual carving commenced in 1990 at a work site in Bangalore, India, a ceremony blessed by the presence of Sri Sri Sri Trichyswami and Sri Sri Sri Balagangadharanathaswami, the two foremost spiritual gurus of Karnataka State, who so loved Gurudeva's vision of a temple carved in India and erected in America that they gave him 11 acres of land and supported every phase of the work as though it was their own temple being built. On the arid desert lands, Gurudeva founded an entire village for the project. Homes were erected for the 75 carvers and their families, wells were dug, kitchens assembled, blacksmith facilities were built along with enormous sheds to protect the stone sculptors from the Indian sun. A Malaysian family, devotees of Gurudeva, Jiva Rajasankara, with his wife and sons, were brought to Bangalore to supervise the workers. The family oversees even today the stones which are quarried, carved and trial-fitted, then shipped to Kauai where starting in May, 2001, a team of seven master stone carvers from India arrived to begin assembly. They are presently on the sixth course of the temple; the work is expected to take several more years to complete. At the time of Gurudeva's passing, they had just completed the floor of the inner sanctum. This is the first all-stone temple ever built in the Western Hemisphere, and one for which Subramuniyaswami has insisted upon the most careful craftsmanship. He directed the carvers to do everything by hand, and even when efficiency experts urged him to permit hydraulic tools to speed up the time-consuming and expensive project, he said no, telling them that by having it done in the old way we would be passing along the ancient, hands-only craft to one more generation. The entire temple, which is taking hundreds of man years to complete, is being produced in the same way that great carvers like Michelangelo and Rubin did their masterpieces, with a simple hammer and an array of chisels. Enshrined in the temple will be a 700-pound single-pointed quartz crystal, possibly the largest in the world, to represent God Siva in His transcendent state. Special Issues Subramuniyaswami actively opposed deceptive and coercive proselytization methods by other religions in India and other parts of the world. He put his concerns directly before leaders of other faiths in public forums and in private. He also raised these controversies at various international conferences and demanded standards be established for "ethical conversion." At the moment when Nepal changed from a monarchy to a democracy in 1990, his influence was instrumental in countering veiled threats to foreign aid that would be held back from this needy nation should Nepal declare itself "Hindu." As a result, Nepal remains the only officially Hindu nation in the world. In the 1990s Subramuniyaswami became aware of the pervasive use of corporal punishment in the homes and schools of Hindus. He immediately began a campaign to "Stop the War in the Home" (see source for this talk at end) and to change the policies of schools. He directed his own followers in many nations to stop hitting or abusing, even verbally, their children under any circumstances, and instructed them to begin teaching nonviolent methods of positive discipline within their local community. For this, he partnered with Dr. Jane Nelsen, one of the great voices of enlightened discipline for children. She visited him on Kauai and together they worked out programs in Hindu communities around the world. This campaign, which is paralleled in other parts of the world among people of other faiths, is bearing fruit, with dozens of schools in India now forbidding corporal punishment, and thousands of Hindu parents reconsidering their own methods of child rearing. When he addressed the 1,200 delegates to the Millennium Peace Summit of World Religious and Spiritual Leaders at the United Nations in August, 2000, he said in part, "To stop the wars in the world, our best long-term solution is to stop the war in the home. It is here that hatred begins, that animosities with those who are different from us are nurtured, that battered children learn to solve their problems with violence. This is true of every religious community." Within his own tradition of Saiva Siddhanta, Subramuniyaswami worked throughout his life to create "pure Saivites," as he said shortly before his passing. He accomplished this both through his publications and through his personal teaching. Relying upon his own intuition and profound mystical powers, he clarified and purified all of the Saivite teachings of his tradition, discarding that which could not be substantiated through his own inner experience. His staff researched thousands of topics and consulted regularly with hundreds of scholars, linguists, historians, theologians and other experts, all of whom enthusiastically assisted this great spiritual leader. He never engaged in theological dispute with other sects of Hinduism, but rather encouraged each to be true to their own traditions and philosophy. For decades he worked to create a Hindu solidarity by encouraging all shared beliefs and practices, rather than emphasizing areas of disagreement. As a result, spiritual leaders of all traditions embraced him and counted him a friend and ally. There has never been a guru so beloved by other gurus, nor one so fond of a brother swami. Over the years hundreds were either visited by him in their ashrams or found their way to his ashram in the Pacific Ocean. Influence In addition to his work within the global Hinduism, Subramuniyaswami also had special relations with a number of communities including the Sri Lankan Tamils, the Saivites of Mauritius, Malaysia and Fiji and his fellow Kauaians. In South India, these theological centers, known as aadheenams, perform many functions. They found and manage temples, hold endowment investments and land, train swamis and priests, maintain libraries, support pundits, arbitrate theological issues, give spiritual counseling and teach. They have the authority to clarify and reinterpret scripture and to revise customary practices of their communities. They also deal with worldly matters and are called upon to settle disputes in the community, to advise politicians, even to help arrange marriages. Subramuniyaswami was called upon to perform all these functions in these various communities. By far his greatest efforts and most focused energy went toward the 2.5 million Sri Lankan Tamils, especially after a disastrous civil war struck the country in 1983. Just prior to its onset he toured the country, addressing hundreds of thousands of Tamils. After 1983, Tamil refugees poured out of Sri Lanka and made their way to Canada, America, Germany, England, Australia and dozens of other countries. He founded the first Refugee Relief Fund for Sri Lankans in 1985, collecting money in the West and sending it to the war-torn region of Jaffna. He established and maintained contact with each of these communities, advised them on how to adjust to their circumstances and to remain staunch Saivite Hindus. In his last Innersearch travel-study program, he visited many of these communities in Europe, and celebrated with them their successful adaptation to their new homes. In Denmark in August of 2001 he laid the foundation stone for an Amman temple and visited other temple communities in Sweden, Norway, Germany and the UK. No group of Hindus counted Gurudeva their champion more than the noble Saivite temple priests. Most especially he encouraged and defended the Sivacharya priests of South India, who are traditionally attached to the aadheenams. He helped restore the dignity of this priesthood and encouraged young men born in the priest families to follow in the profession of their fathers instead of opting for higher-paying but totally secular jobs. He instructed the trustees of these temples outside of India he helped get started to treat their priests with respect, pay them decent wages and provide proper living facilities. He encouraged priests to start their own temples, which a few have done in Canada and Europe. He has always considered the status and well-being of the Hindu priesthood to be the most accurate measure of the well-being of Hinduism in general, and his successor and monks will continue to champion the cause of Hindu priests around the world. The priests in turn assisted Subramuniyaswami's mission at every turn, for example, by sending young Sivachariya priests to train his monks in temple worship, a training heretofore never imparted to anyone outside their caste. Subramuniyaswami first visited Malaysia in June of 1980 with two of his swamis, and then again in January, 1981, traveling with 33 devotees for an Innersearch program which included India and Sri Lanka. Over the next few years, Hindus attracted to Subramuniyaswami's teachings started the country's very first classes in Hinduism, held after-hours at public schools. These classes and the widespread distribution of Hinduism Today magazine had a huge impact on Hindus in Malaysia, a Muslim nation where Hindus are just 10% of the population. Gurudeva's dedicated members in this country disseminated clear Hindu teachings to the youth and instilled a pride in Hindu religion as a result. He sent one of his monastics to teach classes all over the country. In 1986 the first Hindu youth camps in Malaysia were conducted by his devotees, which inspired all the other Hindu organizations to also hold youth camps. More recently, he's advocated abolishing corporal punishment in the homes and schools, directing his devotees to teach classes for other Hindu parents in nonviolent means of parenting and to change school policies regarding corporal punishment of students. At a national level, the cumulative impact of his work has been a dramatic increase in the pride of Hindus. One person said, "He has breathed new life into Hinduism for the Hindus of Malaysia." Today three of Gurudeva's swamis are from Malaysia. Manon Mardemootoo, a long-standing devotee of Subramuniyaswami and a prominent attorney, offered this summary of Subramuniyaswami's work in the island nation of Mauritius: "Subramuniyaswami came to Mauritius in the 1980s at the request of Hindu elders who were worried about the high rate of conversion from the Hindu fold. In January, 1982, he spent an entire month there traveling from village to village with one of his swamis. Then Gurudeva sent a French-speaking monk who at one time was holding 25 classes around the island. He conveyed Subramuniyaswami's teachings on the three worlds, the story of our soul, our great God and Gods, the pillars of Hinduism, karma, dharma, etc., all of which gave us a glimpse of our incomparable heritage, the greatness of Hinduism and the oneness of mankind. He removed misconceptions in the Tamil Saivite community. Many of us came to understand that Sivaratri was not a festival of our Hindi-speaking brothers only, nor was Ganesha Chaturti a purely Maurati festival, but rather both were major festivals for all Hindus. "The establishment of Subramuniyaswami's mission was made official by the Saiva Siddhanta Church Act passed in Parliament in July, 1988. He instituted the printing of a local edition of Hinduism Today in 1986 on the island and set up a monastery on a 12-acre parcel at Riviere du Rempart. Hundreds of people would come for the weekly homas held at that time. Today the major part of this land has been dedicated to a spiritual park, a present of Subramuniyaswami to the people of Mauritius and the only one of its nature in the country. It is now regularly visited by pilgrims from the world over. The Spiritual Park was created at a cost of several million rupees, all donated by local Hindus. The most elaborate part of it is the Ganesha Mandapam, with its nine-foot tall Pancha Mukha Ganapati. As well, equally large granite icons of Lord Murugan, in His form as the six-faced Arumugam, and Lord Siva, in the form of Dakshinamurthi, the silent teacher, also grace the spiritual park. "We have had a regular flow of monastics from our headquarters in Hawaii, Kauai Aadheenam, to the monastery. They created the Spiritual Park and held retreats and seminars for thousands of youth around the island. Subramuniyaswami advised his family members to use ayurvedic medicine and adopt a healthy diet, including raw sugar, brown rice and brown bread. As well he encouraged the wearing of Hindu dress at home, temples and during festivals. Several Mauritians have completed a six-month training at our headquarters in Kauai, where we presently have a Mauritian monk, Sadhaka Tyaganatha, hailing from the same village of Rempart, who is one of the Aadheenam's foremost priests. "Since 1999, Subramuniyaswami has been training our members in positive discipline, the concept of education without violence at home and school and the only way to completely eradicate violence from our society. Gurudeva will be remembered for the sense of discipline in spiritual life and excellence at work which he instilled among his members and the need to pursue daily sadhanas for spiritual progress and peaceful living in the spirit of ahimsa in all aspects of life. This is the present sadhana of members, to take these teachings into the public and make it a living reality. Subramuniyaswami succeeded in creating a sense of self-respect and a new-found identity among the Hindus of Mauritius. "He will also be remembered for two meetings to promote community harmony. The first was with Hindu leaders to strengthen the ties within the Hindu community. Then in 1995, under the auspices of the municipal Council of Port Louis, he met with religious leaders of all faiths to strengthen the bonds of friendship, respect and harmony among the people of Mauritius. Today, in significant part because of Subramuniyaswami's contribution, Mauritius is cited everywhere, including on the floor of the United Nations, as an example of peaceful coexistence in a multi-racial, multi-religious nation." Over his 52 years of ministry, Subramuniyaswami has helped the Hindus of England, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Trinidad, Guyana, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Singapore, and many more countries. Indeed, there is probably not a corner of the Hindu world which has not been impacted by his work. Even though Subramuniyaswami's Kauai Aadheenam is located outside of India and in a largely non-Hindu community, still he found himself performing the traditional functions of an aadheenam for the local community. He was a key member of "Vision Kauai," a group of community leaders including politicians, business people and spiritual individuals wanting to create a positive future for the island's community. He worked monthly with the mayor of Kauai, with county council members, the university provost, the superintendent of schools, business and agricultural leaders, to bring a unity to the ethnically diverse island of 55,000 and to offer his vision for a secure, drug-free future for the children. It was a message he carried forward on local TV and radio programs, at Rotary Club breakfasts to which he was invited to speak, and in person. He would from time to time be sought out for advice by community leaders on the important issues facing the island. Hundreds of residents, well-to-do and not so well-to-do alike, counted him as their easily approachable friend and counselor, remaining only remotely aware of his stature in the Hindu world. He was, in fact, Kauai's most renowned citizen, the only one with an extensive global impact. This was recognized in formal ways by the governor of the state, the mayor and county council. Indeed, the outpouring of gratitude and appreciation from island residents upon his passing was at times as deep and as heartfelt as for those of his close disciples. "Just before his passing," said the monastery spokesperson, "He asked devotees worldwide to carry his work and institutions forward with unstinting vigor, to keep one another strong on the spiritual path, to work diligently on their personal spiritual disciplines and to live every moment in harmony and love for all peoples. His monks, forged in the fires of his wisdom and love, are well-prepared to keep his mission potent and effective. Equally, his family devotees are pure, one-minded and deeply committed. These two communities will continue the work together: building the Iraivan Temple, managing the Spiritual Park in Mauritius, shepherding souls on the Saivite path of enlightenment, continuing the many publications, teaching children their Saivite Hindu religion, preserving traditional culture and art, protecting Hindu priests and the indigenous faiths of the world, contributing to our local Kauai community, guiding the future of Hinduism around the globe and working to reduce violence, child-beating and spouse abuse."

<h2>Jagannath idols stolen from Shri Jagannath temple</h2> The Pioneer Sunday, November 11, 2001 Puri (Agencies) - Close on the heels of the burglary at the 11th century Lingaraj temple at Bhubaneswar a week ago, miscreants stole two idols including that of lord Madan Mohan from the Shri Jagannath temple here early Sunday, police said. The two feet high 'ashtadhatu' (eight metal) idol, regarded as the representative of lord Jagannath, was found missing when sevayats came to open the sanctum sanctorum of the 12th century shrine at dawn Sunday. The silver idol of Narayani -- considered the deity of the new moon day -- was also untraceable, temple administration sources said. The "ratna bhandar" of the temple, where huge quantities of precious jewellery and ornaments of the deities were kept, was found to be safe, the sources said. Police, however, described the act as a definite attempt to rob the "ratna bhandar" which had failed. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, revenue and law minister Biswabhushan Harichandan and senior police officials have rushed here from Bhubaneswar to take stock of the situation. The temple administrator, Bhabani Shankar Panda said that the lock on a side entrance of the sanctum sanctorum, inside which the deities of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra are kept on the 'ratna simhasan' had been found broken. The thieves had also broken locks of two offices within the temple complex but no valuables were kept there. The morning rituals of the deities were delayed due to the incident as the idol of Madan Mohan was associated with all rituals of the shrine. Even the 'mangala arati' supposed to commence at 5.00 am, had not begun till noon, temple sources said. The sources said the 'mukti mandap', the highest policy making body of the temple, was being consulted to find a way out to commence the rituals. Police had sealed the sanctum sanctorum even as thousands of people thronged the temple to have "darshan" of the deities on the occasion of 'ekadasi' day in the auspicious Oriya month of Kartika Sunday. Temple sources said as per tradition, three sevayats -- 'mudra sevak', 'muduli' and 'talachhua mahapatra' -- had locked and sealed different gates of the main temple after the last ritual of 'pahuda' (sleeping of the deities) was completed. After that the temple was cleared of all visitors at around 2.00 am. Early in the morning, when some sevayats went inside to open the door, they found it open with the lock smashed. The police was then informed. On Monday night, thieves had stolen about ten kg of silver ornaments, some gold and four costly saris of goddess Parvati from the 11th century Lingaraj temple at Bhubaneswar. Police was yet to make any breakthrough in the case. According to official sources, one havildar and eight constables of state police had been deployed at different places inside the temple complex last night. Besides, three personnel of Jagannath temple police were also on duty near the 'beherana dwar' inside the shrine. Sevayats, stunned over the development, described the burglary from the Shri Jagannath temple on the 'ekadasi' day as "a bad omen for the state". The miscreants had also struck at the Lingaraj temple on Monday night, considered an auspicious day, they said. The Orissa police and the temple police are responsible for the security of the shrine, the maintenance of which has been entrusted to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). The shrine, besides the sanctum sanctorum, comprised of over thirty smaller temples within its sprawling premises. Even as the pilgrim city -- also a magnificent sea resort police had sealed all entry and exit points from the city. Read the complete news at: http://www.dailypioneer.com

Sorry Valayaji, I didn't. I haven't been around much lately, I'm sorry to say. When those articles came my way, I did a cursory look of topic headings and was under the impression that nothing had been posted on the subject. My mistake. At any rate, the testimony of the (unnamed) devotee at least corroborates the newspaper reports. Adri may not always tell the truth, but the Iskcon authorities in Mayapur are not exactly paragons of the truth, either. Jagat

What does this report have to do with me, dear Valayaji? As far as the truth of what has happened. A bomb went off. What were Iskcon devotees doing making bombs? I think Adridharan has asked the real question: Where in Nectar of Devotion is making bombs itemized as a devotional activity? Check the original site: http://farsight.members.beeb.net/50.HTM <small> [This message has been edited by Jagat (edited 10-31-2001).]

1. A report written by someone in Mayapur: I live in Mayapur just some 1000ft from the building where it happened. Our whole house shook from the blast. I went out side to see half the building covered in white smoke for several minutes. Later on I went with a friend to investigate what happened. We asked all the Brahmacharis and they said they did know what I was talking about and they didn't hear anything. (The Brahmachari Ashram is about 200ft from the building where it happened, which is a half finished guest house.) We went into the building and saw a few policemen. They ask if we knew anything and we told them what we saw. They said they asked the temple devotees and they said they knew nothing. They said that some people outside the main gate saw some people carried away in an ambulance. They also showed us a finger and some other bits of flesh they had found. We saw the room where the blast took place and saw that all there was mostly was a pile of junk swept in a corner. We left the building and again asked a Brahmachari and he said that if anyone askes you anything, just say "I don't know". We told them what the police had found and he started speeking to another devotee in Bengali, (Like I didn't understand...) "Oh no. I thought it was all cleaned up." I didn't find out much more till the next day when a friend of mine, who was good friends with the person who died, filled me in on the whole story. The man who died is named Babu Ghosh. He was working for ISKCON for around 25 years. He had known Prabhupada and was a very nice person. According to my friend he was more advanced spiritualy than many initiated devotees. Three days before it happened he told my friend that ISKCON was forcing him to make bombs and he realy didn't want to do it. He wasn't expert at doing it but they made him do it. Inevitably they made a mistake and, kaboom. The other person was a Bhakta. The thing is that these type of bombs are EXTREMELY dangerous to handle. Even when you throw them at someone you have to do it underhandedly. Anyway, the thing was the local managements ideas for protection in case of WW3. There are other things as well like that they keep all temple entrances locked but one at all times. But the bad side is that they had someone who's not an ISKCON devotee do it as if something did go wrong, which did, they can just hush it away, which they did. 2. From Adri's IRM newsletter: Mayapur Bomb Blast Reveals GBC Terrorist Campaign The world has been in a great state of shock, confusion and grieving since the horrific events that took place in New York on 11th September. Many devotees see these events and the war which has followed as a sign that the only hope for humanity really is Krishna Consciousness, as we approach the precipice of a 3rd world war. However just when you thought things could not get any worse, they do. The headquarters of the movement that is supposed to be providing this spiritual alternative has been caught red-handed engaging in a terrorist bomb-making plot. One could be forgiven for thinking that extremist violence and murders are currently the monopoly of terrorist outlaws like Osama Bin Laden. But now both the Indian media and police have confirmed that ISKCON Mayapur have themselves been making bombs in the holy dhama! (an activity not recommended in "The Nectar of Devotion", as far as we are aware). All of the major newspapers in India (Asian Age, Hindustan Times, Times of India and Calcutta Statesman), as well as the Indian police, exposed this illegal activity as having taken place *within the ISKCON Mayapur temple complex itself by disciples of Jayapataka Swami and the head of Mayapur's security force.* (see full newspaper reports below). Unfortunately for these would-be terrorists, this act of "devotional service" back-fired on them - literally. One bomb-maker died, and his two accomplices were injured when the bomb accidentally went off - a clear case of instant karma if ever there was one: ************************************************************************ "On Saturday afternoon just at the back of Mayapur temple one person died due to a sudden explosion of bombs which they were making in one of the buildings under construction. The deceased was identified as Babu Ghosh, aged 30. One of his associates named Amit Das, was seriously injured. The officer-in-charge Mr Sukumar Dutt of Navadeep Police Station stated that the two said persons were security staff of ISKCON. Both were making bombs in a building behind Chandraya Mandir when one of the bombs exploded injuring the said two persons who were immediately admitted to the Sadar Hospital, Krishnanagar, near ISKCON. Babu Ghosh died in the hospital. Nitai Prasad prabhu, the ISKCON spokesman, is not prepared to accept the said persons as being ISKCON staff. He said the incident took place on ISKCON property, but stated that the said persons had nothing to do with ISKCON." (Ananda Patrika Bazzar, 14/10/01) "A man died and another was injured while making bombs inside a house on the ISKCON compound on Saturday afternoon. The Navadweep Police said, Babu Bose, 30, Amit Das, 28 and their asssociates were making bombs inside a secluded house on the complex when some of the bombs burst. Police sources also said the two had a past criminal record.The two were admitted to Shaktinagar Hospital. Babu died later in the evening. Nadia Superintendent of Police, Ramphal Power, said he had received several complaints of criminal activities having increased in the area. 'We have identified some trouble-makers. Such incidents will not be allowed to recur,' he said. ISKCON sources said the two were not connected to their organisation. "The incident took place outside the complex." an ISKCON spokesman said. But the Police maintained that the blast took place inside the complex. (Asian Age, 14/10/01) "Bomb Makers Hurt - Babu Ghosh, 30, and Amit Das, 28, were injuered on Saturday while making bombs inside a partially constructed house near Iskcon Mandir here. They were injuered when a bomb exploded, sources said, Police arrested the two." (The Hindustan Time, 14/10/01) "One Babu Ghose & his two associates were arrested on Sunday on the charge of a bomb blast near the Iskcon Temple at Mayapur on Saturday afternoon. Police said, Babu was a group D employeee of the Iskcon temple." (The Statesman, 15/10/01) "Police arrested three persons from Iskcon temple in Mayapur and seized the attendance ragister, in relation to a blast near the Temple on Saturday which killed a man & injured two brothers. according to Police, Babu Ghose was making crude bombs near the temple compound when one of them went off accidentaly killing him on the spot & injuring two others. Initially, the temple authorities had denied any connection with the de-ceased or the injured but on Sunday admitted that Ghose was a group D staff." (The Times of India, 15/10/01) "Nadia distict police have interrogated the wounded person who was making bombs at an under construction building under construction at ISKCON Mayapur, in the hospital on Sunday. According to police sources, wounded Amit Das (28) had recovered physically. Higher-ranking distict police officials have interrogated him on this day. It is learned that while bombs were being made, one exploded killing one other person. His name is Babu Ghose (30). Babu Ghosh was working as a guard in ISKCON main office, Mayapur. The wounded Amit Das is also a devotee of ISKCON. Police sources revealed that Babu Ghosh was a known terror in that area. The distict police officials not only questioned Amit Das but Iskcon authorities also. Even though the ISKCON authorities are refusing to accept the responsibility for the incident, the identities of the dead and 2 wounded persons are not unknown to the local people. In the mean time the police have noticed some irregularities in the official papers of the ISKCON main office." (Ganshakti, 15/10/01) "One person died in the ISKCON compound due to a bomb explosion in a building under construction at Mayapur. It created panic as the police have captured 4 fresh bombs and other materials from the place. The police are inquiring why they were making bombs in temple compound. The additional superintendent of police said on Sunday morning that one of those making bombs has died and the other is in serious condition and so at this stage we can't say more. Police have started investigation. [...] Dead Babu Ghose was the security guard in ISKCON, his father said. But the ISKCON authorities said, 'Babu left security job before two and half years ago." (Sangabad Pratidin, 16/10/2001) ************************************************************************ You will notice from the reports how the Mayapur authorities have been trying to squirm out of admitting the obvious, and as usual tried to engage in their usual lies and begin a cover-up. It did not last long since the evidence was so damning that even they had to admit the truth. This comedy of errors was also played out under the full gaze of TV cameras as well as all the main news stations there - E-TV, Akash Bangla and Khas Khabor - reported the news. Intially the Mayapur spokesman Nitai Prasad Das stated on TV that it was a *gas explosion*! Then by the next news report it was admitted that it was bomb explosion, but not on ISKCON property. Then they next admitted on TV that it was on ISKCON property, but those involved were nothing to do with ISKCON. By the final report they had also conceded that those involved were active members of ISKCON Mayapur. Though it will be noted that the Police version of events was accurate from the start. Having been caught red-handed the latest lie they have started circulating was that they were making the bombs for 'self-defence'! Naturally this yarn has had the local police doubling-up with laughter. We wonder what tale they will spin next. Naturally with the current tense world situation in regards to bombs and terrorism, the authorities have taken this matter very seriously, and in addition to the local police, both the state C.I.D., and the Intelligence Bureau are at the scene. Following the incident the Police have reported that many of the leaders and managers at Mayapur have fled, while some western 'devotees' have fled the country, and there is hardly anyone in a position of authority that can be questioned. This is understandable considering the fact that the Police are treating this matter with the utmost importance. While the investigations and interrogations are going on, we have learned both from our sources in Mayapur and the Police, that the bombs were being made to be used in a terrorist attack to take over the 22, Gurusadaya Road, property in Calcutta, which is the property developed by the temple for the use of the Calcutta Life members. It is also the property where a marriage hall was mysteriously burned down 2 years ago, as reported by us in Newsletter no. 16 (ISKCON Calcutta Triumphs Following Arson Attack). Though the thugs from Mayapur have made many attempts to try and seize this property by force, they have failed each time due to huge gates and a high perimiter wall with intense security. Unlike the Temple building, it is not open to the public, and thus is virtually impossible to storm. We have been forced to turn it into a fortress. Frustrated at their many previous failures to obtain entry, the plan was to use the bombs to blow the gates and scare all the security guards and devotees inside to flee in panic, thus allowing the Mayapur mob to finally storm the place and claim possession. This account is backed up by the fact that one week before the bomb blast, Babu Ghosh, the chief bomb maker who died in the explosion, came to visit the property with Dayarama Das, the head of Mayapur. They were seen 'casing the place', making a survey, and also made threats that they would be soon taking the place over. That this is not simply a story which we are giving after the fact to fit the circumstances is proven by the fact that on the 7th of October, straight after this took place, all the above was registered by us with the local Ballygunj Police Station in an official report, which stated that Dayarama had come here with his guards, and that they had threatened to take possession soon. Of course we had no idea at the time, that they were actually making bombs to assist in their terrible deeds.

I beg to point out that the Hindu religion is perfectly based on the personal conception of God, or Viñëu. Dr. J. F. Staal's statement that the Kåñëa cult is a combination of Christian and Hindu religion, as if something manufactured by concoction, is not correct. As far as the Hindu religion is concerned, there are millions of Kåñëa temples in India, and there is not a single Hindu who does not worship Kåñëa.

Check out the entire site http://www.hrcbm.org/

15 thousands minority families dislodged in two districts: thousands of houses ablaze, hundreds of women raped (Translated from Bengali) Report from Janakantha, Oct 10, 2001: Post election violence and oppression against minority has displaced more than 15 thousands minority families in Barishal and Bagerhat districts. The affected upazilas (sub-districts) are Gournadi, Ujipur, Agailjara, Mullahat and Chitalmari. Hindu minorities from those upazilas are being forced out of their land and taken shelter at various villages in Ramshil upazila under Khotalipara districts. The displaced minorities have taken shelter to various schools and colleges at Ramshil bazaar and their relatives in those areas. Islamic fundamentalists have initiated a rain of terror forcing minorities to endure living in a nightmare condition in those areas. Janakantha correspondence Mr. Mojammel Haq after visiting the affected areas today (Tuesday) described that the situation is far grave than the atrocities of 1971. Those family even not displaced in 1971, now they are facing far severe condition and being forced out of their own native land. The oppressed minority reported that due their support for Awami league in the election, BNP supporters went on rampage setting ablaze houses and raping women in Chadshi, Bahadurpur, Barthi, Pingolkati, Ashukati, Tarki Bandar, Narchira, and Sharikal under Gournadi and Rangtha, Bakal, Rajihar, Chingatia, Ramshidha, Dhanduba, Jayrampatti under Agailjara upazila and everywhere in Ujipur. With primitive laughter Islamic fundamentalists raped hundreds of women, removed eye of victims and loot all the belongings of minority victims. Such primitive and barbaric atrocities cannot be expressed in words. Mr. Bimal Biswas, a leader of local Awami league described middle age lawlessness and barbaric rampage in the area. He mentioned that Islamic fundamentalist gang raped mother and her daughters of a Hindu family from Uttachadni under Gournadi upazila in front of public eye. In another incident, three daughters of a minority family were taken out of their house and gang raped publicly by Islamic fundamentalist. He also told to the news conference that BNP cadres kidnapped most of the women and girls from the villages at night, raped them overnight and released them in the morning. Janakantha has also reported that Bangladesh government has not taken any step to prevent such atrocities nor has provided food and shelter to the thousands of victims. If food and shelter is not given immediately, most of the displaced families will starve from lack of food and water. http://www.hrcbm.org/news/janakant_news.html

<h2>What the Afghans need is colonizing </h2> Mark Steyn, National Post There is something inherently ridiculous about a man standing in a cave wearing fatigues and holding a hand-mike and shaking his fist at the entire civilized world. Osama bin Laden called on his viewers to choose between "the side of believers and the side of infidels." But who made his microphone? Who made the camera? I doubt it was Afghan, given that under the Taleban you're not allowed to watch TV, never mind host your own jihad-inciting special. True, Osama disdains much of our decadent materialist culture. I couldn't help noticing, for example, how the poor guy had aged since his last live-from-the-cave special. That floor-length beard could use a couple of vats of Grecian Formula. But, such details aside, Osama has the same complicated relationship to the West as millions of other Muslims. If it weren't for Western technology, he'd be just a loser in a cave shouting to himself. But on Sunday, just for a few minutes, he was the only 11th century guy with his own CNN gig, and what he had to say was useful and illuminating. The comparisons were simultaneously chilling, because of what they appeared to foreshadow (he referred to Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and heartening, because they underscored once and for all that no compromise is possible with such a fanatic. The cave man warmed up with a remark about "the tragedy of Andalusia" -- a reference to the end of Moorish rule in Spain in 1492. As he sees it, the roots of Islam's downfall in Andalusia lie in its accommodation with the Christian world and a move toward a pluralistic society. That's very helpful. Osama's not just anti-Jew, or anti-Christian, but objects to the very idea of a society where believers of all faiths and none rub along together. He's at war with, for want of a better word, multi-culturalism. The boneheads on the left, missing the point as always, march around the cities of the West waving placards against "the racist war." But he's the racist. If Professor Thobani were to drop by his cave, he'd shoot her dead before she'd have time to bleat, "But I'm on your side ..." By comparison with this big central grievance, the specific ones are easily solved. Maybe he's right about the Palestine Mandate of 1922: maybe the League of Nations should have given the Jews a homeland in Saskatchewan or Nunavut and saved us a whole bunch of trouble. And, to be honest, he has a point about the U.S. military presence near Islam's holiest sites in Saudi Arabia: he's right, it is a humiliation that one of the richest regimes on Earth is too incompetent, greedy and decadent to provide its own defence. But it's not America's fault those layabout Saudi princes, faced with Saddam's troops massing on the border, could think of nothing better to do than turn white as their robes and frantically dial Washington. In fact, insofar as the Middle East's the victim of anything other than its own failures, it's not Western imperialism but Western post-imperialism. Unlike Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Americas, Araby has never come under direct European colonial rule. The Ottoman Empire was famously characterized by Tsar Nicholas I as "the sick man of Europe," which would seem to concede admission to the club, but also suggests that its sickness was at least partially due to its lack of Europeanness. These effects linger long: The difference in progress between parts of the former Yugoslavia seems to owe as much to whether the territory was previously Habsburg (Slovenia) or Ottoman (Macedonia) as anything else. The Turks backed the wrong man in the First World War more by bad luck than by anything else, and one can sympathize with the more sophisticated terror-apologists in the West who argue the Ottoman Empire should never have been broken up. Turkey, for its part, was more European in the 1920s than it ever was under the Sultans: Indeed, it remains the only Muslim territory to have successfully embarked upon a redefinition of the relationship between Islam and the state. Turkey gave women the vote before Britain did, the sort of supporting evidence Prof. Thobani might find useful, if she troubled herself with supporting evidence. But in the Arabian peninsula, the Ottoman vacuum was filled not with colonies but with "spheres of influence," a system that continues to this day. Rather than making Arabia a Crown colony within the Empire, sending out the Marquess of Whatnot as Governor, issuing banknotes bearing the likeness of George V, setting up courts presided over by judges in full-bottomed wigs and introducing a professional civil service and a free press, the British instead mulled over which sheikh was likely to prove more pliable, installed him in the capital and invited his sons to Eton and Sandhurst. The French did the same, and so, later, did the Americans. This was cheaper than colonialism and less politically prickly, but it did a great disservice to the populations of those countries. The alleged mountain of evidence of Yankee culpability is, in fact, evidence only of the Great Satan's deplorable faintheartedness: yes, Washington dealt with Saddam, and helped train the precursors of the Taleban, and fancied Colonel Gadaffi as a better bet than King Idris, just as in the Fifties they bolstered the Shah and then in the Seventies took against him, when Jimmy Carter decided the Peacock Throne wasn't progressive enough and wound up with the Ayatollahs instead. This system of cherrypicking from a barrel-load of unsavoury potential clients was summed up in the old CIA line: "He may be a sonofabitch but he's our sonofabitch." The inverse is more to the point: He may be our sonofabitch, but he's a sonofabitch. Some guys go nuts, some are merely devious and unreliable, some remain charming and pleasant but of little help, but all of them are a bunch of despots utterly sealed off from their peoples. As we now know, it was our so-called "moderate" Arab "friends" who provided all the suicide bombers of September 11th, just as it's in their government-run media -- notably the vile Egyptian press -- that some of the worst anti-American rhetoric is to be found. The contemptible regime of President Mubarak permits dissent against the U.S. government but not against its own, licensing the former as a safety valve to reduce pressure on the latter. This is a classic example of why the sonofabitch system is ultimately useless to the West: the U.S. spends billions subsidizing regimes who have a vested interest in encouraging anti-Americanism as a substitute for more locally focused grievances. As a result, the West gets blamed for far more in a part of the world it never colonized than it does in those regions it directly administered for centuries. It seems to me Osama bin Laden's real grievance is with his fellow Muslims. In the Nineties, when he was living in the Sudan, the thug regime in Khartoum persuaded him to invest heavily in the country, in various enterprises of one kind or another. Doing business in such an environment involves an awful lot of palm-greasing. Osama's bookkeepers figured out his business interests in the Sudan had lost $150-million, at which point the great humanitarian cut his losses and moved on to the Hindu Kush. If he wasn't so consumed by his own psychopathology, he could have learned far more about the Arab world from this experience than from any number of books about who did what in 1492 or 1187. As for the West, by comparison with the sonofabitch system, colonialism is progressive and enlightened. Even under its modified, indirect Middle Eastern variation, the average Egyptian earned more under the British than he does today -- that's not adjusted for inflation, but in real actual rupees. Even in Afghanistan, the savagery of whose menfolk has been much exaggerated by the left's nervous nellies, such progress as was made in the country came when it fell under the watchful eye of British India. With the fading of British power in the region in the 1950s, King Zahir let his country fall under the competing baleful influences of Marxism and Islamic fundamentalism. What will we do this time round? Will we stick Zahir Shah back on his throne to preside over a ramshackle coalition of mutually hostile Commies, theocrats and gangsters, and hope the poor old gentleman hangs in there till we've cleared Afghan airspace? Or will we understand Osama bin Laden's declaration of war on pluralism for what it is? The most unstable parts of the world today are on the perimeter between Islam and the infidel -- places such as the Sudan, where vast numbers of Christians have been slaughtered -- and given the vast illegal immigration of Muslims into western Europe and elsewhere that perimeter is expanding. Afghanistan needs not just food parcels, but British courts and Canadian police and Indian civil servants and U.S. town clerks and Australian newspapers. So does much of the rest of the region. Given the billions of dollars of damage done to the world economy by September 11th, massive engagement in the region will be cheaper than the alternative. America has prided itself on being the first non-imperial superpower, but the viability of that strategy was demolished on September 11th. For its own security, it needs to do what it did to Japan and Germany after the war: civilize them. It needs to take up (in Kipling's words), "the white man's burden," a phrase that will have to be modified in the age of Colin Powell and Condi Rice but whose spirit is generous and admirable

This discussion seems to have slipped off the point. I didn't mean to start a debate on abortion. The point is that people with a strong sense of having suffered an injustice (either directly or indirectly), yet who feel powerless to achieve justice by regular means, and have a certain psychological predisposition to violence, become terrorists -- to use force to intimidate the powers-that-be. This is what happened in Oklahoma; it is what anti-abortion terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists are engaged in. When the powerful abuse their power, what resort do the weak have? Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. Revolutionaries were often terrorists who simply won the war. And history is written by the winners. But I have to admit that in this particular case, I ultimately have to put my marbles with the American president. I think it is time to put pressure on Islamic states to move toward democracy. It is the one of the only parts of the world where democracy has not taken hold. South America and Eastern Europe have taken great steps in this direction and only the Arabic world is led by despots who use anti-Israeli and anti-American propaganda to bolster their own militaristic states. The U.S. props up many of these regimes, or has in the past. The U.S. has always been for democracy in theory, but placed such considerations on the back burner when it came to strategic interests. The British empire left democracies in most of the countries it left behind. The U.S. also implanted democracy in the Philippines and other places where it had direct imperial power. Had the U.S. directly intervened in Iraq, perhaps they could have established a democratic system there. The people are fairly well-educated and somewhat secularized. (Of course there are many complications in a country like Iraq, so this may be something of a pipe dream.) Is it time to talk of a "white man's burden" again?