Iskcon Leader's Wife Exposes Iskcon's Mistreatment

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Letter to the GBC about Prthu das

 

VNN

 

USA, Nov 19 (VNN) — [Editor's note: This letter was obtained by VNN

and was deemed important to publish.]

 

Letter by Rambhoru Devi Dasi to the GBC about Prthu das. (See also

VNN story 8724)

 

Dear GBC members, Godbrothers and Godsisters,

 

Please accept my most humble obeisances. All glories to Srila

Prabhupada.

 

It is not my desire to challenge my good husband, yet in light of

the recent events surrounding him, I would like for you to please

hear my story. There are many devotees who are still present in this

movement who can verify my claims as truthful.

 

Typical of the way many ISKCON marriages were arranged in the 70's

without couples ever having spoken with one another, Prithu prabhu's

and my marriage (1976) was made following an instruction from our

local GBC representative. As was also typical of ISKCON members

during that era, we followed diligently all instructions coming down

to us through the parampara system, via our local authorities.

 

For the duration of our marriage of 30 years, I never shared any

kind of private living or sleeping facility with my husband, as he

expressed his inability to preach Krishna Consciousness and

participate in family life at the same time. Endeavoring to be a

faithful wife I followed him in his lifestyle of choice, although

admittedly, it was often, difficult to do so.

 

Before we had children, I lived in the brahmacarini ashram, engaging

in temple worship while my husband distributed Srila Prabhupada's

books full time. I saw him briefly every week or two on weekends,

and then only to pick up his dirty laundry and deliver it a day

later, washed and pressed. We never engaged in friendly conversation

with each other as my husband viewed it to be a frivolous time-

wasting exercise.

 

When my husband decided I needed to have a child, he insisted I

continue to live in the temple rather than secure a home where

together we could prepare to welcome our first child into the world.

Hence, although we performed the garbhadhana samskara by chanting 50

rounds, the fact that he never provided a home for our child sent a

clear message to me that he viewed him as unwanted.

 

Once our first child, Madan Mohan, was conceived, our lives

virtually continued as before. I lived in the brahmacarini ashram;

my husband continued distributing books. I remember how painfully

insecure, helpless and humiliated I felt, living among temple

residents, many of whom found householderlife repulsive. For

example, in order to prevent my crawling son from going into any

room but his own, devotees put 2-foot high boards in the thresholds

of their doors. When he found a way to crawl over it, several

devotees lifted him up, holding his entire body-weight by the fist-

full of cloth they could grab at the back of his neck, and literally

throw him out of the room. Instead of being joyful over my

pregnancy, I felt I was being shunned although I had followed Srila

Prabhupada's instructions. Meanwhile, instead of supporting me, my

husband avoided being seen with me together due to his embarrassment

over our being married. By this time, my rational mind began

seriously questioning how it could be pleasing to Krishna that a

husband continued to perform sankirtan while his family was left

uncared for. My husband rationalized in response to my request to

move outside, What is the use of enjoying mundane family life, if it

meant not going back to Godhead at the end of our lives? I wanted to

leave the temple to find peace for my child, but I had no means to

go. Had I been able to, the fact that my husband always kept my

American passport in his possession meant I could never leave German

without his permission.

 

After giving birth to my eldest son, I returned to a life of

isolation in the temple's small attic room; far enough away so no

one could see me or hear the cries of my child; except when I

descended to attend temple programs. This was in 1977.

 

In 1979, I began preaching with my husband in Ireland. When I say

preaching I mean, I did all the temple cooking, cleaning, shopping

and organizing for the community, meanwhile having the added

responsibility of minding my child, now crawling around at my feet

or sleeping on the bhoga in the kitchen pantry. For this reason, I

rarely attended lectures or other temple programs. I was taught that

the Vedic way of salvation for a woman was by assisting her husband

in his preaching. In good faith, I did my duty.

 

My husband was always the temple leader wherever we went, so I

remained his shadow cleaning lady often finding myself unsupported

and alone in the kitchen washing pots and floors while he slept or

relaxed with a group of select devotees. For the next 10 years, our

lives continued in much the same way. Eventually, we found ourselves

on opposite ends of the preaching front; my husband, now enjoying

life in the Bell Tower of ISKCON's leadership while I continued my

scramble for survival among the grassroots.

 

By 1986, I had a second child, Nila Madhava, who was conceived the

same way as Madan Mohan. My husband and I still maintained separate

living facilities within the temple. Now, I lived together with both

my children; one 9 years old, the other still an infant in a 15' X

15' foot room next to the brahmacarini ashram, sharing a bathroom

with 12 other women. Meanwhile, my husband lived on the opposite

side of the Inish Rath Manor in a room 4 times its size with an

attached bathroom and office he never had to share. When I expressed

my need to have more facility to raise my children in, my husband

insisted that it would make the other devotees envious should he

provide his wife with any comfort in their midst. He repeatedly used

his preaching profile as an alibi for his neglect of his family. I

continued to follow for several reasons:

 

1) I was living on an island in the middle of the North Sea with an

infant;

 

2) I had grown to doubt my own intelligence because I genuinely

thought I was anyway just a stupid woman, whose only business was to

disturb her husband's service to Krishna;

 

3) I wanted to associate with devotees and knew if I caused too much

commotion, I would be labeled Maya Devi and shunned by Prithu's

followers;

 

4) the thought of becoming a single parent with 2 children was

horrifying and I didn't think I could cope, having been trained only

in temple living;

 

5) I had no marketable skills, nor any knowledge of how to live in

the material world.

 

My only solace was knowing that everything was Krishna's mercy and

that He knew how much I suffered and how much I tried to please.

 

By now, as well as being responsible for the deity and devotee

cooking, I was instructed to go on the altar and dress the temple's

3 sets of deities, mind my 2 month old son (still in diapers) and

educate my 9 year old son, materially and spiritually. My husband

took no part in helping me do this. Instead, he often interrupted my

attempts by instructing me to go whimsically in the kitchen and cook

pancakes for his guys while our children were left unattended. One

time while I was thus cooking, my youngest son who was 2 years old,

fell from a steep staircase onto the concrete floor below, cracking

his head and causing him to be hospitalized for a week. Naturally,

my children would run freely around the temple as they saw it as

their home as well as the other devotees. This was often annoying to

the celibate students who, on several occasions physically or

verbally abused them.

 

When my oldest son became old enough to realize he had a father, he

often appeared at his door. Immediately, my husband would look at

his watch and scuttle him away, saying he was taking precious time

away from his preaching. Madan Mohan, yearned to have the

companionship of his father, and often begged him for some private,

personal time.

 

However, my husband never allowed him any entry into his life as a

parent. In due course of time, my children and I became absorbed

into the temple structure; only allowed to take Prithu's darshan in

public places.

 

You will remember, I'm sure, the revolution in Ireland that went on

in Ireland in the late 1980's, when Prithu prabhu was asked to leave

and take his disciples with him. During that time, I was left in

Ireland alone with my 2 children, with no money or place to go,

while rebel leaders and my husband hashed things over in India

during the Mayapur GBC meetings. Several devotees who remained on

the island took this opportunity to unleash their hatred for my

husband by verbally abusing and beating both of my children; my

youngest, then under 2 years old. In the aftermath of this

controversy when only my husbands' 10 disciples remained, I was left

alone with my children to do a full-scale Radha-Krishna worship and

manage the temple, while they all were sent out on book

distribution. While offering my obeisances after putting Their

Lordships to rest at 9:30pm, I often would fall asleep in that

position and wake up a couple of hours later to find it was now

midnight. I started to resent having to do all the deity worship

along with my other duties and realized there must be something

seriously wrong with the way I performed devotional service. If

devotional service was joyfully performed, why was I feeling so much

hatred? I was profoundly overworked. I approached Prithu prabhu on

this issue several times, and he always said there was no one else

to do it. Later, I witness him personally pacifying some disciples

who no longer wanted to do their services as they had to go on

sankirtan, say, Don't worry, my wife will do it for you. When I

complained that I was being exploited, he laughed in my face saying

I was doing a PR job on him so I wouldn't have to surrender.

 

By 1990 we had relocated to Vrindavan where the GBC suggested Prithu

resettle with his disciples in order to figure out what Krishna

wanted them to do next. Again, Prithu chose to live strictly with

his disciples in the temple's bramacari ashram, while I had to live

in various non-ISKCON facilities. Many of these places were not only

unsafe to sleep in but a dangerous walk away from the ISKCON temple,

especially with small children. This meant I generally was unable to

attend morning programs before sunrise or after sundown. On numerous

occasions, my youngest son, now 4, and I were stalked and attacked

by local Brijbasis, while we traveled alone without the protection

of a husband. My husband knew this, but he never attempted to

protect us from these dangers by staying with us. He remained

comfortably living in the temple compound.

 

Eventually, Prithu's disciples decided to collect money to buy an

ashram facility near Krishna Balaram where I was allowed to stay

while they traveled and preached in India. Being in India, more-than-

ever, I felt pressured to cut the much romanticized profile of being

the self-sacrificing Vedic Woman, happily scurrying around taking

care of the needs of everyone except her own. Any Vaishnava Indian

woman will tell you that their lives are not how it appears to be

from the western male's perspective. She cooks. She minds her

children. She cares for the family's elders. Even the poorest woman

hires someone to wash dishes and laundry. She works closely with her

husband sharing responsibility for the family business, which in our

case was spreading the sankirtan mission. Somehow, my husband had

the notion that his real family members were those he brought to the

movement, instead of the ones he brought into the world. He often

told me that he was married to ISKCON, and not to me. All of his

energy went into his spiritual sons instead of his children.

 

I was taught it was unnatural for a woman to preach herself but that

she should rather assist her husband's preaching by being his menial

servant. On several occasions my husband expressed his desire for me

to fan him with a peacock fan and offer him arotik like a real Vedic

woman should. When I refused to do this, he would become insulted.

 

I dropped out of college in 1976 because I recognized Lord

Chaitanya's message as the perfection of Christianity. I feel

cheated that I was not given more encouragement to follow my hearts

inclination to preach Krishna Consciousness directly and rather

instructed to fulfill some Hindu dharma. That is not to say that I

do not feel blessed to have given birth to 2 very special children.

It is just to make a statement on behalf of the need for the young

mothers in our movement to be given the facility and encouragement

to cultivate their philosophical sense along with their mothering.

Many women who are attracted to our philosophy find it inconsistent

that we offer lip service in regards to being spirit souls who are

off the bodily platform, yet, many of our male members continue to

exhibit averse and disrespectful attitudes and behavior towards

women. This sends any intelligent woman away disappointed, meanwhile

still hankering for the true religion.

 

When my youngest son entered the Vrindavan Gurukula (1991), I began

assisting some of the teachers there as I saw much there to improve

in order to make the school pleasing to Srila Prabhupada. My husband

was very unhappy for me to spend time there and discouraged me from

doing anything unrelated to his preaching. Even though he and his

boys were absent for months at a time, while I stayed alone in the

Ashram, he still did not want me using my energy anywhere else. As

women were not allowed to go on the altar or cook for the deities in

the Krishna-Balaram Mandir, there was virtually no service I could

offer directly to Srila Prabhupada's mission in Vrindavan. I felt

useless, discarded and unwanted. Praying at the feet of Sri Sri

Gaura Nitai, I asked if, in spite of the fact that I was unwanted by

my husband, there still might be something more I could do to serve

the sankirtan mission. After petitioning the deities in this way, I

had a dream that clearly revealed Prabhupada calling me to take care

of his personal body in the form of ISKCON by assisting Lord

Nityananda in caring for the householder community. Very soon, I was

invited by some of Niranjana Swami's disciples to travel and preach

in the Former Soviet Union, which I began to do for 2-3 months out

of each year. My main service was counseling confused and

disheartened grihasthas trying like me to figure out how to

participate in Lord Chaitanya's movement and meanwhile remain

sensitive and responsible parents and spouses.

 

When it came to my attention that my youngest son, now 10 years old,

was repeatedly running away from the Vrindavan Gurukula, and that

his ashram teacher had run away and gotten killed (killed himself by

a drug overdose?) in Thailand, I realized the hypocrisy of my

preaching to other householders to be responsible and take care of

their children, when my own children were in trouble. I returned to

Vrindavan to discover my son, Nila, living in the so-called care of

my husband's disciples who had been instructed to beat and lock him

in a room, should he not comply with their instructions. They did

this several times. Before Nila ran away from the gurukula for the

last time, Prithu had personally beaten him and sent him back to

school, feeling betrayed and unloved by his father.

 

The previous year, my eldest son, aged 17, had been given permission

by Prithu prabhu to travel to Rajasthan with a crazy brahmacari to

go treasure-hunting, when they got arrested by Indian police and put

in jail for 3 days. As a result, Madan Mohan had to flee India

because the bramacari failed to show for their trial, leaving Madan

Mohan and another gurukuli to fend for themselves against the Indian

government.

 

To this day, Madan Mohan still risks being locked up by the Indian

police should he ever enter India. He has taken shelter in the New

Dvarka community ever since.

 

I stopped traveling and preaching in Russia and remained in the

Prabhupada Vani Ashram with my youngest son, while he attended the

Porter Burchard Methodist School in Vrindavan. After an incident

where he, Nila Madhava, was beaten to unconsciousness by some of his

classmates with bricks, I organized for both of us to move to

Mayapur where he could attend the Gurukula there. We did not have

the money to live in the grhastha sector of Mayapur Dham and attend

their day school, so I put him in the boys ashram and became a

teacher for the school which offered me a room and a salary of RS

1500 (now aprox $35.00) per month.

 

During the 2 years I taught there, I lived alone in a neighboring

apartment while my son lived in the ashram. I only saw my husband

for 5 days out of every year, and then only because he anyway had to

come to the yearly GBC meetings in Mayapur. Every so often, he would

call to say he would be sending some money. On every phone call, I

expressed that my son and I were very unhappy in this situation and

that were he to continue to neglect our family, we were going to

stop waiting for him and situate ourselves in a more secure and

healthy environment. He blamed me for my lack of surrender saying

that my children would simply adopt whatever attitude I took, and so

if I would just happily do my service, they would not feel any lack

in their lives.

 

In response to my requests that he spend some time with my youngest

son, he promised to take us on a trip to Jaganath Puri for a week

without having to be lumped together with his disciples. By the time

we left for the trip from Mayapur, he had invited 20 disciples to

accompany him on this trip. He decided to share a room with us for

the first time in our lives, but as the room only had one large

double bed which he did not want to share, my son and I slept

(slept?) on the floor next to the bed on a single dirty saree. When

all the devotees shared their meals from the Jaganath temple,

neither my son nor myself were allowed by Prithu to speak to him nor

his disciples while we were in their company. As soon as I would

open my mouth, he would wave for me to be silent. This insulted me

to the core.

 

The more I examined my situation, studied Prabhupada's books and

prayed to Lord Chaitanya, the more I began to understand that I

could no longer follow my husband's instructions. My duty to my

husband as the mother of his children was to take care of their

health and education, first and foremost. Somehow, Prithu never

understood that, and rather wanted me to serve him and his mission

and neglect his children. I knew I had to make a change towards

recovering my children's and my own life, but I had no money or

means to do it.

 

As a teacher at the Mayapur Gurukula, I could see that none of the

children were receiving an education that would equip them for

living in the world in the 20th Century and realized that if my son

was going to live and work in the west, in all fairness to him, he

would have to be educated in the west, not India.

 

In June of 1999, I took a trip to the USA to renew my visa, deciding

that if I could find an ISKCON community where I could give my son

appropriate education, I would not return to India. Although the

Hillsborough Community would not accommodate me, Urmila Dasi agreed

to give Nila Madhava room and board in exchange for payment during

the week while he attended her school. I would take him on the week

end.

 

Having no money and no place to stay myself, I lived in a borrowed

car for a couple of weeks, parked alongside Hillsborough country

roads until my father suggested I return to Guilford College where I

began my Bachelor's degree in Religion (1974) and see if I could

finish it while Nila was at Urmila's gurukula. Guilford is located

45 minutes from the Hillsborough community. Happily, all my

professors, who had worked with me in the 70's were still there. One

professor, in whose home I had rented a room as a student 25 years

earlier, offered me a place to stay and found me a job washing

dishes in the back of a Vegen restaurant near the campus. I lived

there during the week and picked Nila Madhava up on the weekends,

bringing him back to my room, still no larger than the one I had had

in ISKCON; 15' X 15' feet. I shared a bathroom and kitchen with the

rest of the family. On many weekends, due to cold, rainy or snowy

weather, Nila and I sat in that room for the entire 2 days waiting

to return to Urmila's school. We had no money to go anywhere else.

Urmila found that my son, although an 8th grader, only had learned

to read in our Indian gurukula's to 5th grade level. By the time we

left her school in 2001, Urmila had increased his reading capacity

to that of a 9th grader, which prepared him to enter the public

school system. While at her school, however, my son received serious

emotional abuse from Urmila's son-in-law who criticized his family

members, tortured him about his weight problem and forbid him to

speak during meals while he dominated the conversation. Meanwhile,

my son and 3 other live-in students personally witnessed him giving

his 2-year old daughter freezing cold showers as punishment for her

not submitting to his demands.

 

I probably never would have returned to college, had I not have seen

it as a means of bringing my family back together. It provided me a

way to fund ourselves through scholarships and loans; biding us time

until we could learn some marketable skills.

 

During the course of my stay in Greensboro, North Carolina, I began

to reconnect with my eldest son, Madan Mohan by weekly phone calls

which revealed the deep unhappiness each of us felt over having not

shared with each other more of our lives. Madan Mohan had been

living in Los Angeles since 1994 while Nila and I were living in

India. Neither of my sons knew their brothers. When I graduated from

Guilford, we decided that we should reunite what was left of our

family. Hence, I applied to and was accepted into the Claremont

Theological Seminary in California. In this way, I could continue to

cultivate my interest in preaching and also be a concerned and

responsible parent. Prithu had always told me it was not possible to

preach and have a family at the same time. I was so determined to

refute this notion of his that I did my senior thesis project

researching married preachers who had made major contributions

establishing religious movements while remaining faithful and

responsible to their spouses and children. I found zillions of

examples in history of men and women who preached strongly the path

of love for God while doing their householder duties.

 

By this time, Madan Mohan had completed writing his Burnt Laddhu

theater production and began showing it in various ISKCON temples

around the world. If you have seen this production, it will give you

a window into some of the pain he has experienced growing up as a

Preachers' Kid.

 

In spite of all the austerities my family and I have undergone, the

one redeeming thought that has kept us alive throughout all of these

years is that Prithu prabhu was out there spreading Lord Chaitanya's

mission and that we were somehow getting some spiritual benefit from

all our sacrifices. Now, however, to learn that all along he has

been breaking the regulative principles has shattered our lives. Not

because he has so-called fallen down.. In Kali Yuga, even the most

saintly persons take their falls. None of us are perfect. However,

knowing that as his family, we have been left entirely out of the

equation, not only from Prithu prabhu's point of view, but from the

viewpoint of his disciples and the GBC body, has disappointed me

deeply. In all these years of service, I have never once been asked

by GBC members my opinion regarding Prithu's behavior on any issue,

or if I needed help; even in this one. Many senior devotees who knew

well our lifestyle encouraged me to file for a divorce so at least I

would qualify for financial aid from the government. But, I never

did this due to the respect I had for his position and for Srila

Prabhupada. I did not want to jeopardize Prithu's service by

shedding bad light on his family life.

 

It is very hurtful that, even in this current crisis that GBC

leaders were first and foremost concerned with Prithu's disciples

and Prithu himself, meanwhile, no one was considerate enough even to

email us or call us on the telephone. Do we ever count as having any

significance in Prithu's life? Does the pain and suffering we have

endured amount to anything at within the Vaishnava community?

 

Although it is certainly honorable and commendable Prithu has come

out of the closet even if so late in life, it certainly does not

free my memory of the pain I have suffered over the past 30 years.

Nor does it repay all the financial debts I have incurred trying to

put our family's life in order after years of taking out college

loans and borrowing money to survive.

 

For years, we have been unsupported by ISKCON while my husband has

gotten virtually a free ride. His disciples have paid his air fare

to places around the globe. He has slept in the best of facilities;

eaten his choice of foodstuffs; spent months and months in some of

the best vacation spots around the world recuperating from diseases,

spending over $10,000 getting his teeth fixed or hiding out

somewhere writing a book that mysteriously since 12 years never gets

finished. Once I asked Prithu to please give me his rough draft so I

could help him put it into some legible form. He said that there was

nothing coherent that he could give me.

 

Is a mere apology really enough to compensate for the lives that

have been hurt? At the very least, Prithu prabhu needs now, more

than ever, to take an active role in offering concrete support to

his family by clearing them of all of their financial debts so they

can at least have the time-freedom to recover their spiritual

equilibrium. It is not appropriate for ISKCON to simply nod their

head like the Catholic Church does and say, your sins are forgiven.

 

Prithu and I both desire to settle our karmic accounts with each

other so that we may both sit down peacefully, chant Hare Krishna

and leave our bodies. My worry is that, if Prithu does not undergo

some kind of practical atonement for his offenses, he is going to

have to take birth againnext time in the body of a woman, married to

a man who neglects him the same way that he has neglected his

family. This is the price we all have to pay for not being

respectful or compassionate to people we offend. I, on the other

hand, may have to take birth as a manmaybe his husband, to

personally mete out his punishment as the neglectful husband who has

not been respectful or compassionate to their wife.

 

This is what happens if one is unable to reconcile their resentment

for someone who has offended them in this life. Neither of us wishes

to repeat this scenario. Never.

 

Having consulted counseling professionals regarding the unstable

psychological condition Prithus prabhu exhibits, I found the general

opinion to be that such persons must lead a stable and regulated

life performing some kind of practical work. We all know that doing

something on a regular basis is the power behind devotional service.

I personally feel that, more than ever, Prithu prabhu needs to do

some kind of practical work that will raise him out of his

depression and stabilize his consciousness. I also feel that I will

never be able to reconcile the suffering I have undergone in his

service unless he can, at least make an attempt to practically

support his family financially.

 

Even if he can only do some simple work for an hourly wage and send

it to his family, that would be greatly appreciated. By this I do

not mean begging from his disciples for the money. I mean precisely

performing some kind of honest labor by his own hands and getting

paid for it with the specific intention of sending it to his family

as symbolic retribution.

 

Furthermore, after laboring at college for, going on 6 years, I

finally have connected with scholars who are strategically linked to

important theological circles. They are open to understanding the

path of Bhakti as presented by Srila Prabhupada and are happy to

hear it from one of their doctoral students. However, it is almost

impossible for me to continue to preach scholastically in such

circles, while having to work at a juvenile prison 40 hours per

week, which is currently how I make money. I seriously feel that

having been neglected all these years, thinking I was supporting my

husband's preaching while he was sexually abusing himself, warrants

him now to switch roles with me and support my preaching

financially. In this way, before leaving his body, he will have the

opportunity to clear his debt to me, and allow me the satisfaction

of, in this way, letting go of the deep resentment I feel towards

him, and thus truly be able to forgive him. Thank you for listening

to my story.

 

Yours in the service of Srila Prabhupada,

 

Rambhoru Devi Dasi