Times of India article (April 1, 2002)

Jagat · March 30, 2002

[iNDIA TODAY, April 1, 2002)

<h2>CAPITAL CONSCIOUSNESS</h2>

A bitter power struggle threatens to reduce ISKCON to a group of temples selling the same spiritual formula.

by Sumit MITRA

When Swami Prabhupada had prophesied a 10,000-year lifespan for ISKCON, he had perhaps not taken into account the challenges the society he founded would face from Mammon. In less than four decades of its existence, with the smell of money reeking in the corridors of ISKCON premises, its disciples and devotees are fighting a bitter intercontinental battle for control of the purse strings.

On March 17, as the curtain went up in the inner sanctum of the Mayapur Chandrodaya temple in Kolkata-the fraternity's spiritual headquarters-tension was palpable in the committee room. The ISKCON Bureau, the 22 member committee that supervises the society's India operations, met for four hours to thrash out a strategy to meet the challenges posed by two defiant temple presidents-Adridharan Das of Kolkata and Madhu Pandit Dasa of Bangalore.

In the ISKCON managerial ladder, the temple president-the head priest of the temple-has a say in spiritual and money matters. He interacts with the devotees and accepts donations, which need not always be referred to the headquarters for sanction. But the temple president has little control over the initiation of devotees. That is a complex ritual entirely in the hands of the 70-odd gurus designated by the society. The priest can only recommend someone, and it is up to the guru to accept him or her.

The selection of guru itself is a matter that rests with the Governing Body Commission (GBC), a self-perpetuating cabal of 35 monks, most of whom are drawn from ISKCON's American followers. Das and Dasa, the dissident presidents, want the powers of the GBC curbed, especially in the appointment of gurus who, in turn, deal directly with disciples and devotees. What is left unsaid it that all these seem to be a battle for the disciples' money rather their souls.

The temptations are tangible enough: the procession of celebrities in the congregations, the rows of swanky cars in its parking lots and the "living" that generally outstrips the "thinking" in the society.

The trouble began in 1999 when a few temple priests circulated a pamphlet called "The Final Order" which purported to say that the movement's founder Prabhupada had never stated that the GBC, or any other agent appointed by it, would initiate a disciple. Subsequently, the GBC not only rejected the claim but suspended five top dissidents-Das, Dasa, Bangalore temple vice-president Chanchalpati Dasa, Kolkata vice-president Satvik Das, Singapore temple president Sunder Gopal Das and two other functionaries, Navayogendra Swami and Jaya Dhwaj Swami. Till recently, Das held a position in the ISKCON Bureau too. However, the panel expelled him in its March 17 meeting.

The dispute turned from spiritual to temporal when Dasa assumed control of the Rs 7-crore Sri Radha Krishnachandra Mandir on Hare Krishna Hill in Bangalore, a fine piece of architecture built on a rocky outcrop after 12 years of labour. Meanwhile, the dissidents formed their own group, the ISKCON Revival Movement (IRM), with its reach spreading to Kolkata, Singapore, Vrindavan and Jaipur.

In Kolkata, the high court recently passed a stay order on Das' suspension, thus bringing him back into the picture for the control of a large ISKCON property on the fashionable Albert Road. Armed with a court order and with policemen in tow, he is stepping into his former fief regularly. According to reports, the Singapore temple, which is a popular meeting place for local Indians, is now under the rebel IRM flag.

Tension is also brewing at Vrindavan, where Prabhupada, as his disciples remember, "left this planet" in 1977. "In every centre there is a rich vein of protest. We just have to tap it," says Krishna Kant Swami, a Cambridge-educated British national of Indian origin who wrote "The Final Order", IRM's article of faith.

Gopal Krishna Goswami, a former Pepsi Cola executive from New York who now heads the ISKCON Bureau, tuts. The rebellion and its protagonists, he says, represents a "miserable minority". Nevertheless, ISKCON has hired some of the finest, and most expensive, legal brains to steer itself clear of the legal problems caused by the rebels not only in the Calcutta High Court but in Bangalore and Mumbai also.

In Bangalore, the case revolves around the fact that the temple is registered under the Karnataka Registration of Societies Act and whether this makes it independent of the India chapter of ISKCON with its headquarters in Mumbai.

In Mumbai, the issue at stake is the legal propriety of a 1978 decision of ISKCON by which its life members, over one lakh in India, lost their power to amend the society's constitution. Underneath the legal tangle lies the question of whether ISKCON should remain a centrally controlled body, like the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century, or should accept a more federal structure.

The debate has also taken nationality hues with the rebels all being Indians while the orthodoxy is represented by the American swamis and their Indian adherents.

It will certainly not do the cause of ISKCON any good if it becomes a gaggle of 450 temples run by individual priests who will run their own establishments as a franchisee would. Nor can the brotherhood afford to lose its identity as a Hindu MNC, which once attracted celebrities like Beatles lead guitarist George Harrison and American beat poet and cultural guru Allen Ginsberg.

The movement-started in a storefront by the Vedic scholar who arrived in New York City in 1965 with $7 in his cloth bag and the phone number of the son of a friend-was identified with the 1960s western society's search for alternative lifestyles. Its progress did not stop with the master's death or with the changing times.

In the years since Prabhupada's death, seven of his 11 chosen apostles or rtviks (pronounced hritwik), all Americans, fell from grace. One of them had his head chopped off by a friend in an LSD-induced trance. Another was arrested for paedophilia. Yet another ran off with his massage therapist. Despite the shenanigans of the sadhus, the movement acquired momentum and now has hundreds of centres in 71 countries, including Russia and, reportedly, in China also.

"We've grown much bigger than at the time of Srila Prabhupada's departure," says Jayapataka Swami, called Gordon Ellman before his initiation, who is one of the three rtviks still left in the order.

Now ISKCON'S progress may just be dampened by the bitter power struggle, dimming the chances of Prabhupada's prophesy from coming true. What it needs is a spiritual foam to douse the fire of protest in its ranks. The brotherhood requires initiates to take vows against intoxicants, gambling, nonvegetarian food and sex outside wedlock. But the passion for power and money perhaps goes beyond these carnal roadblocks.

"It's God's money," says Das about the collections he took in as the Kolkata temple president, "and why should we give its account to the headquarters?" That is a spirited rather than a spiritual rhetoric.

(gracieuseté de Nori Munster)