An article in Tmes of India

[Guest guest]

Sunday 6 June 1999

 

With the Dark Lord in a Darkened City

Siddharth Varadarajan

 

BELGRADE: Set in a modest house on a quiet street overlooking the Danube -

that Yamuna of the Balkans - the Hare Krishna temple is an oasis of meditative

calm, a limpid pool in which the traumas of war effortlessly dissolve. Bombs

may be falling all around but the bhakts are tranquil, seeing in this madness

and destruction only confirmation of the certitudes of karma.

 

Every evening, before small statues of the Dark Lord, a handful of Yugoslav

devotees sway rapturously on a polished parquet floor. There is no electricity

but the pujari, a young Serb woman, blows a conch shell triumphantly while a

stunning, life-sized statue of Swami Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada, founder of the

Krishna Consciousness movement, looks down sternly from a sofa.

 

If Yugoslavia is the Kurukshetra of the New World Order, I thought, what could

be more appropriate than Serbian bhakts dancing to the name of Krishna?

 

Bhakti Grantha Das, the temple's 28-year-old Serb president, says there is a

spiritual void in the country. ``Many people are atheists and they ask, `If

God exists, why does he allow us to be bombed?' But this war has increased our

devotion to Krishna.'' I asked him why war broke out. ``When people are

sinful,'' he answered, ``they get punishment.'' So is this war divine

retribution? ``Of course. So many animals have been killed here,'' he replied

serenely. Seeing that I was not convinced, he added: ``A Serb always thinks,

``I am a Serb, he is Albanian, hence he is my enemy''. And an Albanian feels

the same towards Serbs. This is out of ignorance. If we realised we are all

part of God, we would resolve our problems.'' And what about the NATO leaders?

Would they be punished for bombing civilians? ``Everybody who is doing impious

actions - Clinton, Milosevic, you, me - will have to suffer. The Law of Karma

is the only law that you cannot cheat,'' he said.

 

What would he do if the Yugoslav authorities tried to draft him into the

military, I wondered. ``The Vedas,'' he said, ``prescribe the four-fold

division of society into Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. I have

had my Brahmin initiation and Brahmins do not go to war. Their role is to

provide spiritual leadership.'' ``On the other hand,'' he said, ``some of our

devotees have a Kshatriya nature, and they have gone to war.'' But surely

Milosevic was unlikely to be impressed by this argument? Bhakti Grantha Das

conceded that I had a point. ``We shall then argue that Brahmins who live in

temples are like monks who live in monasteries. And nobody sends monks to the

battlefield.''

 

I asked him whether the war would make more Yugoslavs turn to Krishna. ``A

famous Serbian soothsayer of the previous century had in fact predicted the

Hare Krishna movement,'' he replied. Mitar Tarabich - whose book Kremasko

Prorochanstvo, or Kreman's Prophecy, ``predicted'' Tito, the birth of

Yugoslavia, its subsequent collapse, the present war, everything - had also

written a cryptic passage about a ``small man from the orient'' who would come

with the ``message of truth''. Tarabich had added that not everyone would

accept this man's word and that his followers would be small in number,

although eventually the truth would prevail. ``We are convinced that this

``small man from the Orient' was Prabhupada,'' said Bhakti Grantha Das with

pride. ``And since we are quite a small group, only some 200 in the whole of

Yugoslavia, that part of the prediction is also correct.''

 

Bhakti Grantha Das can't wait for the rest of the prophecy to come true. ``We

would like this war to end so that we can go back to our work of distributing

books,'' he said. ``The Swami taught us that only by distributing his books in

large numbers can we avert World War III.'' He quoted a stanza from the Gita

about war and hate in flawless but accented Sanskrit. One of the devotees,

Aneta, had a beatific look on her face. An Orthodox Church down the road

started ringing its bell. ``In the Vedas,'' said Das, ``it is written that the

ringing of bells satisfies Lord Vishnu. That is why we say that even they are

honouring Krishna.'' Aneta, the beatific one, asked me hesitatingly: ``India

is punya bhoomi. Do they know about Krishna? Is everyone religious?'' I said

yes but I was not very convincing. Prasad was served - a Yugoslav savoury of

some kind - along with delicious strawberry lassi. I drained my stainless

steel tumbler and a devotee ladled some more. The prayers were starting. The

pujarin was blowing her shankha. It was time to leave.