Bhakti Vikas Swami's text to VNN

[Guest guest]

Dear Bhakti Vikasa Maharaja,

 

Pamho. AgtSP.

 

After looking again at the text I sent to you earlier today (after being

recommended to do so by a few well-wishers), I can see that it came across

quite impolite. Please accept my apologies, and my attempt to answer your

text again.

 

You wrote:

 

> Jatuji--what kind of business do you have?

 

I am managing Cintamani Interntional, a company which produces natural

medicines, food supplements and natural cosmetics. There are only devotees

working in the company, and almost all of our importers are devotees,

running their own company which is responsible for the distribution in their

respective countries. We are focusing mainly on the health shop and

therapist market.

 

Do you import from India?

 

Not right now. I used to import incense and some products from R-expo, but

we stopped, since we decided to start up full time production in Norway of

the Cintamani products.

 

> Having gone to so much trouble to write books, I'm always on the lookout

> for new outlets to distribute them. You would probably be apprehensive

> about anything I write, but as a thinking, concerned person, you might

> find something of value in my "Glimpses of Traditional Indian Life."

> What do you think?

 

I would be happy to read it, and I will gladly buy a book. Please tell me

how to get it.

 

Your servant,

Jatukarnya das

[Guest guest]

which was a reason I

>> preferred the secrecy of GHQ.

 

What is GHQ?

 

A few observations. In my experience, Bhakti Vikash Swami is a

fundamentalistic thinker--almost incapable of entering into genuine

"dialogue". He has a keen intellect but he only uses it to serve his

purposes. It appears that he has a limited capacity to scrutinise his own

thinking (including prejudices). Don't expect to get too far with

him--though by all means debate him if you feel that others will take

notice.

 

Just see his selective invoking of the "offenses" caution. Others must be

careful of challenging him on account of his senior Vaisnava status yet he

feels no fear in describing the devotees who produce ICJ and Hare Krsna

Today as promoters of humanistic doctrines. HELLO! Some inconsistency

here...

 

His bringing up devotees' pasts to discredit their views is a

long-practiced and obvious form of dishonest argument. After all, you

don't have to take the trouble to defeat someone's statements (especially

when they're wise and common-sense and perhaps irrefutable) if you can

simply discredit their characters.

 

Devotees often raise this "return to the Vedic ideal" to support their

desire to keep women in passive, dependent roles. Does anyone alive really

have any idea what the Vedic times were like? It's all based on a little

reading and fanciful imagination to colour in the sketchy picture that one

can pick up from such sources. It sounded to me like women were leaders in

those days--as mothers they were very powerful. Women like Draupadi, Kunti

and so on don't sound like the "wallflowers" that our "let's return to the

Vedic ideal" champions would like to have around.

 

The fact that women are quoting international secular law to support their

positions and considering "borrowing" power from secular authorities shows

how low our Society has stooped--not how low the women are. That they look

to secular society's laws for protection reveals how little protection they

feel within our own Society. The fact is that our so-called Vedic Society

has fallen below the Kali Yuga standards of secular society so that we need

to take guidance from them is an indictment of where we're at. Our current

culture is not received with disdain on account of a mismatch of our values

with the host society's. On most accounts, we are objects of scorn because

we fall way below their standards of morality (which typically correspond

to ours) in a number of areas:-

* the proliferation of drug users amongst our kids

* the hideous way we treat women and children

* the amount of "scroungers"--people who depend on state handouts rather

than finding some honest means of labour

* dishonest fund-raising or livelihood techniques to make a fast "buck"

* being unaccountable in the use of the Society's resources, etc.

 

These are not things which merely contradict atheistic, karmi, (spit, spit)

"sinful demon" standards. These contradict Vedic principles. Sooner or

later we have to face the unpleasant truth--we have sunk to a lower

cultural existence than the non-devotees whom we are so fond of denouncing.

ISKCON is producing "naradhama" rather than "saints".

 

Please feel free to post whatever sections of this letter you deem

appropriate for general consumption.

 

Dd

[Guest guest]

> The fact that women are quoting international secular law to support their

> positions and considering "borrowing" power from secular authorities shows

> how low our Society has stooped--not how low the women are. That they

> look to secular society's laws for protection reveals how little

> protection they feel within our own Society. The fact is that our

> so-called Vedic Society has fallen below the Kali Yuga standards of

> secular society so that we need to take guidance from them is an

> indictment of where we're at.

 

I feel this is the most important point to correct in our society. The

protection

question. Curently there is next to no protection, and as you say, it is

well

below the "karmi" standard of protection. Protection is one of the most

central things in our culture and philosophy, but yet, it at appears

to be the least understood.

 

So the women are actually doing the only sane spiritual thing that can

be done. To point out the very big fault with all means available, and

fight for it.

 

See the example in the Krsna book, when the men did not make offerings

to Krsna, and the women took the thing in their own hands and corrected

the mistake. There is thus a precedence in our scriptures that women

have the right to take things in their own hands, when the men

fail to understand what needs to be done.