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Letter to: Bhanutanya

—

Hyderabad

18 November, 1972

72-11-18

 

My Dear Bhanutanya dasi,

Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter

undated, and I have noted the contents with great concern. One thing is, I am

very

much sad to learn that you have left the company of the devotees over this

incident at Gurukula school. Now you are living by yourself because you have

been

hurt by seeing that the children are sometimes mistreated, and because no one

has taken your good advice in this connection. But you may be assured that I

am always anxious about the welfare of my disciples, so that I am taking steps

to rectify this unfortunate situation. Now my advice to you is to give up

these feelings and return to your life of Krishna Consciousness devotional

service, and if you go back to Dallas school and demonstrate to the other

teachers

there just the proper way to instruct and discipline the students nicely, that

will be a great service. I am forwarding the copy of this letter, with your

letter, to Satsvarupa for his immediately attention.

Now the thing is, children should not be beaten at all, that I have told.

They should simply be shown the stick strongly. So if one cannot manage in that

 

way then he is not fit as teacher. If a child is trained properly in Krishna

Consciousness, he will never go away. That means he must have two things, love

and education. So if there is beating of child, that will be difficult for him

to accept in loving spirit, and when he is old enough he may want to go away—

that is the danger. So why these things are going on _ marching and chanting

japa, insufficient milk, too strict enforcement of time schedules, hitting the

small children? Why these things are being imposed? Why they are inventing

these such new things like marching and japa like military? What can I do from

such a distant place? They should run and play when they are small children,

not

forced to chant japa, that is not the way. So I have given you the guiding

principles, it is not that I must be consulted with every small detail, that is

 

the business of the in-charge, but if no one is there who can manage in the

right way, what can I do? Now if you have got the right idea how to do it, you

may go there again and take some responsible post for correcting the situation,

 

that will be your real duty, not that there is some disagreement and I go away

disgusted, no. That is not Vaisnava standard. Standard should be that, never

mind there is some difficulty, my spiritual master has ordered me to do like

this, now let me do it, that's all.

Hoping this will meet you in good health.

Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

ACBS/sda