BBC Glorifies Srila Prabhupada to the World

[Guest guest]

Newsletter of the Iskcon Revival Movement (IRM) Issue 31

 

Message from Adridharana Dasa, Temple President ISKCON Calcutta:

 

 

 

1. BBC Glorifies Srila Prabhupada to the World

2. Blasphemous GBC Boasts that Srila Prabhupada "is Dead"

3. Classic Quotes

 

1. BBC Glorifies Srila Prabhupada to the World

 

It really is amazing what faith in Srila Prabhupada's lotus feet can do. It

can move mountains. Here we are in the midst of ISKCON's worst publicity

nightmare - with the movement facing a 400 million dollar lawsuit for child

abuse - and the world's largest and most famous media organisation

approaches an IRM follower to broadcast the glories of Srila Prabhupada and

Krishna to the world!

 

On August 22 at 12:45 pm GMT, and on August 23 (which was, of course, the

festival of Sri Krishna Janmastami) at 5:45 pm GMT *and* 11:45 pm GMT, (GMT

= Greenwich Mean Time) the BBC World Service broadcast three 15-minute shows

on Lord Krishna's Advent. The astonishing fact is that according to

official reports the World Service reaches a staggering 150 MILLION

LISTENERS, a significant proportion of whom will have caught at least one of

the 3 programmes. Indeed the show's producer estimates that *each* of the

three programmes was listened to by over 100 million people around the

world.

 

The person who put the show together was UK IRM member Deepak Vohra who has

been working with the BBC for sometime (see later). The main piece of the

show was a dramatic presentation of the birth of Lord Krishna, which had

been written by another UK IRM member Yaduraja Das, and which was based on

Srila Prabhupada's Krishna Book.The play allowed everyone to hear about the

transcendental birth of Lord Krishna, and as Lord Krishna states in the

Bhagavad Gita:

 

"One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities

does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material

world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna."

(Bhagavad Gita, 4:9)

 

However a special Janmastami present for the world was that Deepak also

managed to add an introduction glorifying Srila Prabhupada, as well as the

congregational chanting of Hare Krishna both at the beginning and at the end

of the show. We cannot imagine a more auspicious start to the first

Janmastami of the new millennium, as the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra

was heard simultaneously all over the planet. Millions of people from

Northern Europe to Southern Afghanistan will have heard the glories of

Prabhupada and Krishna for the first time, on the actual day of Lord Sri

Krishna's Advent over 5000 years ago.

 

The following is an extract from the introduction to the show that was

broadcast, which allowed us to glorify Srila Prabhupada to the world:

 

----------

 

"...In the West, too, the festival of Janmastami is also widely celebrated

by devotees of ISKCON - the International Society for Krishna Consciousness,

more commonly known as the Hare Krishna movement. It's a worldwide

missionary movement established nearly 40 years ago by India's greatest

saint and spiritual emissary - His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Prabhupada.

 

His mission was to lead people throughout the world back to a spiritual

existence based on India's ancient Vedic scriptures. Prabhupada taught that

Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and that the goal of life is

to reawaken our forgotten loving relationship with Krishna, primarily

through chanting His Names.

 

"Although Prabhupada only lived for a further 12 years after going to the

West from India in 1965, he ensured that his spiritual legacy would continue

through his books and instructions to guide and teach, and to take

disciples."

 

"In this programme, we'll hear part of the story of Lord Krishna's Advent

based on the books of Swami Prabhupada. The Supreme Personality of Godhead,

Krishna, who is the cause and shelter of the entire cosmic creation. We

believe that God has incarnated in the sound of His Holy Names which can

conquer all evil. That's why at Janmastami you'll hear the Hare Krishna

mantra being chanted in temples all over the world."

 

----------

 

Please note that though the GBC are keen to promote throughout ISKCON that

Srila Prabhupada is 'dead', (please see the shocking next article) at least

the BBC have now informed hundreds of million of people throughout the world

that:

 

"Although Prabhupada only lived for a further 12 years after going to the

West from India in 1965, he ensured that his spiritual legacy would

*continue* through his books and instructions to guide and teach, and to

***take disciples***.

 

Its official - Srila Prabhupada lives, and he is continuing to teach and

take disciples! After all how much more official can you get than having

this fact announced by the BBC, the most famous and reputable broadcaster in

the world. People still say today that - "it must be true, since I heard in

on the BBC"!

 

The driving force behind the BBC broadcast Sriman Deepak Vohra, an UK IRM

congregational grhastha devotee, describes how the project came about:

 

"I've been broadcasting Krishna conscious programmes with the BBC World

Service Religion Department for nearly 10 years now. It's not my main job,

though. I work as the Head of Marketing in the London office of an American

newspaper publishing and media organisation. In 1991, I went along to a

training day at the BBC where I presented a script on the philosophy of

Krishna consciousness. They were suitably impressed that they called me in

again a few weeks later to actually broadcast a series of programmes on

Vaishnavism. The programmes weren't very long, so I suggested they might

want to consider a more theatrical presentation of the philosophy. So, I

adapted the First Canto of the Bhagavatam for a half-hour

semi-dramatisation.

Just imagine, for half-an-hour the airwaves were filled with the sublime

conversations between Sukadeva Goswami and Maharaja Pariksit, and Suta

Goswami and the Sages at Naimisaranya! Actually, it was more than

half-an-hour because the programme was repeated a few more times.

Then a new producer came in and wanted to do more of the same. This time, I

decided to give the bulk of the project to Yaduraja das, another UK IRM

member, and a very nice devotee, brilliant actor and scriptwriter, and

infinitely more talented than me! We decided to produce "The Advent of Lord

Krishna" for radio. Yaduraja wrote the majority of the script and rounded

up devotees from the Bhaktivedanta Players theatre troupe from the

Bhaktivedanta Manor temple. The production was so well received, that the

producer was dying for us to do more. However when this ISKCON child abuse

scandal broke, I thought that was the end of our relationship with the BBC

World Service, particularly because they - like every other media

organisation - had carried news items on the child abuse lawsuit.

 

 

Indeed only a few weeks ago, the BBC came to the Manor to interview the

devotees about their reaction to the child abuse affair. And very recently

in the UK, we've had the photographs and addresses of convicted paedophiles

splashed across the front pages of the newspapers, and mobs of a hundred

people or more have taken to the streets and physically attacked these child

abusers and their homes. So you don't expect the world's biggest

broadcaster to be knocking on your door asking you to glorify Krishna when

that same organisation has covered in its news items the horrific abuse

perpetrated by so-called devotees of Krishna. But I firmly believe that

when you put Srila Prabhupada in the centre of your devotional life, then

all obstacles to glorify Krishna and His pure devotee are immediately

smashed.

 

And I also felt that Srila Prabhupada had *personally* blessed this project

because there is a very specific purport in the First Canto of the

Bhagavatam about using modern technology, in particular the radio, to

broadcast glories of the Lord:

 

""In modernized human society there are great advancements of material

science, and they have invented the radio to distribute sound in the air.

So instead of vibrating some nuisance sound for sense enjoyment, if the

state arranges to distribute transcendental sound by resounding the holy

name, fame and activities of the Lord, as they are authorized in the

Bhagavad Gita or Srimad-Bhagavatam, then a favourable condition will be

created, the principles of religion will be re-established, and thus the

executive heads, who are so anxious to drive away corruption from the world,

will be successful. Nothing is bad if properly used for the service of the

Lord.""

(Srimad Bhagavatam 1.18.6, purport)

 

I think this purport is particularly apt because we are literally

*broadcasting* the glories of the Lord! The Executive Producer of the

Religious Broadcasting Unit said he definitely planned to do more, and even

*lengthier* productions with myself and Yaduraja.

All glories to Srila Prabhupada and Sri Sri Radha Gokulananda!"

 

 

This amazing preaching project is the just the latest in a series of efforts

by the ISKCON Revival Movement to glorify both our Spiritual Master, His

Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, and the Supreme Lord Sri

Krishna. As our previous newsletters have detailed, the IRM has gone from

strength to strength in establishing all over the world the status of Srila

Prabhupada as the eternal Guru for ISKCON. In the space of just *a few

months* we have:

 

* Opened a brand new preaching centre in Manhattan, dedicated specifically

to re-igniting book distribution on the streets of Manhattan, as per Srila

Prabhupada's instructions.

 

* Preached the glories of Krishna to the massive Chinese community in

Singapore for the first time in history, through cultural and educational

programmes sponsored by the government authorities there

 

* Held the biggest Rathayatra festival of all time - this year over 1.5

million people came together in Calcutta (Srila Prabhupada's birthplace) to

worship Lord Jagannath and Srila Prabhupada

 

* Witnessed the flowering of the biggest temple and preaching project in

India, namely the ISKCON Bangalore temple headed by IRM Secretary, Madhu

Pandit das

 

* Conducted a hugely successful nationwide media campaign in India to defend

the honour and reputation of Srila Prabhupada so disgracefully dragged

through the mud due to the misdeeds of the ISKCON leadership involved in the

current child abuse lawsuit

 

* Established a permanent memorial plaque in honour of Srila Prabhupada in

Tompkins Square Park, New York, where Prabhupada began the sankirtan

movement in the West in 1966.

 

While all these achievements have been on national scales, the BBC programme

is the start of our *global* mission to glorify and reinstate Srila

Prabhupada as the Guru for not only ISKCON, but the whole planet!

 

So there you have it. This BBC project is yet another arrangement by

Krishna to both glorify Prabhupada and once again ignite a spiritual

revolution in the hearts and minds of people throughout the world. And this

in the midst of the darkest period for ISKCON.

 

 

2. Blasphemous GBC Boasts that Srila Prabhupada "is Dead"

 

As we have seen from the above story, whenever the IRM presents something in

the media, it is with the *positive* aim of informing the whole world that

Srila Prabhupada *LIVES* and that he is still to be glorified and worshipped

today. Please contrast this with the GBC Gurus use of the media. As we

will see from the following shocking press release that was published

throughout India on the FRONT PAGE of a national newspaper, Jayapataka Swami

boasts how he has managed to get the Asian Age - a national Indian newspaper

- to print an article he wrote, in which it is stated that Srila Prabhupada

is "dead".

 

----------

 

Jayapataka.Swami (AT) pamho (DOT) net

[Jayapataka.Swami (AT) pamho (DOT) net]

Monday, July 24, 2000 10:12 PM ICI (ISKCON Communications India);

Anuttama (das) ACBSP (IC N.America); Amrta Gaurangi (dd) JPS (Mayapur - IN);

Parijata (dd) RNS (IC Mumbai - IN)

News article responding to Adri's Asian Age interview

Home Base: Sri Mayapur Candrodaya Mandir, Navadwip Dham, Nadia, WB, INDIA

 

The following article was published on the Front Page of Today's Asian Age

Newspaper. I copied this off of internet where it is also still there

today.

It is in response to Adri's interview against ISKCON leadership and pro-IRM.

Shankarshan das and Nitai Prasad das delivered the press release and

cultivated the press. I drafted the press release and it was edited by our

lawyers. The newspaper edited it themselves as they always do. Still the

main gist is there.

 

----------

 

Front Page ---- Asian Age news. 24th July, 2000.

Iskcon: What are we to do with Ritvikism?

By Dhiman Chattopadhyay and Kounteya Sinha

 

Calcutta, July 23 On the defensive for months after the sex abuse scandal

rocked their world, authorities at the Iskcon Mayapur Ashram have now struck

back with a vengeance at their Calcutta counterparts, the Iskcon Revival

Movement.

The Mayapur general manager has ridiculed the revival movement president's

doctrine of "Ritvikism" calling it "a strange and concocted idea". In a

signed statement issued to all Krishna bhaktas around the world, Mayapur

general manager Dham Nitai Prasad Dasa has accused revival movement

president Adridharana Dasa of "behaving in a deviant manner" and unleashing

an onslaught of false, offensive, and derogatory publicity". Mr Adridharana

Dasa is propagating a delusive doctrine known as Ritvikism, where he

believes that all devotees wanting to receive diksha within Iskcon should

still receive it from founder-acharya of Iskcon, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Prabhupada, Srila Prabhupada, and become his direct disciples, in spite of

*** him being dead for the last 23 years ***," the letter says.

 

----------

 

Please note that though Jayapataka Swami claims that the Asian Age 'edited'

the press release he wrote, here they are quoting *directly* from the press

release in question. And Jayapataka Swami does not object to what has been

written, rather he boasts to everyone how the 'main gist' is there - with

the main gist being that Srila Prabhupada has been 'dead for the last

23 years' - so that we must instead approach impostor Gurus such as himself.

 

It also seems ludicrous that persons could possibly accuse the IRM of being

'offensive' when it is pieces such as the above which are given the GBC/Guru

rubber stamp. It seems that in the above article, Jayapataka Swami's envy

for Srila Prabhupada has forced him to object to the idea that devotees may

prefer to take Diksa from Srila Prabhupada rather than him by emphasising in

such graphic terms Srila Prabhupada's supposed defect compared to him

- "hey, don't you know that he has been dead for the last 23 years!"

 

Please compare the 2 media 'stories' above. They could not be more

different in terms of their glorification and appreciation of Srila

Prabhupada's contribution to the world.

One states that he *continues* to live. The other states that he has been

'dead for the last 23 years'.

 

 

3. Classic Quotes

 

In this regular column we shall be highlighting the bizarre and

contradictory world of our GBC and 'Gurus', who have occupied Srila

Prabhupada's position on the pretext of being able to guide us out of

darkness and back to Godhead. However as this column will show over the

coming weeks, these personalities would be better advised coming into the

light themselves, and to move out of the way from blocking the clear and

transcendental light which is emanating directly from Srila Prabhupada.

Physician heal thyself!

 

 

*** Classic Quote - No. 4 ***

 

 

*GBC Chairman States ISKCON Has No Brain*

 

"I also have my own views on the application of varnasrama-dharma, for I too

have thought about the subject, but I assure you, that whatever I speak or

write will not go uncontested by someone else in ISKCON. Nevertheless, I

will venture here to propose the major reasons why ISKCON is having such a

difficult time coming to grips with this matter. *** The first and foremost

is that ISKCON - I put it starkly - has no brain ***."

("ISKCON and Varnasrama Dharma: A Mission Unfulfilled", GBC Chairman,

Ravindra Svarupa Dasa, 29/1/99)

 

I would venture to suggest that maybe our esteemed chairman deserves the

award for the 'Understatement of the century', for this little gem!

And we hate to point out the obvious - but if ISKCON has 'no brain' - then

isn't it even remotely possible, that the GBC could have got it all wrong

when they decided that Srila Prabhupada was 'dead', and that instead they

should replace him as substitute Gurus? Stranger things have been known to

happen!

And yet the ONE thing that the GBC are claiming that they could not possibly

be wrong on, which they have concluded through the use of something OTHER

than a brain - which we have now been informed they do not possess - is that

one way or another Srila Prabhupada definitely wanted himself to be replaced

by his disciples as successor diksa gurus in ISKCON.

 

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please keep your

letters, and e-mail addresses of other devotees who should be added to our

list, flowing in.

A hard copy of our main position paper 'The Final Order' is available on

request.

All other IRM papers can be accessed through the EDITORIAL SECTION of the

IRM website at http://www.come.to/irm

If you would like to receive any of the back issues of the Newsletter please

let me know.

 

No 1. Invitation to Srila Prabhupada's Vyasa Puja

No 2. GBC Lose First Round of Court Case

No 3. The Story VNN Refused to Publish

No 4. Poison Theorists Accuse Adri of Complicity

No 5. Iskcon Continues to Promote Child Abusers

No 6. Invitation to Malaysia

No 7. United World Body Formed

No 8. Does Srila Prabhupada Support Poisoning Theory?

No 9. PADA Attacks IRM Position

No 10. PADA Continues to Present False Evidence

No 11. GBC Funded Video says Ritvik Spiritual

No 12. Child Rapist Selected by Gurus to Defend their Legitimacy

No 13. GBC Facing Perjury Charge in Calcutta High Court

No 14. Sahajiyism Makes a Comeback in Iskcon.

No 15. Govt. Minister Inaugurates Bangalore Rathayatra

No 16. Iskcon Calcutta Triumphs Following Arson Attack

No 17. Fighting Lies with Truth Not More Lies

No 18. GBC Resolutions Continue to Provide Laughter

No 19. Indian Leaders Endorse IRM Position that GBC Confused

No 20. Convicted Child Abuser Officially 'Returns' to Parampara

No 21. GBC Special Issue - GBC Chairman Admits ISKCON 'Disintegrating'

No 22. Krsna Confirms Iskcon Rebirth - New York Special Issue

No 23. Hare Krsna Explosion Begins in New York as IRM Temple Opens

No 24. IRM Launches Media Campaign to Defend Srila Prabhupada

No 25. GBC Teaches That 'Living Gurus' NOT Required

No 26. BBT Admits Books Changed to Fit GBC Philosophy

No 27. Big Breakthrough for Krishna in Singapore

No 28. Bangalore Tops World Book Distribution

No 29. City of New York to Honour Srila Prabhupada

No 30. Gurukula Lawsuit Special - The Facts

 

Your comments, questions and feedback are appreciated.

Please write to me at

adri (AT) cwcom (DOT) net

 

Your Servant, Adridharan das