A bitter power struggle threatens to reduce ISKCON

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INDIA TODAY

APRIL 1, 2002

 

 

Capital Consciousness

A bitter power struggle threatens to reduce ISKCON to a group of temples

selling the same spiritual formula

 

By Sumit Mitra

 

 

Madhu Pandit Dasa (extreme right) Bangalore temple president

In Bangalore, the case revolves around whether the temple, which is

registered under the Karnataka Registration of Societies Act, is independent

of ISKCON's Indian chapter.

 

 

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.

 

 

Adridharan Das (centre) Kolkata temple president

The high court's stay order on Das' suspension has brought him back into the

picture for the control of ISKCON property.

 

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 than their souls. The temptations are

tangible enough: the procession of corporate 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 37-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, tut-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,

non-vegetarian 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.