Syamasundara das's side of the story

[Guest guest]

Hare Krsna. You may recall a posting I made here about two devotees

who visited ISKCON Radhadesh in Belgium on Sri Nityananda Prabhu's

appearance day. These are Syamasundara das and Stavapriya das, both

from Australia. I warned that they were preachers of rtvik philosophy.

 

After that posting Syamasundara Prabhu contacted me through e-mail. We

exchanged several letters. Now it seems that it was my mistake to

have labelled them as rtvik preachers...although Syamasundara's

dropping off a load of rtvik material in Radhadesh was certainly an

action that would reasonably attract such a label.

 

To right the balance, I'm publishing here Syamasundara's side of the

story. Now, I would like to make clear that despite what Syamasundara

has to say about Gangadhara das (the Dutch devotee to whom he gave

the rtvik material), from my perspective Gangadhara is not an

insincere person. He does, however, have a history of psychological

troubles. Thus Gangadhara was certainly the *wrong* person for

Syamasundara to speak to about Krsna Kant's literature. His

handing over that literature to Gangadhara could have led to much

worse problems than it actually did. Gangadhara is recovering from a

recent period of misfortune. As a devotee, I like him and pray he

will continue to make progress. I do not agree with the dismissive tone

that Syamasundara aims in Gangadhara's direction. In my view, it was

Syamasundara's mistake to have brought the rtvik material to Radhadesh

in the first place, and his further mistake to have passed it on to any

devotee, but *especially* Gangadhara das. Anyway, Syamasundara das

does manfully take responsibility for that, so I am satisfied that this

"bump in the road" is behind us.

 

 

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The claim that I am a ritvik preacher is an erroneous claim, and the making

of such claim has been an unfortunate false alarm. The fact is, I do not

endorse or even believe in so-called ritvik philosophy.

 

Some ritvik literature, in particular the Final Order, was mailed to the

home address of myself and other devotees in Los Angeles by Krishna Kanta

from London. This is apparently a common practice of the ritvik advocates,

who obtain address lists and bulk mail material. I received it shortly

before my departure for pilgrimage to India with Stavapriya Prabhu. I

didn't read the stuff till I was on the plane, and by the time I arrived in

Europe I was finished with it. We visited Radhadesh - such a beautiful

tirtha - where I was keen to visit a old friend from New Zealand, a

disciple of Suhotra Maharaja at Radhadesh, and Stavapriya also had some

friends to look up. Stavapriya couldn't raise his friends, so asked for a

copy of the congregational members to try and locate them.

 

On our last evening there, I was approached by one Gangadhara dasa. When

he heard I was from LA, known as a centre of ritvik propaganda, he asked me

what was the 'latest'. He told me he had been an avid ritvik follower

since the VVR days. He had been collecting ritvik literature since then

and was particularly interested in the Final Order, which he had heard of,

and he told me he would knew many devotees who would be interested to read

it. Actually I have no interest in the 'ritvik scene' in LA, and know

little about it. But having just read the material on the plane, and not

being convinced (although I found it interesting) I was keen to unload it.

It contains many quotes from Srila Prabhupada, and some sastric quotes, so

I didn't want to just trash it. So I took the opportunity, and gave the

pile to Gangadhara.

 

Next morning, Stavapriya gave Bhagavatam class, which was very well

received, and we were off to London for a few days.

 

Several months later I heard that an ALERT had been placed on COM about

Stavapriya and I being ritvik preachers! The warning was that we had

obtained the Radhadesh congregational member list, and that all temples

should not co-operate with us.

 

This was an unpleasant surprise. It turns out that Gangadhara dasa told

some devotees that Stavapriya and I were on a 'ritvik mission'. The TP

(Hrdaya Caitanya Prabhu) came to hear of this, and when it was also

realised that we had a list of congregational members, two and two were put

together and the alert went out.

 

The fact is, however, that nobody has ever known Stavapriya or myself to

advocate ritvik philosophy. Not even Gangadhara dasa. Gangadhara's claims

about our 'secret mission' are not only baseless, they are nothing but

mischief. The kind of mischief that is not such a big surprise, coming as

it does from Gangadhara who has had a career in and out of mental

institutions, and who has been on a number of occasions beaten up by

devotees for bearing false witness against them.. I hasten to mention that

to beat up poor Gangadhara is not on my agenda.

 

Gangadhara is the ONLY source of these allegations. No-one else has made

any claim that I am a ritvik advocate. Suhotra Maharaja has made enquiries

from other devotees in his zone, and such a claim comes from no-one except

Gangadhara. The most extensive enquiries cannot find even a single person

on the list of congregational members who has been approached about ritvik.

And Maharaja's enquiries from senior devotees on several continents found

not a single devotee who has ever known me to even mention ritvik. Why?

Because I'm not into ritvik! Even my best friend, Bhrgupati Prabhu, 20

year veteran book distributor in LA, has never known me to even talk about

ritvik!

 

I now understand better, however, the responsibility I have to the ISKCON

society to not disturb the minds of innocent and impressionable devotees.

Personally I don't object to mature devotees discussing such subject matter

in a sober philosophical fashion, and that's what I thought I was doing.

But owing to my carelessness, the situation became an unnecessarily big

issue, and a headache for Suhotra Maharaja. I have expressed my apologies

to him for that, and hope that the case can now be closed.

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