A lesson for SYs: Why 95% of ISKCON members left after leader departed

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Sex, drugs, embezzlement chant today's Hare Krishna

 

By Sujor Dhar

July 25, 2001

 

Kolkata - Sex scandals and embezzlement charges that have knocked

the image of the Hare Krishna cult are now being compounded by

street battles and court arbitration between its rival groups.

 

Last month, internal dissensions became public when rival factions

fought over which of them would lead the annual Rathyatra (chariot-

pulling festivals) through the streets of Kolkata and New York.

 

In April, meanwhile, the shaven-headed, saffron-robed cult members

abandoned their drums and dancing to pelt each other with stones

outside the temple of the International Society for Krishna

Consciousness (ISKCON) on Kolkata's Albert Road, forcing police to

intervene and arrest several feuding devotees.

 

ISKCON is better known as the Hare Krishna cult, because its

adherents are best known for chanting it ritually. Krishna is a

spiritual leader said to have lived in northern India 5,000 years

ago, but is deified as a god. The rival groups within the cult are

the ISKCON Revival Movement group led by its expelled Kolkata

chapter president Adridharan Das and the ISKCON Governing Body

controlled from the United States.

 

ISKCON, founded in New York in by one-time professor of philosophy

Srila Prabhupada, rapidly grew into a world movement. It attracted

celebrities like Beatle George Harrison who incorporated the

trademark Hare Krishna chants in his music. When Prabhupada died in

1977, he left behind a translation of the Bhagvad Gita (The song of

Krishna), an ancient Hindu text which, among other things, explained

the laws governing transmigration of the soul and its ultimate

liberation.

 

But Prabhupada also left behind a worldwide empire with more than

100 temples, centers and schools run by 3,000 full-time members -

and over which an intense struggle for control has grown. By the

Nineties, a string of sex and money scandals had overtaken the

movement with a large number of its devotees leaving the fold in

disgust.

 

The biggest blow came in 1988 when Nori J Muster, ISKCON's public

relations secretary and editor of the organization's newspaper, left

and went on to write " Betrayal of The Spirit " , a book which

thoroughly exposed the organization. Muster's book detailed a sordid

story of drug dealing, weapons stockpiling, deceptive fundraising,

child abuse, and murder within ISKCON - and the schisms that forced

95 percent of the group's original members to leave.

 

" The root of the present problems with ISKCON is the proliferation

in number of gurus, " alleged its expelled president Aridharan

Das. " Our founder, Srila Prabhupada, had set up a system within

ISCKON which allowed him to remain the diksha [initiating] guru for

new disciples for as long as the society exists, " he added. " After

his departure in 1977, his leading disciples unauthorizedly stopped

this system and set themselves up as the new initiating gurus. Today

there are some 90 gurus who are creating all the problems, many

accused of sexual offenses and many languishing in jails, " he

claimed.

 

Sex, drugs, embezzlement chant today's Hare Krishna

By Sujor Dhar, July 25, 2001