Vote With Your Laksmi

[Guest guest]

Dear devotees, please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

 

An effective way to protest something you don't like is to apply economic pressure to the offending entity. Many activist groups have used economic protests to change the negative behavior of mega-corporations. Giant companies like Nike and McDonalds have been forced to change their ways because of grass-roots activists. In fact, there is a saying that you should 'vote with your dollars' if you want to make a change.

 

In this particular case I am referring to the unauthorized changes made to Srila Prabhupada's books by Jayadwaita swami and his cohorts. Many devotees do not like that the books have been changed, so here is our chance to do something about it. The original versions of both Srimad Bhagavatam and Bhagavad Gita are now available in their untainted form (pre-1977 printing). We should all vote with our pocketbooks, and apply economic pressure to the BBT and ISKCON to encourage them to print and use only the original unedited books.

 

If you are a temple president or board member, demand that your temple have ONLY Srila Prabhupada's original books in the temple room, library, and gift shop. You and your congregation deserve no less than Srila Prabhupada's original, authorized, unchanged books. Even if you're a congregation member or grhastha living on the outside of the temple you can still demand that your temple replace their books with the pre-1977 versions which were approved by Srila Prabhupada. Don't give any more donations or service until the books have been replaced with the original versions, or send your money to a temple that supports the original books instead!

 

Book distributors should refuse to distribute anything other than Srila Prabhupada's original authorized books. There are many small, medium, and large books available for you to distribute. Many times we have heard new book distributors claim that the Bhagavatams are 'too heavy' and 'too hard to distribute'. Instead they prefer to distribute the newer books that BBT has printed, which are mainly a collection of heavily EDITED lectures and excerpts from Prabhupada's original purports. However, if you ask the book distributors who were around back in 1975, they were selling THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of copies of the original Srimad Bhagavatam volumes, even the so-called heavy cantos like the 5th canto, etc. Srila Prabhupada's original books are as powerful as the sun, and they can dissipate the darkness of ignorance of this age of Kali.

 

If all the devotees demanded that the BBT print ONLY the original versions of Prabhupada's books, and refused to buy or distribute anything else, the BBT would have no choice but to print these books exclusively, and Srila Prabhupada's legacy will certainly be maintained for many generations to come.