ISKCON’S “FESTIVAL OF COLORS” PART#3: DOING THE MATH

 THE PARTY’S OVER, HOLI MEN

As you might have guessed, the reason why ISKCON engages in such irresponsible behavior is purely financial. 

Each year thousands buy tickets, Holi powder bags, meals, and yoga-themed merchandise at each of the multitudes of Festival of Colors venues worldwide. To understand how ISKCON uses these events as multi-million dollar sources of fundraising revenue, look no further than the annual festivities at Spanish Fork, Utah, which tops the list in terms of ticket sales and crowds. For example, while the event organizers expected approximately 10,000 to attend in the past few years, that number can easily balloon to 30,000 by opening day.1

In Utah, this includes, in addition to Spanish Fork, Salt Lake City and Ogden. In California, there are at least six, and many more in major cities nationwide. The list grows exponentially if many major cities around the globe are added to the list, with the slogan of the Festival of Colors event in Sydney, Australia, “Be a Part of the Celebration of the Oneness of Human Spirits” illustrating how ignorance and group hysteria remain powerful tools of duping people out of their money and health.

Those “bliss” peddling snake oil merchants are overdue for a legal reckoning to compensate the thousands of people who have attended their Festival of Colors yoga-themed extravaganzas.  

After the dust settles—no pun intended!—and you have contacted the personal injury law firm of your choice, the next step is having them contact the Department of Public Works (DPW) where you attended the Festival of Colors party. The primary function of this branch of local government is determining whether the group wishing to obtain a “Mass Gathering Permit” meets the municipality’s health department regulations. These details must be included in each and every Event Permit Application. For example:

Utah County Public Works 

Phone: (801) 851-8600

Fax: (801) 851-8612

chrissa@utahcounty.gov or jamie@utahcounty.gov

It will be up to your attorney to ascertain to what extent the department of works in your municipality was negligent in issuing event permits to the Festival of Colors organizers. You are also free to contact a number of these public works offices on your own or as a group of your associates you might organize on the social media account of your choice. 

However, you can be sure that since they clearly failed to conduct due diligence regarding the glaring threat to public health posed by the Festival of Colors, the DPW will be eager to investigate the oversight and take corrective action. In due course the Hare Krishna /ISKCON organizers will face scrutiny like never before and be forced to drop the “peace and love” mask they have hidden behind for more than a half-century.

CONCLUSION

The philanthropic smokescreen cults use to hide their fundraising operations often relies on selling to the unsuspecting public ancient traditions and rituals packaged to suit modern sensibilities. Hare Krishna followers made a memorable nuisance of themselves back in the hippie era of the sixties and seventies hawking their guru’s books in airports and the streets. Back then, users of psychedelic drugs with their fluorescent tie-dye attire flocked to the Hare Krishna outdoor events, where group chanting and gobbling up free vegetarian food was used to entice them to join up and waste precious years of their youth promulgating nonsense. 

Today the approach has changed but the rationale has become a great deal more opportunistic and cynical. Instead of their mind-numbing chanting, those smug  “better than Hindu” hypocrites who used to parade about in saffron robes wringing their hands over the evils of rampant materialism have mastered the practice themselves. Distorting the traditions of the Holi festival in India and the Indian diaspora by serving it up as a New Age springtime festival is bad enough. Worse, however, is dousing their guests (and encouraging them to apply it to other’s faces) with a powder I have shown in this posting is a fluorescent mixture of minerals in a cornstarch base that no one in their right mind would think of inhaling. Yet, sadly, that has been the case many thousands of times.

Readers of this blog from all over the globe—yes, ISKCON, it’s really a globe!—should feel relief that the whirlwind of karmic retribution has finally caught up with those jokers, who, if they have a drop of self-preservation in their veins, will immediately stop making clowns at their un”Holi” parties and stop abusing the public’s trust in the scientific method. 

Disclaimer: Nothing in this blog essay is meant as a substitute for professional legal advice. If you wish to proceed with any claims against the Festival of Colors organization either as an individual or as part of a class action settlement, it would be prudent to contact a reputable personal injury law firm in your area. Although I stand by the research findings in this essay, all of it and much more can be obtained using the services of any competent paralegal.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This essay and all of the charts and illustrations were prepared by and are the exclusive property of the blog author. Using any part of them in any manner, in print or online, is strictly forbidden. A standard link to this blog is a better alternative.

For Jamie 🪷🌈🙏🏻

1. Using the more conservative figure (10,000), if each attendee pays $7 for admission and purchases only one bag of Holi powder for $3, the total would be $100k; if they each bought five bags for $12, it would total $190k, and if ten bags the total would be $290k. If 30,000 attend, the Hare Krishna organizers can expect to be flush with half a million—500k!—in profits with minimal overhead. Add to that prices for meals and the purchase of such merchandise as Ganesh and OM t-shirts, etc. Not bad, you say? Keep in mind that ISKCON  has 88 temples and ashrams in the USA, and holds annual Festival of Color events in most of them. And those are just the revenue streams for the Festival of Colors USA operations! Do the math.