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. 

FACT SHEET FOR ISKCON’S “FESTIVAL OF COLORS” HOLI POWDERS

Holi powders are bad for the environment and a menace to public health! If you have any doubts, the following presentation should help.

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.

SAINTS OR SWINDLERS? ISKCON’S LATEST RECRUITMENT TACTICS

Why is the Hare Krishna (ISKCON) sect so hell-bent on convincing the Indian public that they are genuine Hindus while spending millions convincing non-Hindus that they are simply “peace and love” yoga enthusiasts?

ISKCON spares no expense in catering to wealthy Hindus as it strives to build its reputation as a genuine branch of mainstream Hinduism. All of these efforts have one thing in common: they are nothing more than self-serving propaganda. Money, as usual, talks. If the cult builds another massive temple and continues its well-publicized food relief programs in India, it expects the Hindu public to follow its lead like a pack of blinkered horses.[i]

However, its sordid past—including child abuse, scams to defraud the public, and its founder’s sexist and racist statements—has proved difficult to hide. 

In a desperate attempt to replenish its dwindling numbers among non-Hindus in western countries, ISKCON has revamped its old policy of withholding information about its real beliefs and practices. Now the cult uses social media sites to ensnare new members by positioning itself as another of the meditation and yoga groups offering therapeutic emotional and health benefits. This watered-down appropriation of Hindu religious practices reduces an ancient faith to another “feel-good” experience much like meditation and hatha yoga have been served up to non-Hindus everywhere.

Recently I discovered the latest recruitment efforts by the Hare Krishna cult in the offerings of Meetup.com, a website that hosts software by a multitude of personal and professional groups and caters to adults seeking new friends with common interests. Nothing about the tactics ISKCON uses to attract new members surprises me, but the sheer nonsense in the groups I found was both sad and laughable. History does indeed repeat itself, as anyone familiar with the hippie movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s can see in the descriptions listed below:

• Enchant Mantra Meditation/Vancover
• Sacred Sounds Outside OM/Las Vegas “Tribe Kin”
• Living Well, Being Well/El Paso, TX
• Vedic Astrology, Karma, Dharma/North York, ON

In each case (and there are many more of these ISKCON sponsored groups all over North America and Europe), it’s clear that participants generally have no idea that the meetings they attend are organized by the Hare Krishna cult, nor do they know anything about its beliefs and history. Rather, as anyone who looks at the photographs included in each meeting can see, ISKCON has cleverly disguised itself as one of the multitude of yoga and meditation practitioners familiar to the general public.[iii]

Back in the 1960’s when ISKCON first attracted hippies to its outdoor kirtans and Sunday Feasts, the main lure used to reel in unsuspecting recruits was a mixture of mantra chanting and free vegetarian food, all of which supposedly granted the practitioner easy and instant access to the Godhead.[iv]

Today, these pleasure-seekers appear to have travelled in a time machine to the present, mixing with a new generation of gullible souls eager to delve in whatever variety of Eastern mysticism offers outsize benefits in proportion to the effort involved.

Now it’s fashionable among youth and their college professors to stridently endorse ecological concerns, along with the usual calls for ending discrimination based on sex, race, and gender. They are the tree-huggers of my generation on steroids. Science, in their twisted worldview, takes a back seat to misplaced sentimentality.

Cults have long since seized the opportunity to worm their way into this void, replacing scientific, objective inquiry with so-called authoritative statements, all ultimately non-refutable because of their ancient “Vedic” sources. So you have “Vedic Astrology” instead of the science of astronomy and the fuzzy, warm-sounding “Living well, Being Well.” Abusing the lonely souls who join Meetingup.com groups with a lot of half-baked pseudo-Hindu mysticism is a familiar practice of the Hare Krishna cultists.

For example, this past summer, ISKCON entered a local festival in the New York City Metro Area City of Newburgh, entitled “Colorfest,’ which in actuality mimics the Hindu festival of Holi, this past spring celebrated by Hindus (and Sikhs also) world-wide on March 2^nd. Its association with the Krishna legend is well-known, of course, and some describe it as “the Festival of Colors.” However, ISKCON takes it entirely out of context, as you can see for yourself with the psycho-babble title and activities of its program months after the official Holi celebration:

http://www.newburghilluminatedfestival.com/colorfest. “A Playful Festival to Strengthen Friends and Families with Happiness.” (Please note: this site has subsequently been shutdown.)

Pure, unadulterated bullshit! “Strengthen Friends and Families with Happiness”? What a nonsensical, illogical statement! If you or anyone you know has actual experience with the Hare Krishna devotees, you know that its mission is quite the opposite: while its members appear so welcoming at first, before long they urge you to give your time and money to them, with no consideration of how your actions affect your family and friends.

Worse, even the “colorfest” title is an effort to hide its true identity within the many groups in the U.S. sponsored by colorfest.org., an arts & crafts organization with no ties to ISKCON. In actuality, the website cult uses to advertise their color-chalk throwing events is https://www.festivalofcolorsusa.com, which bills itself as the “World’s Happiest Transformational Event.” These cheap diversionary tactics distort Hinduism in an attempt to lure in throngs of pleasure-seeking suckers.

This pattern of initially “love bombing” new recruits and then training them (by hours of chanting the same mantra on prayer beads and singing it with others during morning and evening services) to disassociate themselves from the “material world” or “karmi life” is ISKCON’s variant of a practice followed by many cults worldwide.[v]

In addition, let’s be absolutely frank: how can tossing colored chalk at another person do anything other than reduce an adult to the level of a toddler who plays in sand at a neighborhood playground and tosses some of it at his or her playmates? Without the cultural and religious significance Holi has to Hindus, the tossing of colored chalk at a neighborhood festival or any other venue is an insulting, irrational act of cultural appropriation. However, if you think that ISKCON cannot degrade Hinduism any further, you are sadly mistaken. . .

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS ESSAY CAN BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORMAT WITHOUT THE WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE AUTHOR

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[i] ISKCON has worked overtime in the Europe and India positioning itself as Hindu adherents of the Gaudiya Vaishnava sect. It founded the Hindu umbrella organizations of Hindu Forum Britain (http://www.hfb.org.uk) and Hindu Forum Europe (http://hinduforum.eu) to convince the academic and business communities of its authenticity as well as to advance its Radha Krishna worship and philosophy.

[ii] Since its founding in the mid-sixties, critics of the Hare Krishna/ISKCON cult have produced a mountain of anecdotal evidence of its massive and persistence abuses of its members, particularly women and children. Most of this abuse was and is a by-product of the views of the founder of the cult, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. My blog essays here and in its sister blog, https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com, summarize much of this tragic history and contain verifiable documentation to support my views. For starters, please visit: https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2015/08/new-eastern-cults-as-incubators-of.html and https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2017/12/new-sex-starvd-idiots-slaves-how.html.

[iii] https://www.meetup.com/Newburgh-Yoga-Meetup/photos. Nimai’s Bliss Kitchen 94 S. Robinson    Avenue, Newburgh, NY 12550. This restaurant is another instance of the Hare Krishna movement’s efforts to hide itself in the popular cultural norms of the current ecological trends: it’s a vegan restaurant offering Indian foods without the milk products that are an integral part of the Hare Krishna cuisine.

[iv] See my essay:  https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-hare-krishna-bliss-addiction.html.

[v] The term “lovebombing” was invented by the followers of the Rev. Moon, also known as “the Moonies.”

RACISM AND CASTE BIGOTRY IN THE HARE KRISHNA MOVEMENT

Re-enslave black people? Call them ugly and uncivilized? Reinforce caste stereotypes treating sudras and Dalits  (“untouchables”) like stupid beasts of burden? ISKCON’s founder openly professed these beliefs and his devoted followers have never denounced them. In fact, the aura surrounding guru A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami “Srila Prabhupada” (1896-1977) has never been brighter, as attested by the 50^th anniversary celebrations of his founding the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in New York City back in 1966.[i] 

ISKCON FOUNDER A.C. BHAKTIVEDANTA SWAMI

Such blind adoration of the man and his teachings is also evident in the academic sphere, where followers of the self-promoting swami treat his legacy as an unparalleled visionary gift to the West. Just last month, for example, Yale University’s Dept. of Religious Studies held its “Hinduism and Ecology” conference at the ISKCON Goverdhan Ecovillage in Polgar, Maharastra (India) from December 11-14th, with many attendees from major universities worldwide, most of whom would cringe and run for cover if they knew their hosts’ repulsive racial ideology.[ii]

In a supremely ironic twist, on 7 December, Prime Minister Narendra Modi—himself born in a sudra family—celebrated the grand opening of the Babasaheb Dr. B.R. Ambedkar International Center, dedicated to the memory and work inspired by the principal architect of the constitution of India and a founding father of the Republic itself.[iii] Despite obtaining doctorates from Columbia University and the London School of Economics, B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) had first-hand experience of the indignities those born into Dalit (“untouchable”) families suffer throughout their lives.  In his commitment to wiping out the caste system and its multifarious injustices, Ambedkar’s life and legacy show what a true mahatma is and why we need to cast a cold eye on so-called saints who promote regressive practices in the name of religious orthodoxy.  

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

ISKCON FOUNDER’S RACIST COMMENTS ABOUT BLACKS

Let me start with a famous quotation from Bhaktivedanta Swami’s commentary (“purports”) from the 1964 edition of his translation of the Srimad Bhagavatam[iv], which, for obvious reasons, has been omitted from subsequent editions. I will refer to the swami as “Prabhupada” for the rest of this essay. (My comments are in blue.)

The cupid, therefore, throws his arrow upon the living being to become mad after his opposite sex never mind whether the party is actually beautiful or not. Such action of the cupid is going on even on the negroes and beastly societies who are all ugly looking in the estimation of the civilized nations. Thus cupid’s influence is exerted even in the ugliest forms (of living being) and-what to speak about the most perfectional stage of personal beauties.

 SB 1.11.36, purport (1964 ed.)

What is truly ugly here is Bhaktivedanta’s degraded view of human sexuality and his monomaniacal belief that “the civilized nations” all share his fierce and ill-informed bigotry. His venomous hatred of and personal disgust with the appearance and behavior of what he calls “the negroes and beastly societies” reveals a coarseness of character his disciples should have recognized as far from his self-described status as a “pure devotee” fit for serving as the absolute moral and spiritual guide for each and every one of his disciples (and I might add, their disciples). Even his own editors—slavish and gullible as they were and still are--recognizing the damage it would do if the swami’s bigotry were made public, omitted it from subsequent editions. This decision, an obvious public relations ploy designed to hoodwink readers, shows how the Hare Krishna movement was from its very beginnings indisputably a cult.

Treating his absurd racist views as private, esoteric morsels of divine wisdom fit only for circulation among his disciples was a cheap maneuver intended to both insult their intelligence and that of the public:

Certainly we are not going to say these things about the negro people publicly… So, you can understand that these talks are not for the public, as they have not got the ability to understand.

 Letter to Satsvarupa, 9 April 1968, San Francisco

Evidently our revered guru truly resented the progress made by “a third-class negro” in Western countries, and regarded them with the contempt usually associated with white supremacists and other disgruntled malcontents:

This is Vedic civilization: plain living, high thinking. And poor thinking, poor in thought, poor in behavior, and living with motorcar and this, that, nonsense. It is all nonsense civilization. A first-class Rolls Royce car, and who is sitting there? A third-class negro. This is going on. You’ll find these things in Europe and America. This is going on. A first-class car and a third-class negro.

Room conversation, 5 October 1975, Mauritius

First-Class Success!

Judging from his disciples’ expertise in cheating and harassing the public that characterized Bhaktivedanta Swami’s book-selling scams—who can forget those saffron-clad nuisances who annoyed passengers at airports for so many years!--he was clearly an expert at hurling unfounded accusations against black people:

And especially in your country it will be dangerous because these blacks, if they don’t get employment, they will create havoc, these blacks. And they are not civilized. They want money, and if they don’t get money, then they will create havoc.

Room conversation, 21 January 1977, Bhuvanesvara, India

The following conversation, which I have quoted in full, between Prabhupada (Bhaktivedanta Swami) and a number of his disciples, shows just how he advocated racial segregation. Here he equates blacks with crows and states that they “naturally” prefer to live with their own kind:

Rāmeśvara: In regards to brainwashing, they claim that our life-style tends to take the devotee and isolate him from the world.
Prabhupāda: Yes. We hate to mix with you. No gentleman tries to mix with loafers. In England still, the rich quarter is different from the poor quarter. Is it not?
Hari-śauri: Not so much. It was though, formerly, very strongly.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Aristocratic will never live… Even in America, they don’t like to live with the blacks.
Rāmeśvara: No.
Prabhupāda: … So that separation… Crows will not like to live with the ducks and white swans. And white swans will not like to live with the crows. That is natural division. “Birds of the same feather flock together.”
Jagadīśa: And honest men don’t like to associate with thieves and criminals.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is natural. We are not interested even with these daily newspapers. We are interested Bhagavad-gītā. We don’t keep any news. We know the dogs are barking. That’s all. But that does not mean we have to mix with the dogs.

11 January, 1977, India

DUAL EVILS: CASTE HATRED AND RACIAL STEREOTYPES

Now I will introduce a set of Prabhupada’s comments showing his belief in the hereditary, race-based hierarchical caste system and how it should be introduced to and practiced by his followers world-wide.[v]

The following—in which he openly states his belief that blacks should be returned to slavery--is possibly the most notorious of the swami’s racist statements:

Sudra is to be controlled only. They are never given to be freedom. Just like in America. The blacks were slaves. They were under control. And since you have given them equal rights they are disturbing, most disturbing, always creating a fearful situation, uncultured and drunkards. What training they have got? They have got equal right? That is best, to keep them under control as slaves but give them sufficient food, sufficient cloth, not more than that. Then they will be satisfied.

Room conversation 14 February, 1977, Mayapura, India.

Never Again! You Can Keep Your "Sufficient Food and Cloth."

It is hard to believe that Prabhupada wished to import the evils of the caste system to wherever had followers established temples, but these statements make it indisputably true:

The varnashrama college has to be established immediately. Everywhere, wherever we have got our center, a varnashrama college should be established to train four divisions.

                                                           Morning Walk, Vrindavan, India, 12 March, 1974.

Once the populace is situated in the varnasrama-dharma, there is every possibility of real life and prosperity both in this world and in the next. [Sure, as long as you’re not a sudra!!!]

Srimad Bhagavatam 4.14.19, Purport

The following two quotations reveal how Prabhupada equated skin color with caste. Predictably enough, because he claimed sudras have a “black” complexion[vi] because they are allegedly “non-Aryan” Dravidians (so-called indigenous people from Southern India), they are imposters even when they have obtained a higher social status. In this way, caste bigots treat the “black” blood of a sudra as a pollutant:

So here, this man was cheating. . . . He was dressed like a king. Just like king is very gorgeously dressed. But his bodily feature, he was a black man. The black man means śūdra.

Lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam 1.16.4 1 January, 1974, Los Angeles, CA.

Dravidian culture. Dravida. They are non-Aryans. Just like these Africans, they are not Aryans. Now they are mixing up with Europeans and Americans. In India, it was, one from the higher section, brahmana, ksatriya, vaisya, they will be fair complexion. Sudras, black. So if a brahmana becomes black, then he’s not accepted as brahmana. . . .And if a sudra becomes fair, then he’s to be know that he’s not pure sudra. 

                                                  2 August, 1976, ISKCON farm in France

In the following, Prabhupada extends his disgust with sudras to Native Americans, by simply hurling more insults accompanied by his typical unsupported oversimplifications:

Sudras have no brain. In America also, the whole America once belonged to the Red Indians. Why they could not improve? The land was there. Why these foreigners, the Europeans, came and improved? So sudras cannot do this. They cannot make any correction.

Room conversation with reporter, 3 June 1976, Los Angeles

OPPORTUNISM:  THE WORM AT THE CORE OF THE CASTE SYSTEM

By now, some of you might be thinking, “why didn’t somebody tell me about this nonsense before?” Well, in what began as a flirtation in the 1960’s and in a few decades, blossomed into a full-blown romance, many Western countries have embraced Eastern mysticism with incense-clouded glasses. Savvy marketers of yoga, meditation, and various sorts of guru-worshipping cults insist that each of them has a proven method to achieve “transcendental” results fast and easy. Voila! You have achieved enlightenment. Now everything you are and have is subject to a spate of rules and regulations designed to keep you orbiting around their star. Our guru Prabhupada used to call it “spiritual communism” and he wasn’t kidding.

Scandals abound in these neo-Hindu organizations, but threats and hush money virtually guarantee that only a very few instances are made public. Those who are deeply involved in these enlightenment-is-easy scams are deluded fools who see what they want and choose to ignore the rest. For all the talk about spirituality, it has never ceased to amaze me how most of these people seem to have lost their souls as they retreat into an alternate reality where empathy and common decency have little to no value.

Dalit Woman Cleaning Feces Off Train Tracks

Back to our subject.  If you want to get an idea of how the caste system poisons India to this day, just go to Twitter or Google and search for the term “Dalit.” You will find a multitude of hair-raising accounts of everyday abuse—domestic terror, really--suffered by these “untouchables” at the hands of higher caste Indians. Such outrages are modern day vestiges of those Ambedkar fought against so courageously and detailed so unforgettably in his 1936 unpublished speech, Annihilation of Caste.[vii] To better appreciate his contributions to eradicating the injustices perpetuated by the caste system, readers need to get their facts straight regarding its origins and methods of operations. First, Ambedkar’s correction regarding the issue of race and caste:

As a matter of fact the caste system came into being long after the different races of India had commingled in blood and culture. To hold that distinctions of castes are really distinctions of race, and to treat different castes as though they were so many different races, is a gross perversion of facts.

Annihilation of Caste  5.2 pp.237-238.

So much for the caste origin myths and their relation to the skin color gradations in some sort of primordial caste structure![viii] The fact is that all natives of the Indian subcontinent share DNA markers, regardless of the percentage of ancestral sources and their geographical locations.[ix] What the institution of the caste system did (around 1,500 C.E.) was to artificially restrict interbreeding by restricting intermarriage between castes, resulting in gradations of skin color that have been mistakenly associated with each caste. However, as Ambedkar states, India was already a mixed population racially before the caste system took hold.

We already know about the racism and caste bigotry ISKCON founder Prabhupada taught his disciples, virtually all foreigners whom Hindus strictly following the dictates of the Manusmriti would have torn limb from limb had they the audacity to presume that they could preach to them about the Vedic scriptures, enter a temple, what to speak of wearing the sacred thread and actually declaring themselves to be Brahmins! Yet this is precisely how our guru taught us to regard ourselves, using the reputed caste egalitarianism of the Bengali Brahmin Chaitanya (1486-1533) as warrant for his actions. Keep in mind that Prabhupada’s many references to the Manu Samhita (Manusmriti) as the lawbook of mankind, are meant to be taken literally:

Manu-Samhita is the law, Hindu law, still accepted, they have made many amendments. But it is not to be amended.

Lecture on Bhagavad-Gita 7.3, 18 February 1974.

 

As the saying goes: you can’t have it both ways! Yet this is precisely what Prabhupada tried to do; in fact, his racist statements about sudras are only the tip of the iceberg when compared to the prohibitions from the Manu-Samhita aimed at sudras who dare to aspire to improve their lot in life:

A once-born man (a Sudra), who insults a twice-born man with gross invective, shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin.

 If he mentions the names and castes (gati) of the (twice-born) with contumely, an iron nail, ten fingers long, shall be thrust red-hot into his mouth. 8.271. 

If he arrogantly teaches Brahmanas their duty, the king shall cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and ears. 8.272.

From these quotations from the Manu-Samhita (there are many more just as terrifying), there is no doubt that keeping the sudra caste from protesting their condition and obtaining education requires subjecting potential and actual violators to threats and horrible punishment. Worse, it uses its scriptural authority to approve the severe punishment of those who violate its rules. Prabhupada tried to skirt dictates of the Manu Samhita against sudras and the social stigmas Dalits suffer to this day by linking caste to the guna-karma theory, in effect claiming that one’s guna, or nature, determined caste, not birth.[x]

This was merely a ploy to justify his preaching activities in the West to people who he himself stated would be classified as the lowest scum of society in Vedic culture, mlecchas (impure persons) and yavanas (foreigners). Perhaps these views might partially explain why he insisted that his disciples live in extreme penury, eating on the floor with one’s hands, sleeping on the floor in crowded, vermin-infested ashrams, slaving all day selling his books on the street, and other indignities that haunt ex-devotees to this day. Prabhupada told us to believe that initiating us as his disciples and then investing us—many of whom were once a bunch of former drug addicts and hippies--with the sacred thread made us genuine Brahmins, a joke that was made at our great personal expense.

CONCLUSION

Today the caste system remains hereditary in nature and, as Arundhati Roy points out in her introduction to Annihilation of Caste, its upper caste members include many fabulously wealthy business owners and others occupy a vast majority of government positions.[xi] A relatively few Dalits—Mayawati comes to mind--have risen to positions of influence in politics, but the vast majority remain deeply and stubbornly impoverished. To make matters worse, most of the caste-related outrages today are committed against Dalits, whose protected status as beneficiaries of the “reservation” system sparks continual outrage from the higher castes due to its quotas and other forms of government sanctioned affirmative action.[xii]

Furthermore, the hereditary nature of the caste system is another reason why Hinduism—unlike other major world religions—does not seek converts. Ambedkar’s straightforward analysis of this issue is worth remembering and repeating:

The law of caste confines its membership to persons born in the caste. Castes are autonomous, and there is no authority anywhere to compel a caste to admit a newcomer to its social life. Hindu society being a collection of castes, and each caste being a closed corporation, there is no place for a convert.[xiii]

This is a major reason why Indian gurus who are actually preaching in the West prefer terms referring to meditation, yoga, and the like. Gullible people with deep pockets are favorite targets. However, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada introduced his Krishna Conscious (ISKCON) sect to the West by actively proselytizing to and accepting as disciples multitudes of grossly uninformed and under qualified Americans and Europeans for the express purpose of opening temples and selling his books. His dictates about our personal lives cost us our relationships with our families and in most cases, damaged our health and emotional well-being. The crimes and controversies that arose shortly thereafter and continue to this day are direct byproducts of these irregular practices. If Prabhupada wished to teach his followers about the Gita and his Gaudiya (Bengali) Vaishnavism, fine, but using them as means to his ends was morally repugnant.   

Finally, the words of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar on the irrational and immoral nature of the caste system:

Reason and morality are the two most powerful weapons in the armoury of a reformer. To deprive him of the use of these weapons is to disable him for action. How are you going to break-up caste, if people are not free to consider whether it accords with reason? How are you going to break-up caste, if people are not free to consider whether it accords with morality?[xiv]

Amen.

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[i] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ronakdesai/2016/10/27/iskcon-celebrates-50-years-since-its-founding/#10ca36eda0dc.

[ii] http://fore.yale.edu/calendar/item/hinduism-and-ecology-towards-a-sustainable-future.

[iii] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/narendra-modi-br-ambedkar-international-centre-new-delhi-4971999.

[iv] Generally known as the Bhagavata Purana. For more information about this epic poem, see the note at the end of my blog essay: https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2017/12/new-sex-starved-idiots-slaves-how.html

[v] “Varnashrama” refers to the four-fold caste system in a pyramidal social structure consisting of the priestly Brahmins at the top, followed by the warrior Kshastriyas, then the merchant class Vaishyas, and finally, toiling at the bottom and supporting all three “twice-born castes, are the lowly sudras. The caste system is the varna part of the system. It is also refered to as “chaturvarnya” or the four-fold caste system (a term popularized by Dayananda Saraswati; see note below) to condense what had grown by the modern age into an intricate set of castes and sub-castes. Women born into these families assume its hereditary caste. The ashrama part refers to the religious orders for the three upper classes; sudras have no part in it and neither do women (who are expected to follow the dictates of their families regarding choice of husband and at what age). Under the tutelage of a guru, a boy in the brahmachari ashram is a celibate student; after marriage in his early twenties, he becomes a grihasta (householder or married man), after his sons are grown, he leaves home with his wife and retires into the forest for penance as a celibate vanaprastha, and afterwards, if he wishes, returns his wife to the care of their sons, vows lifelong celibacy, and becomes an itinerant preacher, or a sannyasin.

[vi] Referring to lower caste natives of India as “black” in this context is just a pejorative term with no basis in reality.

[vii] Ambedkar, B.R. Annihilation of Caste. Intro. By Arundhati Roy, The Doctor and the Saint. Ed. and Annotations by S. Anand. Verso: NY, 2014. Hereafter referred to as “AoC.”

[viii] See indiafacts.org/aryan-invasion-myth-21st-century-science-debunks-19th-century-indology/ for a summary of controversies regarding this matter.

[ix] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Aryan-Dravidian-divide-a-myth-Study/articleshow/5053274.cms.; https://hms.harvard.edu/news/genetics-proves-indian-population-mixture-8-8-13.

[x] The source of the guna-karma theory is the Bhagavad-Gita 4.13, where Krishna states that the four castes are his creation and their classifications and duties arise from the guna [innate quality] dominant in each. It is interesting to note that this information has been used as pretext by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, founder of the Arya-Samaj and others (including Prabhupada) to claim that birth does not determine caste, whereas a straightforward reading of it is an unmistakable affirmation that the guna-karma theory only amplifies the claim that caste is hereditary because the qualities that typify each caste are innate in the denotative sense that they are innate.

[xi] “The Doctor and the Saint,” pp. 23-33.

[xii] https://www.india.gov.in/topics/social-development/scheduled-castes.

[xiii] AoC, 10.3, p. 254.

[xiv] AoC. 22.16, p.303.