What makes a guru a fake? Let me count the ways:
Trashing the
reputation of other gurus or religious figures with unsubstantiated lies and
innuendo, while advancing himself as the most authentic and
divinely inspired sadhu alive.
Expertise in aliening impressionable youth from family and friends and replacing them with cult sycophants whose initial welcome turns into a hell-hole of food and sleep deprivation as well as semi-slavery.
Initiating hordes of fanatic, ignorant disciples and using them as human pack mules to fool gullible truth-seekers with get-enlightened-quick fantasies?
Gang-related activities including harassment of and conspiracy to silence dissenters, whether by beatings, threats, or murder?[i]
Child abuse consisting of, but not limited to parental alienation, loss of childhood, rape and beatings, and abysmal educational quality.[ii]
Ridiculous, contrived belief system full of pseudo-scientific nonsense and vicious, bold-faced discrimination against women and minorities.
INTRODUCTION
If you think that any or all of these practices are
acceptable so long as the guru’s followers give out free food to the
poor[iv], WELCOME to
ISKCON!
Before you take out your checkbook or credit card, you
might appreciate some background information about the grinning cultists who
seem bent on convincing the public that they are “more Hindu than Hindus.”[v]
In the words of the group’s founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami: “although posing as great scholars, ascetics, householders and swamis, the so-called followers of the Hindu religion are all useless, dried-up branches of the Vedic religion.”
This essay will establish beyond a reasonable doubt that it is ISKCON, not
Hinduism, which misrepresents “Vedic religion.”
The proliferation of Indian gurus in the West and the rise
of the cults of the 1960’s and 1970’s surged due to the hippie culture’s
fascination with Eastern mysticism. The Beatles, for example, were initially
entranced by the late founder of Transcendental Meditation (TM), Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi (d. 2007), and out of them, George Harrison retained his interest
in Hinduism, but transferred it from TM to the Hare Krishna sect also known as
the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON).
Other practitioners of what Meera Nanda terms “neo-Hinduism”[vi]during the same period include Sathya Sai Baba and Sri Chinmoy, both of whom still have large groups of followers in
ANTI-HINDU SCAM ARTISTS
This year marks
the 50th anniversary of Bhaktivedanta Swami’s coming to New York City in
1966 and founding the International Society for
Krishna Consciousness. By registering his sect a religious
nonprofit, the swami now had the means to accept tax-free donations
and open temples as a means to proselytize to Westerners as
well as the nonresident Indian population. A.C. Bhaktivedanta
Swami was an unusually charismatic preacher in an age of numerous competitors.
This one-time Calcutta
businessman used his marketing acumen and keen sense of the spiritual vacuum
affecting Western youths in the hippie era to build in little more than a
decade a world-wide organization consisting of thousands of disciples and many
temples on a grand scale.
However, few of the Hindus who throng ISKCON temples
and support their programs know that the sect’s founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta
Swami, never considered the Hare Krishna movement to be Hindu at
all. The following are a number of statements Bhaktivedanta made in
reference to Hinduism:
The Krishna
consciousness movement has nothing to do with the Hindu religion or any system
of religion.... One should clearly understand that the Krishna
consciousness movement is not preaching the so-called Hindu religion."[vii]
Bhavan’s Journal. 28 June 1976.
We are not preaching Hindu
religion. While registering the association, I purposely kept this name,
'Krishna Consciousness,' neither Hindu religion nor Christian nor Buddhist
religion.
Lecture
on Bhagavad Gita, Mumbai. 1974.
During the years following their guru’s demise in 1977, the
disciples of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (many now gurus themselves), reversed his
position on Hinduism as they grew more and more dependent on the wealth of the
Hindu community both in India and abroad. Instead of denouncing Hinduism, they
used the affection the Hindu public tends to feel for the folklore of the
butter-stealing, witch-killing, and gopi-loving Krishna
and conflated it with the teachings of the philosopher-chariot driver of the Bhagavad Gita. The message was clear:
Gaudiya (Bengali) Vaishnavism, with its Hare Krishna mantra chanting and
world-wide presence, is what Hinduism
should be.
CROSS-DRESSING BENGALI BRAHMIN AS RADHA/KRISHNA COMBINED?
Magnifying his own role as a self-proclaimed “pure
devotee” in a lineage of Gaudiya (Bengali) Vaishnava gurus from Chaitanya
Mahaprabhu (1486-1584) to himself was Swami Bhaktivedanta’s chief public
relations strategy. The term “Bhakti Yoga” led people
to assume that the swami was popularizing just another
strand of Hinduism as his predecessors had done. In fact, he
intended to supplant them all. For Bhaktivedanta, this meant teaching his
followers that he was the latest and greatest guru in the Gaudiya Vaishnava
Sampradaya, which he claimed was established by Chaitanya himself and consisted
of "pure devotees."
His modus operandi was to initiate as many Americans and other Westerners as his disciples and send them out to open temples where he and his followers would spread Chaitanya’s worship of Radha Krishna by chanting the Hare Krishna mantra and dancing in front of opulently dressed murtis. Yes, superficially it appears to be based on the tiny Gaudiya Vaishnava sect, which worships the cowherd incarnation of Vishnu, Krishna, and claims that Caitanya Mahaprabhu, a 16th century Bengali proponent of Bhakti-Yoga, was an incarnation of Krishna and Radha combined. What sets the Hare Krishna movement apart at first glance is its aggressive marketing tactics and habit of actively seeking converts among non-Indians
Visitors were soon thronging to ISKCON temples to be dazzled
by the sheer spectacle of so many gorgeously dressed and decorated murtis of
Radha and Krishna , along with the Jagganath
idols of Puri and a grouping of five dhoti-clad men whom the devotees explained
were murtis of the Bengali saint Chaitanya and his associates. Accustomed as
they are to the profusion of murtis such as Durga, Shiva, Vishnu, and Hanuman
in Hindu temples, few visitors to the Hare Krishna temples would have realized
that Chaitanya, whose devotion to the Radha-Krishna legends and popularization
of congregational chanting (“kirtan”) is undeniable, was also the
cross-dressing leader of a cabal of Bengali Brahmins with similar practices and
tendencies. If not for the reverence that Hindu culture still holds for
high-born Brahmins, there is little chance of the Gaudiya Vaishnava contention
that Chaitanya was the incarnation of Radha and Krishna
together not having been greeted with laughter and derision as it is a transparent
denial of his behavior as a gopi-bhava afflicted transvestite.[viii]
INSULTS TO RAMAKRISHNA PARAMHAMSA & SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
Furthermore, what would Indian political
luminaries—the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi comes to mi nd-- if they
knew how the founder of the Hare Krishna movement derided the achievements of
the Hindu saints who traveled to the West many years before he set foot in New
York in 1966. His hostile and ill-informed comments
about Ramakrishna Paramhamsa and Swami Vivekananda Swami are
prime examples of Bhaktivedanta’s predilection to trash the reputation of the
predecessors who cleared the way for him. For example, during one of his
“Morning Walks” (08/01/1976), he claimed that the Ramakrishna Mission was
“simply bogus propaganda” and “they picked up two American ladies, that’s all.”
A worse combination of envy and breath-taking ignorance is hard to imagine. Perhaps
Bhaktivedanta Swami might have benefitted from reading the words of Dayananda
Saraswati, who in the Ten Principles of
the Arya Samaj wrote that “all actions should be performed with the prime
objective of benefitting mankind.” As for his charge that Vivekananda “picked
up two American ladies,” Bhaktivedanta could have learned from his example. In
this regard, it is well-known that the initiates of the Ramakrishna Mission are
all celibates, sanyasins as well women. Vivekananda Swami regarded celibacy
highly and his example continues to inspire millions of Indians dedicated to a
morally and militarily strong India ,
including Narendra Modi himself.
FRAUD AND FALSE PROMISES: MAKING "THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS"
Bhaktivedanta Swami, on the other hand, valued quantity far over quality in the choice of his disciples and thus quickly accepted as his disciples young men and women who knew next to nothing about his philosophy or personal history. These impressionable youths were simply entranced by the exoticism of Eastern religions that was one of the many escapist fantasies popular during the hippie era of the 60’s and 70’s. That he abused their trust and held them in low esteem was apparent from the beginning.
I remember attending initiation ceremonies where mentally-ill individuals
scarcely able to control themselves were initiated as disciples and was
appalled at how quickly the dealings between men and women deteriorated due to
the poisonous effects of our guru’s absurd and vacuous beliefs about the inferiority
of women.
The hastily patched together arranged marriages the swami recommended soon began to fail miserably and the children born of these hellish relationships were taken away after a few years and dumped in gurukulas where their sufferings and abuse left many scarred for life.[ix] After he died in 1977, he left eleven of his disciples to manage ISKCON and initiate disciples on his behalf (a sure sign that he regarded those he so carefully trained as unfit to act as gurus). In short order, they and others sprang to action to take his place and all hell broke lose, with more mayhem and criminality than I can possibly treat in this essay.
Suffice to say, fraud reared its ugly head and infected the Hare Krishna movement from the schools (“gurukulas”), the abuse of government-provided welfare benefits to provide for housing, food, and medical care the cult would not provide, and a highly scripted method of “distributing books” which was nothing more than method to part fools from their cash. These books the ISKCON zombies peddled were advertised as the swami’s translations of puranic literature such as the Bhagavad Gita and Bhagwat Purana (“Srimad Bhagavatam”), but were in fact pastiches of plagiarized translations of other editions as well as the efforts of a few of his own disciples who self-taught themselves rudimentary Sanskrit.
Before long it
became obvious that formal fund-raising techniques had to be employed and the
main target, as I mentioned near the beginning of this essay, was and is the educated
and prosperous Hindu community in India and abroad. However, this
pattern of what I call “guru-faking” was not limited to ISKCON and has
continued to grow, adapting itself to different conditions while the followers
of these gurus have begun to appear more like nascent terrorists than the naïve
thrill-seekers of my own generation.
[i] http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/30/us/religious-leader-convicted-of-us-charges.html.
[ii] http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/tortured-souls-6394890.
Also see: http://www.icsahome.com/articles/authoritarian-culture-and-child-abuse-in-iskcon.
For a refutation of the idea that child abuse has
ceased in modern-day ISKCON gurukulas, see:
[iii] http://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2011/08/17/local-hare-krishna-group-will-reconsider-its-aggressive-party-patrol-tactics/.
For a recent decision on ISKCON’s well-known harassment of travelers at
airports, see: http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/08/20/12-56621.pdf.
For a useful list from the 1980’s to 1999, see: http://www.icsahome.com/articles/iskcon-in-the-news-cult-observer-1984-1999.
[iv] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2763798/Up-35-students-hospitalised-Bangalore-DEAD-LIZARD-mid-day-meals-causes-food-poisoning.html.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/it-was-not-the-dead-lizard/article6439198.ece. See also: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/64-students-fall-sick-after-consuming-mid-day-meal-in-up.
Akshaya Patra is run by the ISKCON Bangalore faction of ISKCON, a dissident
group that follows the Ritvik policy of initiating disciples on behalf of the
founder of the Hare Krishna movement, who died in 1977. This food relief
program dwarfs the ISKCON Food Relief program headquartered and run by their
enemies from Mumbai. Regarding ISKCON
Food Relief, see: http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report-iskcon-to-face-inquiry-into-food-poisoning-vinod-tawde-2189331.
[v] The issue of whether the ISKCON sect can be considered
Hindu was decisively answered in the negative by its founder/acharya A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. For a useful
summary of the supporting documentation, see the Hinduism Today Magazine article entitled, “Can it be that the Hare
Krishnas are not Hindu”? http://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=4499.
[vi] Nanda, Meera. “Postmodernism, Hindu Nationalism, and ‘Vedic
Science’.” http://frontlineonnet.com/fl2026/stories/20040102000607800.htm.
[vii] The
Science of Self-Realization. 1977 Chapter three.
[viii] See
Sri Caitanya Mangala, 2.9 and the numerous description in the Caitanya
Caritamrta (2.15-16; 2.18 112-119 and 203-208. Sri Caitanya’s associates
appearing on his sides in the temple murtis are Advaita, Srinivasa, Nityananda
Rama, and Gadadhara Pandit, each of whom Caitanya regarded as incarnations of
various members of the Radha Krishna and gopi legends.
[ix] Please
see my essays on this subject: https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com/2016/01/monsters-and-marriage-iskcons-legacy-of.html,
