Letter from Temple Presidents of ISKCON-Bangalore Group to GBC of ISKCON and Bureau of ISKCON-Mumbai

To The GBC of ISKCON and Bureau of ISKCON-Mumbai Dear Maharajas and Prabhus, Please accept our humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

We are very grateful to you for your clear response in your joint letter dated March 9th, 2013. It is unfortunate that for you, Srila Prabhupada’s system of initiation as outlined in the July 9th, 1977 written directive, is a barrier for an out-of-court settlement. This is in spite of our offering of the ownership/control of all the properties of our group temples in India, in return for your leaving intact our present system of initiations, as per Srila Prabhupada’s July 9th, directive, and allowing it to be practised and preached in our temples.

While recognizing our concerns of minimization of Srila Prabhupada’s position in ISKCON, it is unfortunate that you are not embracing the straight forward solution of declaring all initiating gurus to be initiating on behalf of Srila Prabhupada. This alone ensures that His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada will spiritually rule the heart of every devotee in ISKCON. This is a one stroke solution to the admittedly major problems that ISKCON is facing on this front today: parallel and conflicting lines of authorities, fall down of gurus, internal guru-centered factions within ISKCON, lack of financial accountability of gurus due to the unavoidable tradition of guru- dakshina, etc.

Yet, we see your reluctance to accept the simple and straight forward solution, provided by Srila Prabhupada.

We appreciate the efforts and measures being taken to keep Srila Prabhupada in the preeminent position in ISKCON. Now there are many of you, who are Srila Prabhupada’s pre- 1977 disciples in the GBC and Bureau, with a concern to keep Srila Prabhupada in his preeminent position in ISKCON. But, after a few generations of gurus who are externally and visibly successful, with their large number of disciples, there will be no impetus to attempt to maintain Srila Prabhupada’s preeminent position. This is because their external and noticeable “apparent success in preaching”, could blind the gurus and their disciples, from recognizing the

influence that Srila Prabhupada will continue to play in the hearts of devotees! We shudder at this thought. Whereas, in the alternative that we have been practising in our group of temples, through the July 9th system of initiation, Srila Prabhupada will inescapably shine, not only in the institution, but also in the heart of every ISKCON devotee.

We hoped that we could work peacefully together as a single organization even though we may differ in our understandings of Srila Prabhupada’s instructions. When we have assured you of a mutual code of conduct, which takes care of peaceful coexistence, your response is really surprising. We believe that if Srila Prabhupada were to take a decision in this matter, where hundreds of his devotees have implicit faith in him, as their spiritual master, deliverer, giver of transcendental knowledge and bestower of Krishna prema – which we sing everyday as part of the daily program established by Srila Prabhupada (what an irony, we can sing everyday but not allowed to believe!) – he would never have responded with a demand that we give up such faith in him. Your act of rejection will definitely not be seen in the spirit of co-operation. Srila Prabhupada said, “Of course, disagreements may be there, but there should not be dissension” (Letter to Umapati, May 30th, 1968). It’s agonizing, that our sincere efforts to prevent dissension, while agreeing to disagree, have been rejected.

Even though a few among you, may not want us to be part of the larger ISKCON, nevertheless, for the rest of the world, Srila Prabhupada has blessed us with ISKCON-Bangalore Society. We at least hope, that you will see our group as creating strong followers for Srila Prabhupada, our beloved Founder-Acharya and diksha guru, and desist from disturbing our preaching activities as is being done since the last decade.

We also wish to reiterate that all of us, without exception, loathe to become “regular gurus” without direct, explicit and institutional authorization by Srila Prabhupada. This is because Srila Prabhupada has explicitly stated in the Srimad Bhagavata purport: “One should take initiation from a bona fide spiritual master coming in the disciplic succession, who is authorized by his predecessor spiritual master. This is called diksha-vidhana.” (SB 4.8.54 purport). We humbly request you to desist from offering such enticements to us, as nothing could be farther from our desires than this.

The GBC – Bureau having decided to not to take our organization, with our faith, under the umbrella of the GBC – Bureau, let us at least work towards “live and let live” as two separate groups and continue to expand and serve Srila Prabhupada’s mission. In the past, certain destructive acts of your representatives at Bangalore, has been disowned by you as an organization, but these individuals continue unabated with their below the belt, avaishnava strikes against our group in public. Although you may disown such acts, in the eyes of the public, they are definitely attributable to ISKCON-Mumbai, which only brings about disrepute to GBC – Bureau and ISKCON as a whole.

Let this mediation exercise at least bear the fruit of peaceful co-existence as two different groups, spreading their own missionary works. In this direction, we could set up an on-going mechanism of dispute resolution between the two groups, with the help of a mutually accepted ombudsman. When we have decided to part ways keeping our differences intact, let us both think creatively how to produce more preaching results in terms of more temples, devotees, books etc., for Srila Prabhupada’s larger mission of spreading the Krishna Consciousness

Movement throughout the world.

Thanking you, Your humble servants, sd/- Institutional directive on initiation approved by Srila Prabhupada dated July 9th, 1977