SHAM MARRIAGES AND
“SPIRITUAL” ADVANCEMENT
Now I will show how A. C.
Bhaktivedanta Swami used his personal experience to teach his disciples about
his notion of the “Vedic” or traditional Indian view of marriage (this is a direct quotation):
- So I think I have spoken about my own life. You know that I was a
married man. So after being married, I did not like my wife. (laughter) . . .So I was preparing for
next marriage. . . . So my father, he was a saintly person. So he called me one
day and said, "My dear boy, you are trying to marry again. I request you
don't do that. You do not like your wife. That is a great fortune for
you." (laughter) So I gave up that idea of marrying. Yes. So now I am
realizing my father's blessing, yes, that if I would have been too much
attached to my wife, then I could not have come to this position. That's a
fact. So by ethical point of view, from spiritual point of view, to become too
much attached to wife is an impediment for spiritual advancement.
Lecture on Srimad-Bhagavatam
1.3.17, Los Angeles, 22 September, 1972.
This advice from the swami’s
father, far from being a “blessing,” condemned his son and daughter-in-law to a
loveless cohabitation that could have hardly aided the “spiritual advancement”
of either party. Worse, the swami’s open admission that he never liked his wife
proved in his own experience that Vedic marriage as he understood it is a
farce. As Milton put it, the notion of remaining married under such circumstances, is to “grind
in the mill of an undelighted and servile copulation.”[1] The swami’s making an example of his arranged marriage to an 11-year old girl he never even liked (despite her virtuous behavior), speaks volumes about his lack of character in general and of human dignity in particular.
BLAMING THE VICTIMS: LUST AND "THE WEAKER SEX"
You might now ask why ISKCON
marriages took place at all if the swami had such negative views of the
institution from a religious viewpoint. The next quotation and the one
following it will provide an answer:
- But if
there is sex desire, how to control it? Women are normally very lusty, more
lusty than men, and they are weaker sex, it is difficult for them to make
spiritual advancement without the help of husband. For so many reasons, our
women must have husband. That's all right, but if once they have got a husband
he goes away so quickly, that will not be very much happy for them. Letter to
Madhukara, 4 January 1973 .
- Generally,
separation between husband and wife is due to womanly behavior; divorce takes
place due to womanly weakness. The best course for a woman is to abide by the
orders of her husband
Srimad Bhagavatam, 4.4.3 purport
These pronouncements are typical of the
unsubstantiated, ignorant drivel that the swami used to justify ISKCON’s
barbaric treatment of women. Never at any time did he present one iota of
evidence to support this and other blatantly sexist assertions; instead, he
used terms such as “normally” and “generally” to give the impression that they
are common knowledge. All of these nonsensical claims about the lust and
weakness of women are transparent excuses crafted by cowardly men to justify
their sexual abuse and battering of females of all ages.
Furthermore, what does a sham marriage to a
buffoon so stupid as to believe such nonsense about his would-be wife do to
advance her spiritually? I personally witnessed the agony of both partners when
the swami performed the arranged “marriage” of two sincere devotees in the
first ISKCON temple in New York City back in
1968, all for the purpose of their starting a temple in Boston.
The misery and humiliation on their faces was unmistakable.
As was soon
clear, the only reason the swami advocated marriages between his American
disciples--most of whom were strangers to each other--was to use them to open
new temples. Soon, after it became clear that sanyasis were better suited to
this task, he just as easily gave the couples a “spiritual divorce,” leaving a
shaven-headed “widow” with one or two white saris toiling in a temple or hoodwinking
the public in the street. This fact alone makes his comment about the distress
of the wife when her husband “goes away so quickly” so ironic and cruel.
FROM “GRIHASTA” TO “SANNYASI”: ROBOTS FOR KRISHNA
Moreover, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami did not hesitate
to offer the same advice he alleged his father gave to him to a number of
his senior disciples to justify their separation from their wives for the
express purpose of enhancing his preaching aims and in one case, urging one of
his Indian disciples to become a sanyasi like himself. The following is an excerpt from the letter dated 11 May 1972 he sent to the ISKCON guru now known as Gopal Krishna Goswami:
- Your wife has proven turbulent, that is the grace of Krishna. I may inform you in this connection about my
family life. Actually, I never liked my wife. I was going to marry another, but
my father saved me from the danger and he told me that you do not like your
wife, that is the grace of Krishna. So don't be worried about your wife. If she wants to re-marry, let her do so, and you'll be free and I shall give you Sannyas [the renounced order] and you will be preaching freely.
Please note: I was the “wife” the swami is referring to here and at the time I was a few weeks pregnant. It is painful even now—40 years later!—to write about my reaction to reading it: I
was devotee since age 14 and had passed my teenage years tending my deities at
home (while going to high school) and living for the weekends when I would go
to the temple. By all accounts, I was a very sincere and stalwart devotee. In fact, although I was repulsed by the very sight of Gopal Krishna and actually fled to the protection of my sister at the St. Louis temple, I was flown to Boston to marry him under the mistaken notion
that the swami had ordered me to do so.
|
|
REPULSIVE PEST GOPAL KRISHNA CIVIL “MARRIAGE” WITH
INNOCENT 17 YEAR OLD MINOR CHILD
DATED 4 JULY 1970 |
I remember a powerful chill passing through my body as I read above letter, because I realized that Gopal Krishna had the temerity to write to our guru to defame me, all the while using me to satisfy his lust. However, what cut me most of all was the swami’s casual dismissal of
me, without even as much as asking me for my side of the story. For all of my
loyalty and courage in his service, I was nothing to him. At the time, I simply
had no inkling of how low he regarded women (as I discuss below). Had I known,
I would have never wasted a precious moment of my life serving a foreigner who
believed women are nine times as lustful as men and half as intelligent.
It is interesting to note that the swami never speaks of love between husbands and wives; instead, he uses the binary terms of “attachment” and “detachment” as if the emotions of family members are as meaningful as the interactions of caged lab animals. How irrational he sounds, despite the claims that his loveless family life resulted in his “complete liberation from worldly attachment.” In truth, a miserable family life simply tends to perpetuate itself: the wife or husband might seek affection elsewhere (as the swami admitted in his own case) and the children often become abusers or violent sociopaths in their grief at their unremitting feelings of loss.
BRAINS AND BIGOTRY: EDUCATION, ISKCON-STYLE
- To
understand Brahman is not the business of tiny brain. Alpha-medhasan. There are
two Sanskrit words, alpa-medhasa and sumedhasa. Alpa-medhasa means having
little brain substance. Physiologically, within the brain there are brain
substance. It is found that the brain substance in man is found up to 64 ounce.
They are very highly intellectual persons. And in woman the brain substance is
not found more than 34 ounce. You’ll find, therefore, that there is no very
great scientist, mathematician, philosopher, among women. You’ll never find
because their brain substance cannot go.
Lecture on Bhagavad
Gita Hawaii,
3 February, 1975
It is obvious that there is no substance to the
swami’s laughable claims about the “little brain substance” of women compared
to that of men. His saying that “it is found” or “is not found” when dealing
with matters concerning human physiology is an attempt to dupe the gullible
into believing that some sort of expert is the source of this manifest rubbish.
However, no evidence is offered, simply pronouncements that reflect nothing
more than self-serving prejudice. Unfortunately for bigots everywhere,
arguments that fail the test of rational analysis are easily defeated by simply
pointing out their logical fallacies. In this case, the first is a hare-brained
leap of logic: how does the claim that men “64 ounce” of “brain substance” lead
to the conclusion that “they are very highly intellectual persons”? This is a
patently nonsensical claim, of course. Brain size is always relative to the
body weight of the species in question and even then it is no predictor of general intelligence.
If this were not the case, the sperm whale, which has the largest brain in the
animal kingdom (averaging 7,800 grams to the 1,300-1,400 of a human) would hold
the world in thrall and subjugate even the most fanatical saffron-wearing
“saints.”
Readers at this point might wonder at the sheer
idiocy of anyone in the modern age claiming that “there is not very great
scientist, mathematician, philosopher, among women.” It is not unusual,
however, for religious fanatics to have their heads so far in the clouds that
they forget that they are actually lodged securely in their nether regions.
Whenever I hear such evil claims as the swami’s, I feel less sorry for their
ignorance than for the tremendous harm these ideas have done to women since
time immemorial. It is bittersweet to note that while 57% of college students
in the U.S.are women,
little girls going to school in Afghanistan
risk their lives every day. It is also
impossible to ignore the achievements of modern Indian women in every sphere
and forget that, as BBC News reported last year, up to eight million girls were
selectively destroyed in India
in the past decade (using modern ultrasound and abortion) simply because
families prefer boys.
To add insult to injury, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
also advocated denying the children of his disciples’ arranged “marriages” the
opportunity to develop whatever intellect they possessed:
- There is no question of academic education for either boys or
girls--simply a little mathematics and being able to read and write well,
that's all, no universities. Letter
to Chaya Dasi: 16 Feb. 1972.
It follows that the ISKCON
gurukulas where these children were sent at the ages of four or five had no need to employ qualified teachers and, indeed, it
soon became apparent that many of these roles were occupied by sexual deviants
and child abusers of every description. The parents of these children were
allowed to see them once a year during “parents weekend,” otherwise they
generally lived separately in the ashrams at or near the temple, spending their
days on “sankirtan,” which at the time (and to the present) was nothing more
than an organized scheme to dupe the public on the streets and in airports to
purchase one of the swami’s books. If that was a barren life for the parents,
it was much worse for the children. In essence, they missed their childhoods
entirely.
To get a more comprehensive picture of the abuse these innocents
suffered, I refer the reader to the
many accounts of abuse contributed by the former gurukula students themselves,
most of which came to light when many of them filed a
lawsuit in 2001 against the Hare Krishna movement. Typically enough, after
spending many millions defending themselves against the lawsuit, the ISKCON
movement filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the express purpose of avoiding making
settlements that would be even remotely decent. Instead, the former students
were given meager financial compensation along with a lame apology from the
ISKCON GBC (Governing Board Commission). Not one of the perpetrators has ever
been arrested.
CHILD ABUSE AND BOOK SCAMS: THE
SWAMI’S “VAISHNAVA SOCIETY”
Now I want to address for once and
for all the excuses the ISKCON management has proffered to defend their guru
against any claims of responsibility for the gurukula abuse. I have already
treated the low opinions the swami held of women and his habit of arranging
marriages between his disciples for the purpose of spreading his warped version
of Vaishnava Hinduism. How these practices led to the degrading treatment of
children has always been side-stepped, often by fervent advocates of the swami
who allege that the worst of it occurred after his death in 1977.
An entire
industry consisting of accusations and counter-accusations consumes many senior
devotees (particularly in India), all of which derives from the notion that the
original executors of A.C. Bhaktivedanta both colluded in poisoning him and then
took on the mantle of guruship for themselves. There is even a very vocal
faction that believes that the new adherents can take initiation from the
swami, albeit in spirit. This “ritvik” controversy has continued unabated for years
while the now largely Indian public attending and supporting these often
extremely lavish temples are ignorant of the policies and history of a cult
that in reality is far removed from Hinduism. The following quotation twists
the lid off the stinking jar of excuses his followers continue to offer to
defend him against the torture so many of the gurukula children endured:
- Any
householder devotee who is working full-time (with his wife) as a sankirtana
book distributer, of temple managerial duties, artist, cook, etc. shall be
provided food, shelter, and other bare minimumnecessities by the temple itself.They should not cook their own meals separate from the temple
meals. If they have children, then some minimal allowance may be given
according to the number of children. If they want anything extra or over and
above what the temple president sees as absolute necessity, then they should
work outside—the temple cannot pay for anything beyond the bare necessities. Letter to Kirtiraja Das, Bombay, 12 Jan, 1975
“Bare necessities” is
the key term here: in practice, it meant spicy, ill-prepared food unfit for
children, squalor typified by no furniture or even proper bedding—sleeping bags
without pillows were the norm—and a regimen of deity worship that began at 4:30
in the morning after a shower so frigid that some gurukula students reported
being cut by shards of ice. The swami’s
obsession with selling his books came at a very high price for everyone, but
the already fragile marriages and the hapless children they produced suffered
worst of all.Readers unfamiliar with
the culture of the ISKCON movement A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami developed are
probably in shock by now and understandably so. It is important to note that
the swami had numerous children in the marriage I have touched upon earlier in
this essay and so was undoubtedly aware of the responsibilities of a father and
husband. Many of these are financial in nature and others grow from the love
and security both parents should naturally provide for each other and their
children. However, in his rush to market his published works to the public in
the West, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami used his disciples as little more than
robots, insisting that the main business of his sect was “sankirtan,” which
meant hitting the streets to dupe the gullible into purchasing a book or
pamphlet that was usually promptly tossed in the nearest trash can.
He wanted
absolutely nothing to do with the practical issues arising from families that
were ripped apart as easily as they were formed. Extreme poverty ensued, with
ISKCON parents forced to use public assistance of various kinds (medical, food
assistance, etc.), with much of it subject to confiscation by temple
authorities. The children in the few years they spent with their parents
(before being shipped off to abuse and privation at the gurukulas in the West
and in India), had few if any toys and either lived with their mothers in the brahmacharini ashram or in a shared
apartment where two or three families were crammed in unfurnished rooms.
Actions provoke
reactions and when the family is used to promote ideas without consideration
for the parties involved, the consequences can be severe indeed. A.C.
Bhaktivedanta Swami, who we affectionately called “Srila Prabhupada,” had an
ambitious plan to spread his version of Bengali Vaishnavism and carefully
constructed an image of himself as a “pure devotee” whose edicts and beliefs
were divine in origin and therefore not subject to challenge of any kind. His
ideas about women and the roles they should occupy in the Hare Krishna movement
were, as I have amply demonstrated, products of an irrational, dark-age mindset
that he persistently tried to present as both Vedic in origin and
scientifically valid. In other words, he was an ignorant bigot bent on using
his hypnotic chanting and prasadam feasts to lure the inquisitive minds of the
West into following a social model that is at root nothing more than an assault
on reason and, for believers in the Divine, an insult to the Creator who so
obviously endowed both men and women with unparalleled reasoning capabilities.
What really amazes me is why his male followers—many of whom were
college-educated—never confronted him about these and other blatantly absurd
claims. That they fell under the spell of the swami’s self-imposed cult of
personality is clear and that he inflated their egos by filling their heads
with notions about the mental, moral, and physical superiority of men is just
as obvious. In the final analysis, however, the passive-aggressive attitudes of
the men in ISKCON perpetuated a system of abuse that they knew was rotten at
the core.
Today, the ISKCON
schools serve a primarily Indian population and therefore most use a standard
educational scheme, all the while hiding their preposterous so-called Vedic
notion of the universe from the parents of these students. It would be
interesting for these sincere Hindus to investigate the cult they are
supporting so generously and, when they do so, I guarantee all my readers that
they will wonder at the brass statute of the founder of the ISKCON movement on
the altar of the temple where they worship and start thinking about shifting
their donations to another more worthy cause.
The Doctrine and Discipline
of Divorce,” in The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Ernest
Sirluck (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 11:258.
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13264301. "India’s Unwanted Girls.”
For a
representative example, see:
http://www.rickross.com/reference/krishna/krishna41.html.
http://www.iskcontimes.com/brief-history-of-guru-hoax-in-iskcon for a
representative discussion.
