Western perceptions of India & how they affect bhakti outreach, The Monk’s Podcast 144, Yogesvara Prabhu

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you very much for joining again for the Monks Podcast. Our discussions have been very stimulating and quite appreciated by thoughtful devotees. So I thought today we could discuss a topic of how we as a movement, ISKCON as a movement, we could say Krishna Consciousness started from India, it’s from India, but now it’s spread all over the world.
Prabhupada started in America. And we can say that presently, we are not very, certainly not as strong in America as we were in Prabhupada’s times. And there is an increasing cultural distance that is seeming to be there between India and the West.
So I thought we could talk about Western perceptions of India, how they have been historically and then how they were in Prabhupada’s times, how they have changed now, and how that affects people’s receptivity towards Indian spirituality. An important subject. I’m glad you thought to bring that one up.
Thank you. So if we start from the past, it seems, say, India was colonized by the British and initially in the 17th, 18th centuries or 18th, 19th centuries, early 19th centuries, there’s not that much interaction between India and, say, America as there was between India and the India and UK or Europe primarily. So before we go into the specifics of perception, so when we see the West, traditionally, you would say, probably in the in Bhakti Saanswetakar’s times, West might have meant UK, going abroad itself might have meant UK or Europe, Prabhupada chose to go to America.
And now West often refers to a broad generic worldview. So maybe you could explain what we mean by the West and why the West is so influential or why Western perceptions matter so much. I like what Gandhi used to say when people asked him, what did he think about Western civilization? He said, oh, it was a good idea.
Last time also he had quoted this. So I’m sure Gandhi was being sarcastic when he said it was a good idea. Of course.
But you know, the West has failed miserably to live up to its own promise. Unfortunately, it’s been very good at self-promotion. You know, what people call the West is generally Hollywood.
It’s what they know in the movies. It’s what they know from the kind of public perception, the popular perception of the West. It’s a cliché.
When you say the West, you know, as opposed to the East, historically, as you said, India was an enslaved nation, you know, British weren’t the first. You go back to the Turks, you go back to the Mughals, you know, there were many different foreign peoples who came into India looking to exploit. The wealth, the riches in those days, 15th, 16th centuries, spices were more valuable than gold.
So there was this perception of let’s get into India and I mean, I’m researching, I’m trying to write a biography of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. There’s one story about around 1500 Vasco da Gama arrived in India from Portugal. Having been sent by the king with the mission of uniting the Christians of India, there was a Christian community in India at that time.
And creating a united front and defeating Islam. The Gama arrives in Calcutta, and the first thing he does is he sees a temple, a Vishnu temple, and he thinks, oh, I found the Christians, this big church here. He goes inside, he sees all the deities and he says, oh, these are strange statues of the Christian saints.
And then he hears there’s a kirtan going on, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, he’s like, oh, they’re chanting Hail Mary, Hail Christ. So he was very happy that he had discovered the Christians. Anyway, the point is, for a long time, India was subjugated.
And because Indian culture is a respectful culture, hospitality is an important quality. Raised in a brahminical culture, you’re taught to receive a guest as good as God. So people were received and they were British in particular because they had a certain kind of classy attitude.
They were welcomed. And what people understood for many hundreds of years, the impression that people had in the West was whatever they had learned from Christian, British missionaries and administrators and scholars who came and essentially gave a very slanted perspective on Indian culture. So the perception of India up until the mid-1960s, I would say, going back to the East India Company, you know, the 1600s, was of a backward nation where people worshipped idols.
Anyway, we don’t need to get into all the details. The point is that there was this very slanted picture drawn by the historians, by the people coming into India. They were called the Orientalists at one time.
Their agenda was at a certain point to convert the, quote unquote, Hindu heathens to Christianity. And there was a lot of propaganda made against deity worship. In fact, of all the deities that the British found objectionable, the most objectionable was Krishna.
Because Krishna was the one deity who behaved in an illicit manner, dancing with these wives of other people and so on. At least the other gods, they performed some administrative function, so they were somewhat quasi respectable. And even the Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita was respectable because he was a teacher and he was a warrior and so on.
So the British made a distinction, not the British, but those administrators who chose to write and comment on what they perceived a, quote unquote, Hindu culture. They separated the Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita from the Krishna of the Bhagavad Purana. Oh, it’s from that time.
Krishna of the Gita. I had read about this, I had read about the separation, that they think of Krishna as a syncretic figure, but it started at that time. So I didn’t know that.
I thought, OK, yeah, it came primarily from the British who said this Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita, he’s teaching some good lessons for life, you know, about respect for duty and so on. This other Krishna, he’s a very bad role model, especially for young people. How can we promote someone, you know, a village deity who dances with women in the moonlight? This is immoral behavior.
And so there was this propaganda against Bhakti. Well, that’s where you and I are going. We’re going to how have perceptions of India in the West influenced the reception of Bhakti in the West? That’s true.
So the first thing the first thing to understand is most people’s understanding up until the mid 60s, I’ll explain why the mid 1960s in a minute. But up until that time, the impression that people had was more or less whatever reports had been brought back by the British from India. And they were the most, you know.
Irresponsible, insulting. Inaccurate. Condemnation of Hinduism that you can imagine.
Yeah, the British were even the first ones to invent the word Hindu. I mean, that’s Hindu was not a religion. And so the British began taking census studies in the 1600s.
Yeah. When the British came in, you know, after Aurangzeb’s death, more or less the Mughal period comes to an end, the British see this as an opening to make India a colony of of England. And so the first thing they do is they start taking a census.
And in the British census, they obligated people to say, are you Muslim or Hindu? Otherwise, there was no such thing as Hindu. So, I mean, everything that we know about the nomenclature might not be there. But Aurangzeb had this Jaziya tax, which he imposed specifically on people who are not Muslims.
I don’t know what he called them because he must have called them something. And they call them the Sindhus, people from on the other side of the Sindh river. They were the Sindhus.
And then because they pronounced their S’s like H’s, the Sindhus became the Hindus. Yeah. So, you know, I think that the idea whether Hinduism is a construct or a reality that’s full of volatile topic because sometimes that idea that Hinduism is a construct is used to deny that there’s any such thing as Hinduism at all.
And that kind of reductionism also alarms and anger some followers of the Vedas. I think the point you’re making is that things have been misrepresented. That’s it.
That’s it. And because, you know, we’re having an abbreviated discussion about because if we could have this discussion for a whole semester, you know, of university study. So, we’re packing a lot of things and it’s going to be somewhat inaccurate because we’re making it so abbreviated.
Yes. Just to add one more point. But the point generally being.
So, add one more point. I mean, I’d also heard about this, the Bhakti, the temple worship and the Bhakti religions were derided. They were mocked and they were considered like they had even a intellectual interpretation by which they said that these are all recent deviations.
And somehow they seem to say that the Advaitic interpretation. Was like the original, original religion. So, Max Muller and some other Paul Dussen and all of them, they did that.
So, it was not only devotion was downplayed or derided, but you can say almost the opposite of devotion was also highlighted. Exactly. It was made to seem as if that is the real Hinduism or real Vedic teaching or Vedantic teaching, whatever.
Now, you’re raising an important point. Why was this the case? Well, one reason was that what the British and other outsiders coming into India were responding to was not the actual Bhakti religion at all. They were responding to the Sahaja misappropriations.
So, when you read some of the quotes from the missionaries and others about, you know, this embarrassing, immoral behavior, they’re not responding to, you know, Chaitanya Bhakti. They’re responding to the Auls, Bauls, Prakriti Sahaja, all of the different deviant groups who arose, there were some before Mahaprabhu, but most of them came after Mahaprabhu passed away. And they were using the Radha-Krishna paradigm as a pretext for wanton sexual behavior.
That, in essence, they were right to object to it. You know, they were correct in objecting to what they perceived of Bhakti culture, because it was abominable. It was immoral.
It was licentious, but it was not the real Bhakti culture. So, that’s one reason why there was this aversion to devotional practices. The other is that Shankara had become so powerful in India.
Why? Well, one reason is that what he was promulgating was very attractive. You know, namely that when you come to the fulfillment of your yoga, when you come to the perfection of your meditation, your material ego dissolves and you become, you know, one with everything. This world is an illusion.
We’re all God. We all become God. Okay, that’s nice.
I’ll go for that. You know, Bhakti required austerities. Bhakti required that you control those material impulses.
You control that ego of wanting to become God and become servant of God. So, you know, that’s, I mean, there are many different reasons why the impression in the West of India has been so upside down. Another reason is the first exponents of what we’re calling Hindu culture to come to America were South Indian yogis who were also putting down the Bhakti tradition as the vestige of some undeveloped period in India’s history.
You made mention of this a moment ago, that the real tradition is the Vedantic. Dvaita Vedanta, that’s the real thing. You read S. Radhakrishnan, first vice president of India, in his commentary on Bhagavad Gita, I think it’s ninth chapter, where Krishna says, yeah, come to me, surrender unto me, and he says, it’s not Krishna, you know, it’s to the unborn speaking through Krishna that we have to give ourselves up utterly.
So, you know, that’s not Bhagavad Gita, that’s, you know, his misinterpretation. But when Vivekananda spoke in Chicago, the World’s Fair, 1896, I think. 1893, I think, in Chicago.
Yeah, he said, it was condemning with feigned praise. He told the audience, don’t put down these people in my country for worshipping idols. It is the attempt by inferior minds, lesser intellects, to grasp very high, complex truths.
He’s saying, be patient with them. When they come up and see the light, they’ll recognize that actually we all worship the one unborn, non-manifest, supreme being. So he was attempting to win over the Christians by stripping away the parts of Hindu culture that they found objectionable.
All right, you don’t like Krishna? OK, let’s get rid of Krishna. You don’t like deities? OK, that’s just for the for the beginners. No, you don’t need to get upset about it.
The higher stages for people like you and me, we understand it’s all the one. So there’s a lot of reasons why. So it’s interesting, like you talk about two distinct factors.
So Western perceptions of India was shaped by Westerners looking at India in a particular way and also by Indians presenting India in a particular way. That’s it. Exactly.
So it’s exactly both sides. Both sides. OK.
But now just now, I want to introduce a little bit, it just seems still there was some kind of almost romantic or appreciative attraction toward Krishna, toward India among quite a few thinkers, especially in America, Emerson and Thoreau, they seem to appreciate the Bhagavad Gita. So how did that happen or was that? Yeah. Well, you’re referring to the transcendentalists.
Yes. Who were most active up until about the time of the Civil War in the United States in the 1860s. By the time the Civil War was over, most of the transcendentalists were dead and their influence was just as romantic poets and courses for high school of American history.
They didn’t have a very lasting effect, but that was a romantic reaction to the kind of industrializing that was going on in America by the mid-1800s was building railroads, constructing cities, you know, westward ho, you know, build your wealth, you know, get land, you know, become prosperous. You know, it’s the Protestant ethic you mentioned. I think you mentioned Max Weber a little while ago.
Yeah. If you read, yeah, you read him. Hell, you know, the Protestant ethic was, you know, God wants you to become rich sort of thing.
So there was that reaction against that by the transcendentalists, you know, Walden Pond and so on, this very idealized utopian view of what human life can be. But for the most part, that’s at least today you won’t find, you know, that idealism has kind of all dissipated. And we’re back to just, you know, wanting to earn money.
So by the way, it’s always been there, something a little bit, a little appreciation has always been. When you’re using the word idealism, are you referring to the philosophy that there is only that philosophy is also that only ideas are only something beyond matter is the ultimate reality or using idealism in the sense that some noble ideals that people were trying to aspire for. But those ideals, but that aspiration, that aspiration toward that ideals are way in the way.
It did. You know, there were many utopian movements in America, not just the transcendentalists. And they had some appeal.
But they were rather naive. Now, they were predicated on the notion of achieving material equality. Now, we know that that’s impossible.
There’s no such thing as material equality. But the beauty of philosophy, the beauty of Bhagavad Gita and so on, is that it points to the spiritual. Equality of all beings, materially, there will always be differences.
So artificially to say, well, we’re going to have. We’re going to make a society that the socialists and communists and late 19th century Russia did the same thing. We’re going to have a classless society.
Well, that didn’t work. You know, it’s it’s it’s trying to be in heaven on earth. What happened was that it always dissipates because there’s always a ruling class that emerges.
You might say everyone is equal, but this group is more equal than the others. You know, and the system is for their benefit. And it lost appeal as well, because people didn’t like the idea of such uniformity.
Now, I don’t want to become just like everybody else. That wasn’t very appealing. The American image is one of the rugged individuals.
You know, for yourself, I found this advertisement. I’ll hold it up. I don’t know if you can see it.
Can a club be with all its members think alike? That’s where they’re thinking of ISKCON, is it? Yeah, that’s that’s that’s the impression of devotees is that, you know, they’re all dressing alike. They’re all chanting the same thing. They all think the same thing.
They’ve given up their individuality to be part of this, you know, utopian. This is recent. Now, this was from 80s, still about 40 years ago.
OK. But if we’re talking about what is people’s impressions? We’re still kind of laboring under that image of being a cult group or, you know, when devotees show up in public, there’s still some sense of. Well, they’re nice people, I’ve learned a little bit more about them and they do good things, but it’s not for me.
I’m not a joiner. You know, I don’t want to I don’t want to put on the same clothes as everybody else. So there’s still that lingering sense about, you know, the Hare Krishnas.
I have this fight with my brother all the time. My brother calls me a Hare Krishna. Nobody calls me Hare Krishna.
Even I don’t I mean, I don’t call myself a Hare Krishna. What’s a Hare Krishna? There’s no such thing. It’s invented.
That’s an invented phrase. Anyway. What do you mean? Hare Krishna? No, Hare Krishna are the first two words of the Maha Mantra.
The first word is the vocative of Hara, referring to the internal energy of the supreme being. Krishna is the name of the supreme being in personal form. It’s not like now you’re a member of the Rotary.
So it’s a misnomer. It’s not actually, you know, technically we’re Gaudiya Vaishnava. OK, anyway.
OK, I mean, people probably they see us chanting Hare Krishna. That’s why they call us Hare Krishnas. So it’s a lazy way of lazy way.
OK, so I’m just trying to understand when you showed this photo, how are you connecting that earlier with some phase of idealism? And then it went away. And then I didn’t get the connection between this photo. Yeah, well, our subject is Western perceptions of India.
So one misperception that people have is that, you know, people from India, they dress this way, they think this way. And, you know, it’s changed to a certain degree in just the last decade or so, because multiculturalism has become an important quality in business, in education. So there’s a little bit of a greater respect for ethnic and racial origin.
You know, the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s just it’s become somewhat more delicate. So people are more cautious, you know, about grouping everybody in the way they did for a long time.
By the way, the reason things began to change in the 1960s is that there was a piece of legislation that was reversed. America, going back to those days that we were talking about before, when it was all, you know, America for Americans, Westward Ho, we’re going to build our nation. And it was very Christian based.
You know, America was based, was built with, with, first of all, oil money and a lot of the oil barons, going back to the first discovery of oil in the mid to late 1800s, was used to finance Christian missionaries, Oral Roberts and Billy Graham and all of the early, powerful Christian missionaries and then the televangelists, all their financing came from oil barons. You know, John, John D. Rockefeller was the deacon of his church. You have people who see oil is God’s plan for building a Christian world.
So they use their profits and their money for, for financing ministries for building Christian universities. My God, this is quite a radical thought. Oil is God’s plans for building a Christian world.
How do they make sense of oil being found in the Middle East? Or they can’t make sense of that then? Well, now we’re really getting into a complex. I was thinking how, how, I think today Islam thinks like that also to some extent, they think that’s the way they, they, they have gained power and they got gained prestige in some ways. I had no idea about this.
I had some other time. Yeah. We could discuss the, let’s say the backdoor relationships between American oils and the OPEC monopoly in the Middle East.
And so that’s a different topic. Of course. I had of course heard that Christianity equated something like technological advancement with religious virtue.
And they said that because, because we are religious virtue, so God is blessing us with so many technological advancements by which we can prosper. So that part I don’t know, but specifically oil is interesting. Oh, yes.
A big, a big impetus to the evolving of Christian America. And there was no room in that vision for foreigners. I mean, we could bring in Chinese to help lay down railroad tides.
Or we’d bring in some Hindus to, you know, do some of the grunt labor, but they were never welcomed in America. There were, you know, Hindu, there were a few Hindu temples back in the late 1800s. They were burned down.
You know, there were pogroms, you know, to, to get the foreigners out of America. And it got to a point where by 1904, Congress passed what was called the Anti-Asian Exclusion Act, that anyone from Asian background, India in particular, but also Japan, China, and so on. There were these very severe limitations on, on immigration.
Only a handful were allowed into the country. There was something like 3000 people a year were allowed in. 1904 was when the act was passed.
Oh, okay. And then it wasn’t until 1964, I believe, 60 years later, that Congress repealed the Anti-Asian Exclusion Act or the exclusion, Asian Exclusion Act, I’m not sure about the title. And finally, the doors were open and people from Asia were allowed to come and get their green cards and live here and set up businesses and so on.
And so what was 3000 or 4000 people a year became 300,000 people a year. There’s this huge jump. Okay.
And that’s why, you know, you go back to the 60s, the early to mid 60s, you see this influx of teachers, all the Swamis, Swami Sat Chit Ananda, you know, all the other teachers, including the Prabhupada. For the first time in American history, we’re allowed to come, get their green card, build their ashram, open their yoga studio or whatever it was and teach, which is why the 1960s in America are so often connected with India and incense and chanting and yoga. That connection was because of, in large measure, the repeal of that Asian Exclusion Act.
Okay. So then there was a change, then the shift in impression of India began to change more dramatically. So Prabhu, just to take a step back in here.
So when Prabhupada came, there did seem to be, on one side, I’ve heard that in the Nilamruta, it is said that the Swamiji was speaking to the toughest audience in the world. That was the time, I think, 1965, the Time magazine put an article, he’s God-dead. So in one sense, they were not at all, the hippies were not at all like submissive people who are going to hear from a guru, as they might anywhere in India.
But at the same time, while there was not submission, but there was also some curiosity, some interest. So maybe can you talk a little bit about, and it does seem that when Prabhupada came to New York, we could say the mainstream society in America, the people were no more interested in the yoga that Mishra Yoga Studio, like that kind of people were teaching. So it was not the mainstream that got attracted to Prabhupada so much as the hippies.
So maybe you want to talk something about how the hippies emerged and how, why they were receptive? Well, that’s fine. It’s also a part of the story. We can certainly spend a minute talking about it.
But if you have a particular flow going, you can go ahead and then you can come to this later also. No, no, no. This is quite organic and we’re coming to this point.
That’s fine. I would ask your listeners and your viewers to be cautious about something. And that is to avoid generalizations, if you can.
Okay. Generally, I try to avoid generalization. The danger there is to think that this is what America was like, this is how Americans thought.
It’s not so. There were some people who thought in a particular way about people coming from India. Other people thought in a different way.
So I think we do a disservice if we try to simplify a complex issue. We like simplifications because then we can just be done with it. We can say, now I understand it.
And they can move on to, you know, you want to still get some love. But you haven’t understood. It’s much more complex than that.
I noticed that among Americans in India also. India is so big and complicated. So something that happens in Bihar or someplace like that and Mumbai are very different.
So I guess what you’re saying applies. America is bigger than India also in geography. I have to tell you, my biggest disappointment, Prabhu, and this gets very personal for me.
When I first met devotees in 1969, gives you an idea how long ago. It was in London. And there were the three couples who had come from San Francisco to open the temple.
They met George Harrison, and that story is fairly well known. But this small group of us included Jai Hari, who was from Pakistan. Tribhuvanath, Ireland, you had Americans, you had, there were two sisters from Sweden there.
There were people from France there. And, you know, it was never, there was never this divisiveness that we’re seeing now. No one thought about anybody else in terms of, well, he’s Hindu or, she’s Christian or that one’s Jewish or, you know, we were just one family.
It was a wonderful thing to be together. And that’s part of what the appeal for me was becoming a devotee. My goodness, what a lovely environment this is, you know, where people treat each other with respect as human beings.
And whatever their background is, it doesn’t particularly matter. I’ll tell you also, truthfully, at that time, we had a young man who was gay. Radhika Raman, I think was his initiated name.
There were two women living together. I mean, you know, it’s as though, when Prabhupada was here, and we were attracted to come and maybe become his students, become initiated, whatever. No one, he didn’t have us fill out any questionnaires.
You know, have you ever been in prison? Did you finish your college education? You know, do you masturbate? What is your attitude toward Indians? You know, are you a Republican or a Democrat? There was none of that. There was no bias against people. The feeling was, well, the past is the past.
You’re here now. And isn’t that a wonderful thing? And now we’re going to serve together. It was a very beautiful, effective, meaningful atmosphere of inclusion.
And I don’t know what’s happened. I don’t know what’s happened to us. We’ve become so political.
Yeah, sorry. I mean, this is amazing. So, you know, we can understand inclusion in terms of, say, nationalities, ethnicities, or other those things.
But in terms of sexuality, so Prabhupada knew about those gays and lesbians, that gay devotee and the lesbians living together, and he was okay with that? Look, he had his personal preferences. There was one discussion, a young man went in and said, look, I’m gay. And, you know, should I leave the temple? No, you just, you have to make up your mind about, you know, how you will be.
When we have a prescription against what we’re calling illicit sex, it’s not qualified whether that’s illicit sex between partners of the opposite sex or same sex. The prescription is control yourself, become happy with one partner, and dedicate yourself to serving Krishna and developing your love for Krishna. You know, these things were, at least back then, it was such common sense.
It was such common sense. There was no big hoopla about it. And you and I have talked about this in the past as well.
I don’t want to have to reiterate that or, you know, go back and revisit that territory again with you. But the point is, if we’re asking about… So, Prabhupada, since you brought this point up, there’s one thing that, yes, somebody has to, they had a particular past and they’re trying to deal with it. So, but in one sense to deal with it is to stop doing it entirely.
The other is that you regulate it. So, you are saying that during Prabhupada’s times, what applied for, you could say, straight couples was also applied for gay couples. At least in his time.
At least in his days, I mean, you know, this was no big secret. I mean, we spoke about these things when there was need to discuss them. Nobody made a big deal out of it.
It wasn’t a big deal. It just wasn’t a big deal. We were all there together to serve Srila Prabhupada in spreading his mission.
And it was a very warm, affectionate, supportive environment. That’s the movement I remember back. And I have to tell you, at times, those memories, they keep me alive.
Because what I see around me sometimes is so discouraging. You know, I don’t know whether you and I talked about this, but I spent the last year and a half, maybe two years, drafting a code of ethical behavior for ISKCON. Did we talk about it? Yeah, you mentioned that it’s very difficult to make it universal because of cultural nuances.
And then eventually when you made it also, it had to be pared down to bare essentials. Yeah, you know, and okay, I can appreciate that in some countries, I’m told in some countries of Africa, for example, homosexuality is illegal. So, you know, if we’re going to establish temples and spread Krishna consciousness, we can’t be banned because we’re breaking the law.
I mean, so, you know, there are considerations like that that do have to be dealt with. But there are times, honestly, like, for example, it was shocking to me. I mean, shocking when I heard, when I learned that caste discrimination is still an issue among devotees.
Really, where? I never heard of this. Yeah, that, you know, that there’s still, you know, a discrimination among people because of their caste backgrounds. How is it? How is that? I mean, I would really need to see evidence because what I have seen in India, I mean, any devotee who has dedication, who has zeal, I’ve seen some of the leaders in ISKCON, at least in my generation and a generation earlier also, whatever caste, I mean, nobody asked me what my caste is since I joined.
And I haven’t, I know, I can right now quote at least from my own five devotees who are temple presidents who are conventionally called from lower castes. So, I suspect this might be a Western perception of India which might not be grounded in reality because caste is… Well, I hope so. I hope you’re right.
I’ll just qualify. See, caste is a big reality in India in the rural areas and in the government sector. In the rural areas because society is still stratified that way and in the government sector because there are putas and because so, you know, often people from the lower caste because of what they call here the reservation policy and America something similar affirmative action.
So, that applies not just at recruitment, but that applies throughout. So, a person gets promoted based on caste, not just based on caliber of work. So, in the government circle, there is this, but I think urbanization and privatization of the economy I don’t, at least I haven’t heard of caste being a major, not even a major factor, even a minor factor as far as I know.
Well, I’m not at liberty to discuss details because there’s a certain confidentiality that I have to respect. Yeah, I understand. But I appreciate what you’re saying and I thank you for offering me some reassurance that maybe it’s not very widespread.
There may be some individual cases here and there. But, but, and this is the important thing. If you want to talk about what are western impressions of India and how those impressions influence the reception of bhakti, there’s, you know, there’s still this rather cliched image of India as a place where, you know, people believe that, you know, my karma is such that, you know, this is, I deserve this.
This is my karma. So that’s looked down upon. You know, there’s a terrible shallowness in the appreciation of what, you know, the true wealth and wisdom of India is.
And so we’re still, you know, we’re fighting that to a certain degree. And, you know, you see me, when I come to have my discussion with you, I’m wearing my kurta and, you know, I put an environment where you see my altar behind me and so on. It’s a devotee viewership and I’d like to come across as part of the community.
I want people, I want your viewers to know that I speak as a devotee. I don’t generally dress in dhoti and kurta. I don’t, you know, I’m teaching in different environments, educational environments, and I don’t want to trigger those prejudices that people might have by presenting myself in a way that says, oh, he’s one of them.
He’s from that group. So I try to avoid that. But still, you know, so it’s there.
It’s an issue. It is an issue. So overall, you could say that if I’m understanding right, what you’re saying is that the overall perception, the three things, there’s a perception of India itself, there’s a perception of Hinduism and there’s a perception of devotees.
So now all of these are related to some extent, but there are differences also. So if I understand what you’re saying is, India is still perceived as a war-stricken country, little bit caste. Even after the sheer number of software engineers coming to America and Indians, I think in the sense, 1965, what you said, 1964-65 when the act was repealed, there have been many professionals who have come and now, now the CEOs of top companies in America are also Indians.
So is that bias still there? Well, now you’re getting, now you’re talking about it. When you get into money matters, finances, business, somehow those distinctions don’t have as much importance anymore. If someone has a contribution to make to your bottom line, let’s hire them.
But then you get another kind of cliche, you know, the cliche of the Hindu IT professional. So it’s almost like there’s this other kind of grouping of, you know, we’re going to find the kind of staffing we need for our technology from that group, because there seem to be a lot of very smart people from IIT and elsewhere coming to America who have the skills that we need. It’s still not a very particularly informed or enlightened position.
Okay. It’s better than looking down on someone. Let me get to what I think is perhaps at the heart of the issue that you’ve raised here, because it’s an important subject that I’ve been looking forward.
Yeah, just before we go to that, see I had raised a question and then I said that, so Prabhupada, it seems that the main demographic that is attracted to Prabhupada was the hippies. So in response to that, you said that we shouldn’t generalize that. So was that saying that the people who were attracted to Prabhupada were not only the hippies or what was the context of that answer? Okay.
Well, first of all, it’s a mistaken idea. It’s a cliche to think that Prabhupada’s early disciples, students were all hippies. That’s just not the case.
There were some, particularly in San Francisco, which was kind of the haven for hippies and the counterculture movement back in the 60s. But if you look at the people who formed his community, let’s say here in New York at 26 2nd Avenue, you had Hayagriva, who was a professor of English literature at Ohio State University. You had Professor Tom Hopkins who came up and became a regular visitor.
Alan Ginsberg, who was a world-renowned poet. You had musicians from the downtown jazz world in large measure who came and brought their instruments and took part in the kirtans from a musical perspective. You had some people who had studied Vedanta who were coming to understand what’s the difference between what we’re learning uptown and what this person is teaching downtown.
And, you know, there were artists. Jadharani was a painter. Umapati was a sound studio technician.
So Prabhupada was a university student. Yeah, just to qualify. So maybe I had a different understanding of hippies.
So it’s not just that anybody who used to experiment with drugs was considered a hippie. It is like somebody who had no responsible career and they were not doing anything in a responsible life. They’re hippies.
Is that the right understanding? Because in one sense, if you see Howard Wheeler and all of them, they were also into drugs. And so it’s not just hippies. It’s much broader than just the idea of experimenting with drugs.
Alginsberg was like a pioneer of taking drugs for going towards spirituality. So how are you defining? Sure, if you really want to understand about this era, I recommend a book to you written by a professor named Maslow called simply The Sixties. There are also other books called Spirituality in America.
I can give you some recommendations if you like of books. Generally, what they do is they say, you know, when we talk about the hippies, if you think in terms of full-time hippies, there might have been maybe 200, 250,000 young people. That’s it.
Really? If you talk about weekend hippies, in other words, people who had their jobs, they were going to school, but on weekends they put on the bell bottoms, they put on the beads and they dance in Central Park, whatever. Let me add a few more. If you’re talking about the counterculture movement, which is different from the hippie movement.
Hippies were the famous cliche, tune in, turn on, drop out. They rejected the society. Counterculture was looking to build a positive alternative to society.
Those are the ones who had the farm communes and so on, who were politically active. Again, beware of generalizations. You have to get a little bit more specific into what kind of a community, what kind of mindset are we talking about? Prabhupada appealed to, I mean, my experience was, he appealed to a large number, what is a large number? I don’t know.
He appealed to some people who came out of the anti-war movement because, and I’m speaking for myself here, I was editor of the student newspaper, the Daily Cardinal at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. And I was there when we were having the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in the streets of Madison, and it wasn’t working. You know, the protests, the violent protests just weren’t doing anything to change the administration’s mind about the war in Vietnam.
It was still bombing like crazy. Here was Srila Prabhupada, Swamiji we called him in those days, proposing a different kind of peace plan. That you have to change people’s hearts.
You’re not going to achieve peace just by reforming political agendas. You have to change their hearts. And so we found this as a more effective form of active protest, if you will, by going out instead of, you know, with signs against the war in Vietnam, with mridangas and cartels.
So we were back in the streets demonstrating as we had been doing in college. But it was for this higher form of revolution, you might say. So Prabhupada appealed to different people for different reasons.
And at least for myself, it was that sense of here’s a more effective form of social action. That’s amazing. I’m thinking about, Radhanath Mahajan also concerned about racial injustice.
And so in one sense, he’s not entirely atypical of the kind of devotees who were attracted. Of course, every devotee is an individual. Every Vaishnava is a great soul eventually, ultimately.
So it’s so easy to generalize. So if I understood what you’re saying is that the counterculture was quite a broad movement. And there were many constructive movements going on within that to change the way society worked.
And within that, a very small, but maybe highly visible or highly publicized section was the hippies, the full-time hippies. Well, they were more visible. Sure, they were colorful.
And the newspapers and magazines could get some good readership if they took photographs of the colorful groups. So those are the ones who got the attention. But Prabhupada’s following was not limited to that by any means.
So when you say Prabhupada made the hippies into happies, so that is a true statement. But that doesn’t apply to all of Prabhupada’s disciples in those times. Sure.
Someone was specifically asking about, are your followers all hippies? This is a specific conversation. Sorry, what were they asking? Are all of your followers hippies? He said, well, they used to be. Now they’re happies.
But he wasn’t saying, I’m here for the hippies. That was not his point. That was his point.
So again, our subject is Western impressions of India. So in one sense, you are in this process correcting some Indian impressions of the West also. Indian impressions of the West and followers of Prabhupada.
So I think it’s dynamic. It’s natural. Yeah.
So if we can move forward. So now just to go a little deeper into this. So when Prabhupada came, you said that one of the things that attracted this broader demographic was there was a spiritual way to make a change.
So I never thought of that. Marching, going on the streets and doing Harinam was a different way of doing marches for… Social action. Absolutely.
And our whole history. Gaudiya Vaishnav history is a history of social activists. What was the first time? Nansen Kirtan.
Mahaprabhu. Yes. You know, leading a very large number.
It wasn’t a small group. It was a large number of people. To Chand Kazi’s palace.
To make clear their objections to his interfering with the Harinam parties. And it got out of hand. I mean, if you read in Chaitanya Bhagawat, I think also Chaitanya Charitamrita, it’s described that the followers and that protest parade, they got a little rowdy at first.
Yeah, that’s true. They messed up the flower gardens of Kazi’s palace and so on. And Mahaprabhu, it wasn’t in favor of that.
He sat down and he spoke very politely. Chand Kazi saying, you know, we’re actually related. We’re family members.
You know, we have a cousin. He’s, you know, establishing a nice foundation. They’re friendly.
Talks. See, this is the elegance of our movement. It’s not this divisiveness that we’re seeing in Washington.
It’s not this rowdying and yelling. It’s anyway. Yeah.
Sorry, I get a little bit. No, I understand. So, maybe, so how did you talk about this dimension of how it was a whole social action.
But could you talk a little bit about say, how did the perceptions of India either contribute or detract from people getting attracted to Prabhupada when he came there? Right. Did it play any significant role? Like, I do know that Haiguru Prabhu and Kirtan Mahajan, they had earlier gone to India. So, it seems that at least some people thought of India as a land where they could learn more about spirituality.
Yes, that was on the plus side. India was seen as kind of the home of mysticism. Okay.
If there was wisdom to be found, if we can find the meaning of life, it is likely we will find it in India. That was on the plus side. Because India was, you know, the birthplace of so many great teachers and the avatars had come to India and, you know, the great Sanskrit texts and so on.
But there was an appreciation for India. It was not all negative. There was an appreciation for India as this place where there are great mysteries that can be unraveled, you know, if we just find the right teacher.
And one thing I recall from those years, I’m going back to the 60s now, is that people coming from India taught a little bit of the mystery or they hinted at some kind of wisdom. Nobody had the whole picture. When Prabhupada came, he gave the whole picture.
He was the first person, at least for me, who actually explained what is the wisdom of the East, you know, what is the mystery that India can solve. He was the first person to do that. Everybody else, you got, oh, maybe it’s this or, you know, some, you know, there was some partial truths about the illusory nature of the material world and inner self, you know.
But it wasn’t clear, it wasn’t substantial until Prabhupada came. And then it was very clear and very simple. That was the beauty of his presentation.
You know, it was like, yeah, that makes sense. That answers the questions. Everyone else saying, no, it’s a great mystery.
It’s only a mystery until you understand what it is. And Prabhupada explained it. But India had that appeal.
It was always that appeal that, you know, the yogis in the Himalayas and the mystics in the mountains and the forests and so on. It was some truth we found. Okay.
And so there, at least there was some openness, but eventually Prabhupada had to, you could say, to use commercial and sell the product. Although there was some interest about the product, it was Prabhupada who, as you said, provided the whole product, which had its own attraction. He had to fight those misimpressions of India.
Yes. He had to correct the misimpressions. The first misimpression was that Bhakti is Hindu.
The first misimpression is that you’re saying, don’t think this is Indian religion. He said, I have to say that a lot, you know, because people would look at the devotees, they said, oh, they’re Hindus. They’re from India.
The sun rises in the east. That doesn’t make it an eastern sun. That was the explanation.
He used. So that was the first misimpression of India that Prabhupada had to rectify. Then he had to rectify so many other misimpressions like, well, women are inferior.
He said, when you read that sort of thing, that’s a material distinction. He said, in Krishna consciousness, there’s full equality. He had to rectify that misimpression.
So, I mean, I would say that it was Prabhupada who created that impression by talking about mispurports in other places. I don’t know whether he rectified it. Well, that was part of the, that’s part of the challenge that we’re confronting today.
There’s a lot of discussion. What I’m understanding is that maybe his writings created that impression but in his personal leanings, he rectified that impression. You and I have talked about this before.
Yeah, we can talk about it separately. How do we deal with the controversial statements in Prabhupada’s books? Yes, that’s true. We’ve talked about that.
There’s an issue of the ISKCON Communications Journal coming out next year, specifically dedicated to this theme. How do we, how do we understand the controversial statements? The article that I was asked to write was about Hitler. Sometimes it seemed maybe like Prabhupada said that Hitler was a gentleman or he was a prisoner.
There’s an article about Prabhupada’s statement about women. So, it’s a whole issue coming out next year of the ISKCON Communications Journal dedicated specifically to to this topic. Oh, okay.
That’s wonderful. Actually, I love the ISKCON Communications Journal articles and it was such a loss when for almost a decade we didn’t have it. I think last year they published, this year they published one issue.
There’s a lot of deep serious reflection in each article in the journal. Yeah. So, it’s been revived.
Mostly the credit goes to Mahaprabhu. Martin Gurvich, who is a devotee from Belgium. At least he has an art gallery in Belgium.
He’s put resources into, in time and effort to reviving the ICJ. Oh, okay. So, yeah, I think that’s an important topic to discuss.
I’m also part of Shastrika Advisory Council. We wrote a paper on hermeneutics and that also, I think that’s a major issue for us to, as a movement to negotiate. And that’s a whole different subject.
So, you could say that Prabhupada, there were some positive perceptions, some negative perceptions. Now, if we move forward, still Prabhupada was substantially successful in taking Krishna Bhakti to to Americans. And now, today we see things have gone down substantially.
now there are, of course, we could say internal reasons why that happened. But apart from those, you could mention that if you like a little bit, but are there, has there been a change in the perceptions of India, which which has affected either positively or negatively the receptivity toward India? From my, from what I said, from what you said, one thing struck me that people are more, because of multiculturalism, there is a greater level of openness. So, that could be a positive development.
And yoga has also become far bigger than what it was at that time. So, that could also be seen as a positive development. Yes.
Of course, we’re confronting in ISKCON as an institution what some people have characterized as the Hinduization of ISKCON. And so, people get an impression if they just judge by what they see when they come into a temple, it appears to be primarily staffed or appealing to people of Indian extraction. That’s the impression because a lot of the people now are from India.
Again, it’s a topic that has a history to it. In the 70s, when we had our strong income coming from book distribution, the balance, the demographics were a bit more equalized. After the book distribution went down, there was an influx of money coming from Hindus who would attend ISKCON temple functions as their home away from home.
Because the deity worship standard is so high, because the prasadam is so tasty, because the festivals are celebrated with such care and attention. So, there were an increase in the number of Indians attending ISKCON temples. So, there when there were fewer Westerners, fewer people of white skin and more people of Indian extraction, some people got the impression, well, this must be Indian.
So, that’s an issue, you know, that is raised and discussed. Okay. How to deal with that? That’s a major issue.
In one sense, I recently read a book on religion in America and it seems that what Martin Luther King, yeah, Martin Luther King, he said that the time of like about Saturday 11 o’clock or Sunday 11 o’clock, the time when people go to church, he says that is the most demographically divided time in America. People go to their own churches or their own churches of their own particular denominations, which could be regional or ethnic or whatever. So, it seemed that religion is a place where people come and congregate according to not just their faith, but also their ethnography.
So, that’s the ethnicity rather. So, that could also be an issue. If we are primarily, we have primarily seen as an Indian movement or a Hindu movement or a movement made of Indians primarily.
Well, that was another misimpression that Srila Prabhupada had to rectify. Yeah. That Krishna consciousness is a religion.
It’s not a religion. Not only is it not Hinduism, it’s not any kind of religion. Now, it’s the nature of dharma, it’s the nature of life itself.
So, that he had to remedy. Now, some people engage with Krishna consciousness. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
You know, even Krishna acknowledges in Bhagavad Gita, some people want me to be their worshipable God. If they come to me, they’re in distress. So, I’m their God.
And that’s fine. It’s not going to be particularly attractive to non-Hindus though. If it’s presented in that way, well, this is, you know, a religion that comes from India.
Hmm. Why was Prabhupada so enthusiastic about the Bhaktivedanta Institute? Why was he supporting his scientist disciples? The one area where money is given from the DBT did not have to be reimbursed. Where that group was to be supported.
It’s because he wanted to establish that Krishna consciousness is not a religion. It’s a science. Therefore, what these PhD devotees are doing is extremely important.
So, he supported them. He was sending them $10,000 a month from the DBT to pay for rent and prasadam and travel and whatever else they needed. So, they could work full time to establish this rational objective foundation of bhakti, not as a Hindu religion, not as a religion of any kind, but as the non-material source of life.
That was at the heart of his whole mission in the world, was to do that. Okay. That’s a major challenge to deal with.
Now, you know, saying that Krishna consciousness is not a religion is almost imposing the paramarthik on the vyavaharik, the transcendental on the material. It’s like saying Vrindavan is not in India. That’s true, Vrindavan is in the spiritual world, but if you want to put it anywhere in the map of the world, we have to put it in India.
So, similarly, Krishna consciousness, yes, it is transcendental, but if you are going to put it anywhere in the categorization of the world, we are not going to call it a science that is going to be studied in the physics or chemistry or biology. We are going to study it as a religion. So, I’m not sure whether we can that categorically reject the fact that we can say that, yes, it is not what is normally thought of as a religion.
There are significant differences, but but to categorically say it’s not a religion would be, I mean, Prabhupada wanted it to show that we have a scientific basis and there are statements of Prabhupada both ways that he said that we are not a religion, but then Prabhupada would talk about the Hindus and especially in terms of say Indians supporting the temples. At that time, he did use the word Hindus. You know, Prabhupada was somewhat for everything and the beauty of Krishna is that he is truth on many levels.
You know, he’s not, he’s not one dimensional. He’s not a one dimension. He is an equal opportunity divinity.
That’s beautifully put. He can accommodate people, whatever their particular motive is for approaching him. But we have to be very, very clear about this, Prabhupada.
This is very, very important. The physicalist scientific paradigm, what is sometimes called naturalism, is Maya’s single strongest weapon. It is the crown jewel of the tools of Kali Yuga for keeping souls enslaved in the cycle of birth and death.
Irrefutable, concrete evidence that you are your body. We have to understand how serious this is. You know, we have no problem with science.
But those individuals who would misuse science as a weapon, who would weaponize science as some kind of path to defeat religion, to prove atheism over theism. That’s a systematic campaign that has to be addressed. And that’s where Prabhupada displayed his warrior qualities.
He was outraged at people who would use the presumption of science to prove that God does not exist. I was listening to a podcast a couple of weeks ago by a lovely gentleman who, his name was, well, never mind his name. But he was from Oxford and he was a biophysicist.
And he was giving, the reason I was watching him, it was a one hour summary about how life works. And it was a wonderful exposition about molecules coming together. And, you know, from a purely objective perspective, for a non-scientist like me, it was a wonderful overview of the workings of life.
And then, at the end, out of nowhere, he says, and all of this is happening without need for any God. And I’m thinking, why was that necessary? Why? You know, when I go to the dentist to get a cavity filled, at the end of filling my cavity, my dentist doesn’t turn to me and say, and I did that without God. I’m filling the cavity.
Why does everything have to be, why do you have to weaponize science to disprove the existence of God? I don’t see why that’s necessary. But that seems to be now some kind of unspoken obligation. That we are going to prove that this universe, there’s no soul, there’s no transcendental cause to anything, there is just matter.
That’s all there is. Prabhupada was outraged at this. How dare you? How dare you deny people their own spiritual identity? How dare you try to mislead them into thinking that there is nothing but matter to creation? You have no evidence.
You have never proved that consciousness evolves from some interaction of material particles and forces. How dare you declare otherwise? How presumptuous of you. How dangerous of you.
Because you are robbing people of their hope that they have any kind of dignity to their own being. He was outraged at this. So it’s really important, you know, you want to understand something about misimpressions of India.
I mean, this goes to the heart of it. This was Prabhupada’s mission. This was his mission right here.
Yes, of course. So when you are talking about Krishna consciousness as a science, you are talking about how Prabhupada was quite strong in recognizing that science has been weaponized against religion or against God, against spirituality. And that’s why Prabhupada wanted to counter that.
So that was your emphasis when you are talking about Krishna consciousness as a science. Yes, and part of that was to make very clear to people that Krishna consciousness is not a religion. Religion is something material.
Religion is a historic construct. It has a moment of origin in time. Islam, Christianity, these are religions that have a moment of origin in historic time.
Religions point to that ahistoric, non-material ethos underlying all life. Ideally, that’s what religions do. But the purpose of religion is to create a social construct where people can be safe, where life can be lived harmoniously.
It gives people a structure to their lives, rituals, a worldview, a healthy worldview. You know, it plays that role. But it’s not eternal truth.
And Prabhupada was adamant that we had… When did you ever hear Prabhupada say now everyone should become Hindu? Of course, Prabhupada never said that. That he never said. So, you know, this goes to the heart of his mission.
True. So, if I understand right, what you are saying is even today that major misconception that we are pursued as a as a religion that will have to be addressed if we are going to reach out to if Bhakti wisdom is to reach out Bhakti is to reach out to the Western audiences or broader audiences. That’s a major… Yeah.
And you know me well enough, Prabhupada. I mean, you know that my take on that is that it will communicate best when we demonstrate a contribution to solving the issues of society. When we can demonstrate that the Bhakti perspective has practical application in the world.
That it has a contribution to make toward resolving climate change. Toward alleviating poverty, contributing to education, the rights of underrepresented minorities to the peace process. When we can demonstrate that practical contribution then people, I think, will begin to appreciate oh, there’s something more to this than Hinduism.
Okay. Now, so what that would require is if we whatever whatever we could say whatever box or bracket people we have put us in if we become resources or provide some insights by which society’s problems can be solved then it’s organically we will be people won’t be able to place us in those boxes any further. Then naturally we will emerge as different from that bigger than that.
So it’s not so much preaching we are not this but actually tangibly showing what we are doing or what we what we can offer. That’s what will make a difference. Contributing to quality of life contributing to remedying the terrible dilemma that we have come to in terms of the the terrible price that’s being paid for our technological advancements that’s not a religious thing you can call it spiritual if you like but being able to articulate that the long term solution to these challenges must come not from just a reconfiguring of material circumstances but by redefining the very nature of life itself.
Why should we why should I not redefining the nature of life itself not reconfiguring what? The long term solutions short term solutions you can come up with by throwing money at a problem by you know redistributing something by attacking it materially from some other angle long term solutions will not come just by reconfiguring the circumstances around the problem or the challenge they’ll come when there is a change of heart within us that will motivate a permanent reform of attitudes behaviors corporate values we have to redefine what it means to succeed what is success in life you cannot come to an answer to that question without first knowing who you are what is life and you know every day Prabhu every day you turn on the television you read the newspaper the message is you are your body you are your body buy this thing it’ll make you look more beautiful eat this it’ll make you more healthy use this medicine it’ll cure your disease everything is about the body where’s the knowledge of the self and even when you listen to the so-called self-help gurus and the so-called spiritual teachers and the podcasts and everything what are they talking about they’re talking about relieving stress they’re talking about becoming more calm more peaceful within yourself all material things that’ll disappear like that as soon as the next dilemma comes up boom it’s gone I remember teaching yoga studios I watch these classes the end of every yoga class 10 minutes of savasana you lie there now you feel good how long does it last one minute as soon as you leave the studio you’re back in the street bam where’s your savasana where’s your shanti it’s all gone there’s all these material solutions you cannot arrive at a permanent solution without first defining this and that was Prabhupada’s great contribution and that is what bhakti is all about and that’s the misimpression that we have to remedy here that somehow spirituality means de-stressing I’m sorry you get me we all worked up you know I see your concern and compassion coming out it’s so so so we have a very good note to to it’s almost like we have gone in the complete circle whatever we the emphasis was on that our essential identity is spiritual and whatever is the specific perceptions misperceptions that might be there in different parts of the world about different parts of the world we could say that this is the this is the ultimate foundation which we are trying to address and if you address this then other things will fall in place yeah I truly hope I pray this every day that our temples and ISKCON as an institution will continue to evolve a new kind of educational foundation platform where instead of the same pardon me I don’t mean to be insulting but instead of the same cliched bhagavad gita classes that you hear day after day after day there would be deeper discussion about the important issues of the world and how Krishna consciousness intersects with those situations and how what we have to offer is something very relevant to the world we live in to the people around us and and and we there’s a lot of work to do there’s a lot of work to be done hmm true true there’s one topic I mean we have come to a devotional note if you have time we could discuss this or we could discuss this separately one point was there which is about which which annoys many Indians in western perceptions of India that often India especially if we read New York Times or if we read many mainstream newspapers they seem to have a very prejudiced view of India very rarely say India launched a space missile India had a space mission which was almost like 120th the cost of what NASA did and we were fairly successful but instead of lauding that there was a cartoon which said that you know this is the poor man going to space they are begging and then they’re going to space so that that’s just one example but almost everything that happens it’s given a negative perspective perspective that say any kind of political agitation happens and the Kashmir issue came up then it was seen as it was basically a political law and right law and order issue but it was given a religious tilt so same thing with many things like that so now one understanding that I had is that to some extent Indians themselves are responsible for this in that Indians had not endeavored to have themselves represented properly in the media Indians go into the STEM fields and they become engineers and doctors and professionals but they don’t go into the fields which influence public opinion they don’t go into journalism so much they don’t go into law they don’t go into maybe politics that much as other demographic other people so it’s we ourselves could be a factor that we never really cared for how we were being pursued but would you like to address this point briefly before we finish or it’s a different subject this is what I love my talks with you you go to the heart of the most challenging and the most important issues confronting us today I’m so grateful to you I really am I’m very appreciative for the chance to have these kinds of discussions I mean we’ve been talking now for an hour and 45 minutes I don’t know if anybody’s even left out there listening to what we have to say but I’m glad to be talking with you and you’re right instead of just encouraging people to become I don’t know Pujaris and the Temple Presidents why not have a school of journalism you know why not have a why not encourage people to become educators I mean that’s where the opinions are formed opinions are formed people form their opinions yeah what they read but more what they view I think we need a union of Vaishnava broadcasters you know people who will produce content for wide distribution on the big screen on the small screen that remedies what you’re talking about these misimpressions of India as this contradictory place where they don’t pay any attention to their own slums and people are running around starving but they’re launching satellites into space these cliches are so hackney and they’re so naive and they’re so stupid that it almost doesn’t bear discussion you know because anyone who looks at India and continues to say oh yeah very impoverished place you know what are you going to do that’s just the world going on doing its stupid business one more day you know the people who are thoughtful they want to know so what is your opinion coming from your culture what is your opinion about the hostilities in the Middle East coming from your background you know from the knowledge of you know your texts and so on what is your opinion of of SpaceX you know and the colonizing of the universe you know I mean these are important issues that we have positions on but no one’s asking no one’s asking our opinion of these things so we may have to take a more proactive role here and that means having people who are you know in these fields and connecting the dots making the connections between the situation in the world and the perspective that’s offered by what we make I call the Bhakti perspective I don’t like it’s not the Vedic perspective that’s it’s more how does Bhakti you know that’s a nice one actually the Vedic observer we had the BTG column but Vedic is too broad and it it doesn’t convey what you’re doing and it may even be too specific it generally refers to Chaturvedi you know Rig, Sama, Darja and Yajur Vedas and those are rules for forest dwellers you know it’s rituals for the renunciants it’s not it’s not the world we’re living in today my brother makes the same mistake he says I have a brother who follows the Vedic perspective what is he talking about? I don’t even know what that means it’s silly so your brother uses the word Vedic perspective you’re saying well look I think he’s trying to be complimentary he’s interviewed a lot and he’ll bring me into the discussion as a way of saying you know there are many different ways of looking at the world you know my brother for example is a Hare Krishna and he follows the Vedic perspective you know and for him he brought it up because his most recent book which is called Till the End of Time the last sentence of the book is about he’s given 300 pages of physicalist science about there’s nothing but matter and nothing but physics and then at the end he says and this of course nourishes our soul the last word in the book is soul so I said to him I said you owe me royalties come on work over the money you’re going to use those kinds of words you got to pay me so on this radio broadcast with a woman named Krista Tippett she has a wonderful show called I’m Being and he talked about me and said so you know my brother asked me was that for me that you use that word so wonderful it’s fine it’s all in good fun we love each other very much but someday I hope he’ll take the time to look into it so he doesn’t continue to misrepresent me in that way you know okay so so just to round up this point so you’re saying that the biases exist not because particularly the media is biased but because nobody has worked to correct the biases or is that the way we should look at it so that we can do something about it beyond just complaining or becoming negative we’ve reached a point in the 60 odd years of our existence as a society as a movement where the responsibility has shifted it’s no longer the emergency work that it was in the 1960s and 1970s the obligation today is as you are doing with your program to go deeper inside the issues that are relevant to the vast majority of humanity and to contribute a new light a new perspective on possible ways out of the darkness possible solutions to very complex issues not a comprehensive not to presume that we have some comprehensive way of solving climate change that that’s silly but making our small contribution to a multidimensional approach to a challenge such as climate change and that comes from a respect for the dignity of all life that we can do that we’re uniquely situated to do we need writers we need filmmakers we need documentarians we need educators we need journalists we need scientists we need people researching these fields who can make those connections I believe that’s our future that’s our future that’s where we’re going as a movement as a society and and we’re a little bit slow we better pick up the speed here pick up the pace no yeah that’s true I think we have got too caught in our own definitions of success and our own standards and our own conceptions and in one sense the broader world what is happening we have become somewhat insular which is a challenge field and I think podcasts like these where you are expressing the need for broadening our conceptions or broadening our our conceptions of what we are meant to do in the world so that we can change people’s conceptions of who we are these are a big big service I would suggest that you issue a challenge to everyone who watches your podcast or listens to your podcast that they should come back to you with suggestions for how the message of Bhakti culture can be applied in the larger world let’s stimulate some discussion you are the ideal magnet for attracting that kind of energy because you are all about exploring these issues let’s get real let’s get practical why not ask the people who are seeing this or listening to your programs to proactively come up with some ideas let’s get a discussion started here what is our contribution what is our perception or position on recombinant genetic engineering what is our position on GMOs what’s our position on alternative energy should we be going into space should we be doing this should we get some talk going on here you know it’s a very exciting you know very very exciting is science wrong this is a very good topic for discussion that should interest a lot of people when whether it’s my brother or whoever looks out at this magnificent creation and says you know if you follow the physics far enough we can describe everything including consciousness are they actually wrong or is there a dimension of truth to what they’re saying that might be perhaps just incomplete I mean we need to find points of harmony points of tangency where we can work cooperatively with people who may have a very very different perspective from ours because the the odds are very high now you know the steps are high I don’t know you know look at today’s newspaper the front page headlines in today’s newspaper about the ICC coming out with their first report in 15 years and showing that the science behind climate change is more convincing and and and detailed than ever that human actions are at the cause of the devastation that’s going on and that we’re at a real tipping point here we’re at a real tipping point we’ve got to make some serious changes immediately if we’re going to avoid even further damage in the near future already there are millions of people being displaced by rising tides by by out-of-control fires in California and elsewhere these are real issues we have something to say about it we have something to say about that but we’re not saying it true that’s that’s shameful that’s absolutely shameful so i would i would encourage you to send a a challenge out to everyone who sees your show come back become part of the solution get involved now it’s important time is wasting yes i think that’s a brilliant idea and that will give us also a lot of a lot of ideas for future podcasts and of course i would say that what you mentioned earlier about the typical bhagavad gita classes sometimes we have these grandiose sounding statements Krishna consciousness solution to all problems we need to actually it’s not grandiose in that it is true ultimately but we need to explain how it is true not just make a slogan that it is true that’s it that’s it yeah you said it you said it that’s it Krishna consciousness is the solution to all problems okay prove it show me show me how don’t just spout cliches at me that’s boring and shallow are you boring and shallow is that who you are show me something that’s true I think this is where serious intellectual engagement with the contemporary world is what is going to be required yeah we better do it soon there may there may not be a world left to to fix that’s true oh god you know I appreciate your broad vision instead of saying that maybe our movement is not having sufficient followers and maybe we will not have many western devotees in our movement it’s not that we are preaching just for spreading our movement we are sharing actually to help the world and so in that sense it’s it’s not survival it’s actually it’s that’s true why don’t we just like expect people are going to magically you know start coming to our temples and chanting how do you what is so silly show something that’s worth following we don’t we don’t deserve a bigger following or a bigger movement if we have nothing practical to offer what’s the point true anyway so actually bro I’m sorry if I get a little no no bro you don’t have to apologize but I appreciate your what you’re saying this is amazing again I am realizing the same point that in different ways that rather than you know looking at what is wrong in the world we can look at what we are doing wrong and fix it so rather than saying people are not coming to our movement the way you put it is we don’t deserve more people coming to the movement if we are not actually doing our work of presenting what the movement is offering properly let them take some adult education course somewhere you know let them practice Buddhism let them do something that gives them some satisfaction because if they’re not finding it here why should they be there you know where where’s the substance behind our declarations you know we have we have work to do yes so thank you so you know there’s something which I have I mean many things I appreciate about your our podcast but one thing I strongly appreciate is that that the you could say there is like a missionary zeal among many of our preachers and I sometimes feel inspired and energized just like some people have an energy they want to go out and open centers and preach and make devotees and that has its own spiritual potency and vibrancy to it but when sometimes we get into intellectual discussions sometimes the compassionate reason or the compassionate purpose of the intellectual reflections get lost so we can just get caught in this topic but what I see very strongly present within you is that yes we want to go deep intellectually is see it’s not we can’t just be hasty as you say we can’t just keep repeating cliches but while going deep intellectually the compassionate purpose also comes out very vibrantly or very vividly both in our discussions so I appreciate that sometimes it’s easy for those who are intellectuals to get so caught in the head not in the head in the sense that they don’t have a heart but we get caught in the arguments and counter argument in the reasoning and the abstractness of the subject that the concreteness of the subject that we have the compassion that we have that we can get lost you’re touching my heart it’s a little hard I mean we came and he gave us our lives back and gave us back our souls and what are we doing to help others retrieve their souls how can you expect people to understand the glories of Mahaprabhu if they’re just suffering from you know institutional racism and earning 30 cents on the dollar because they’re black or Hispanic or because they’re a woman or they can’t afford medicine you know because they’re living in America where medicine is basically just legalized criminality legalized criminality because it is so expensive yes yes it’s for the rich you can have good medicine you can have good legal support if you have money and if you don’t have money to hell with you you’re going to die in prison that’s America that’s America and you know I just think we’re supposed to be doing something otherwise our declarations of loving everyone are simply hollow lies empty hollow lies I can’t think of the words I’m sorry anyway maybe we should say goodbye now I love the statement without action without compassionate action so Prabhupada retrieved our souls retrieved or saved us I don’t use the word saved retrieved you said retrieved our souls it’s a beautiful way of putting gave us back gave us yeah we had lost them we gave it back we help people to do the same thing that’s true it’s a very heartfelt note should I try to summarize I don’t think I summarized can encapsulate what all we discussed but I can try in a few minutes so we broadly discussed topic of Western perceptions of India and how they affected how they affected receptivity to Indian spirituality and bhakti she started by talking about how while West is almost the word term West has become like a cliche earlier it was the European family Britain so because of their colonial intention that incident was amazing it’s a Catholic temple and it’s strange deity saints so but when they came to India they often wanted to deride so they thought that Krishna they separated Krishna and they said Krishna is a immoral God Krishna in Vrindavan at least is a of an immoral God and they said that the bhakti tradition or the theistic temple worship tradition is all deviant and they derided it and then conversely the so they had their agenda for misrepresenting and Indian teachers also who went to the west they also they also said bhaktis for the less intelligent people and and eventually so they privileged the Advaithic interpretation so there was certain misrepresentation and you said till 1960s almost India was seen as a very poor country so not only religiously negatively but also also cultural or economically negatively and there were pockets of appreciation like immersion thorough but that didn’t last for very long and over a period of time from American perspective because America also went through its own history and there was hostility towards American immigrants America is for Americans so from 19 was it 1904 to 1964 anti-Asia act so that is also an indication of the negativity towards Asia in general what is and including India but there was some receptivity towards Indian spirituality India is the land you go to if you want to gain wisdom and I know the meaning of life and I think one major point which you which I personally learned was that the hippies were just a very small subsection of the counterculture and the counterculture was involved in many constructive causes and so they just when they reformulated that how that constructive constructive cause could be done through bhakti so instead of going on political marches for social justice he saw Harinam Sankirtan as a form of social action which was social action so we have to avoid generalizations so Prabhupada attracted a very broad demographic of people and allowed that usage of full-time hippies and part-time hippies so it’s quite insightful and then we moved on so Prabhupada still had to do the hard work of of presenting Krishna conscious and you said one while there were while there was appreciation for Indian spirituality like a generic thing but overall and Prabhupada presented the whole picture you could say the whole product and that was what attracted and then you also mentioned that during Prabhupada’s time there was a mood of inclusion and people from different nationalities and different sexual orientations they all lived and together and they so they they all practice bhakti together and then we moved on to modern times or today’s world we could say so because of various internal dynamics in India or in America and it’s in America we became our movement became primarily catering towards Indians and then we discussed about how Krishna consciousness is not a religion in the sense that today science is being weaponized to critical God and condemn religion and Prabhupada was strongly against that that this was the only project that bhakti wanted to put money into without expecting any returns from this is proper very conscious so how important proper that was a proper and then broadly in today’s world Indians have become software engineers and they’re prominent but it’s more that it’s a utilitarian appreciation that if you can expand my bottom line and wherever you are from doesn’t matter I will you know you can we will work together but that is also another kind of silo that are people are being put in but the but overall in today’s world because there is some some movement toward non-judgmentality and multiculturalism so there are some positives but more important is that we are being increasingly seen as a religion and that is why we will not be able to attract a broad demographic and then I think the key takeaway toward the end was that we have to show how our wisdom can address problems in the real world today problems like especially the environmental crisis or political violence in different parts of the world and if we do that then that is how actually we are we are carrying forward our legacy and you said otherwise our declarations for loving Krishna or loving everyone they are just hollow lies and yes as devotees we may we can’t we have to go beyond making sloganeering that solution to all problems but actually show how we can offer solutions and then we can and then we can actually attract a lot more people otherwise we don’t deserve to attract some people more people and if we don’t do something urgently there may not be a world left to preach to that was very you could say empoweringly sobering if I may say thank you Prabhu you want to add any concluding words not this time that’s very grateful for you for what you do giving me a chance to spout off I am grateful that you are sharing not just your head but your head and heart together so compassionately thank you very much I look forward to having many more podcasts with you in the future Hare Krishna thank you Hare Krishna