Working with Hindu organizations for common causes, The Monk’s Podcast 167 with Mahaprabhu Prabhu

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna Mahaprabhu. Hare Krishna. Thank you very much for joining the Monks Podcast.
Thank you very much for inviting me. It’s very nice to be with you. To see you face to face.
Face to Zoom. Nice way of putting it. Zoom to Zoom, we can say.
Yeah. So, I am one of the editors of Back to Godhead. So, we had received an article of yours for publication on what you did for Incredible India.
And it was amazing. I had no idea that within our movement, we have artists who have so much penetration in the western world, European world. And then when we interacted, I saw your pictures with Narendra Modi and several other eminent leaders in India as well as Europe.
So, I suspect that many of our viewers may not know how far-reaching your influence is. But what I do know is that you are a pioneer in many areas in the movement of artistic presentation of Krishna consciousness and also in communications. I think the art could be a separate podcast we’ll have in future.
In communications, you pioneered the revival of the Islam Communications Journal, which is a very important publication after it was in hibernation for 10 years. And in the current context with respect to the terrible events that have happened in Bangladesh for our devotees, you have been the forefront of galvanizing support, especially in Europe, to ensure the safety of the devotees there and to ensure that justice is done. Actually, right after this podcast, I’m going around the corner to the Bangladesh Ambassador to hand over four letters of protest from four different organizations.
So, it’s right now, today. Thank you for making time in spite of this critical time for all of us as a movement also. So, I thought that it’s good that we could have this podcast today.
Broadly, we can discuss about how we can work with other Hindu, Vedic, Indic organizations for causes that we all share interest in. It could be protection of Dharma, sharing of bhakti, even respect for India and Indian culture, Indian art. So, there are many shared causes that we have.
So, that is a broad topic I thought we could discuss. If that’s okay with you today. Yes, yes.
Yeah, we’ll leave the art part for another podcast. It’s a completely different world. The communication world and the art world.
So, today, maybe we could start a little bit with how you were introduced to Krishna Consciousness and then how you came to the service of communications. Yeah, maybe I can go a little bit before that that will give an idea why I’m so much involved in the arts because of my personal background. I’m born in Uruguay, South America, in a very small country that is quite liberal and very secular to some degree even though Catholics are the majority of the population.
But still, it’s just barely majority, like 50% or something like that. It’s a very secular country. And I’m born in a family which is an interfaith marriage because my father was Jewish, from a Jewish background.
My mother was Catholic. And my father was a very well-known artist from Uruguay. So, I was brought up in the art world from very small galleries, museums, workshops of artists, and the smell of paint and the smell of oil on the paint.
So, basically, I was brought up in this art world and took time in my Krishna Consciousness to bring it out. But from the last, like, 14 years, I’ve been dedicating a lot of energy and time to promote the art. So, that’s the link between why I’m promoting the art so much.
It’s connected with my upbringing and also the fact that my father is a very well-known artist. And by selling his artwork, a part of that can be used for promoting devotional art and spiritual art. So, that we can talk about another time.
But I just wanted to make the link. But I did mention that I come from a very secular country. And though my father was Jewish, my mother was Catholic, they never really gave me any religious education.
They allowed me to kind of grow up and make up my own mind. So, just to also make the connection between my education and communications, I was brought up… I did primary school in the United States, in New York City, which was obviously one of the most liberal places. I was there in New York City when Prabhupāda was visiting in the early 70s.
I didn’t meet him, of course, because I was a very young boy. But I did see the devotees chanting on the streets on 34th Street and 14th Street when I was small. And it always captured my attention.
I did all my primary schooling in the United States, in New York, but then my father died. I was only 11 years old. So, I went back to Uruguay with my mother.
And there was military government. It was a dictatorship. It was very harsh.
Uruguay is a very democratic country, but it had a seven-year period of heavy dictatorship, military dictatorship. And it was a very big shock for me. School was very formatted.
You had to wear a tie to go to school. You couldn’t have long hair. You had to have… The last button had to be closed.
There was somebody controlling that at the entrance of the school. So, it was very much the opposite of New York City. So, I did my secondary school there.
And then I went back to the United States to a university in upstate New York, in Syracuse, to study political science, international law and political science. My idea was to get involved in politics, go back to Uruguay and change the country and change the world. It was very utopian.
I had a lot of hopes to change the world through politics. But the professors were so good in the university that they completely changed my perspective on what politics can actually do for the world, change the world. They were so good that politics is very limited.
Many things are at play, at stake. So, there’s not much you can do within politics, which is true. So, then I kind of diverted my attention more inward and I said, well, if I can’t change the world, let me change myself.
That’s fascinating. So, your political studies professors were good and you’re saying their goodness was that they pointed out the limitations of politics. That’s fascinating.
They were so good that they drove away all my utopian nature to change anything in Uruguay or the world. Sorry, if I’m not able to catch this. Are you being sarcastic that they’re so good? Actually, they presented their objective.
They were good in teaching how politics actually works. I was a little bit idealistic. I was thinking politics had a bigger cause and plan and, you know, whatever.
I had a much more idealistic idea of politics, but they were actually teaching real politics, international politics and all that. So, then I kind of changed my focus and I said, if I can’t change the world, I said, let me at least change myself. So, then I became more interested in spirituality and I was immediately attracted to the East, to Buddhism, Hinduism and very, very, very quickly, in a question of weeks, I decided to go to India, dropped my studies the last semester of school.
So, what was it? Nothing in your upbringing seems to have connected you with India or the East. So, what exactly did you get? Nothing in my upbringing. It just came from inside.
An attraction for the East. I was not attracted to Judaism or Christianity, philosophically let’s say, but I was very attracted to Buddhism, impersonalism and then later on to Vaishnavism. So, I was definitely attracted to go to India.
I felt that that’s where the answers to my spiritual questions would be and my spiritual path was taking me to India. So, I decided to take all the money from my studies, which my mother didn’t like very much, and go on a trip to India, preferably by land. I wanted to go through Europe and or go by land to India to discover myself and to discover spirituality.
But I managed to visit the place where my mother came from in Basque country, in North Spain. And then I went to Paris, where I was on my way to go to Lithuania, where my father came from. But in Paris, on Christmas Eve, 24th of December, I was very interested in Indian spirituality.
I was looking for the Bhagavad Gita, actually, to buy a Bhagavad Gita. I had plenty of money because I had all the money from my studies to travel around the world. So, then I met the devotees on the street.
How old were you? Had you completed your studies or you’re still studying? I was at my last semester for a bachelor’s degree. So, I was like 19, almost 19, 20, something, 20, something. And your bachelor’s was in what? In political science and international relations.
Okay, political science. And then I met the devotees chanting on the Place Saint-Michel in Paris, very nicely, a big Harinam. They were distributing Prasadam, Ladoo, which I devoured, I loved.
And they were also giving Bhagavad Gitas for free. And for me, that was like, I was looking for the Bhagavad Gita, and they were giving the Bhagavad Gita for free. So, then for me, it was like, wow.
So, the devotees gave me a Bhagavad Gita, and then that connection was very powerful. I tried to read it, to understand it. It was very difficult, of course, at that moment.
But then I very quickly decided to join the movement in Paris, in 1982. And since I joined the movement, I’ve done many different services. Of course, in the early days, everybody was on Harinam or Sankirtan.
So, after a few months of Harinam, I went on Sankirtan as a Brahmachari, traveling all over France, doing missionary activities, distributing books. And that lasted for several years. Of course, there was a crisis in France when our leader, Guru, left, Bhagavan left, and the whole yatra kind of collapsed.
Even administratively, it was kind of a mess. And I depended on proper administration from the movement to be able to stay, because I was a foreigner. So, in order to stay, I had to get some type of paper from the movement.
And they couldn’t even supply that. It was so dysfunctional at that moment. So, I had to leave.
After some time, I had to leave France, and I went to the UK. And I continued doing Sankirtan in the UK for about a year and a half. So, all this was which year, roughly? I left France in 87.
Okay. And then I stayed in England for a year, and then I came to Belgium. And there, I kind of stayed in Brussels for a while, and then I joined in Radhidesh, where I stayed for many, many years.
I’m still there. And I continued doing Sankirtan for several years. But I was also getting more involved in management, little by little.
Of course, when I became Grihastha, after 10 years of Brahmachari, then I really got into management in Radhidesh. I helped develop the tourism department and many infrastructure facilities to make Radhidesh a nice place for visitors and tourists. So, I was involved in management there for many years.
But communication… Sorry, what we have behind is the Radhidesh backdrop, isn’t it? Yes. I will tell you the story a little later, because it’s very much connected to the topic of today. It’s a very interesting thing that happened.
I will mention it a little bit later. And so, I got involved in communication very early on, because for me, it was natural from preaching on the street with books, to also representing our movement to the higher echelons of society, the leaders of society. For me, it was a natural thing to try to help the movement in that field.
And for me, it was easy because of my education and speaking several languages and things like that, so it was easy to interact with people from the leadership positions in society. Plus, I saw the need, the urgent need, because the movement in Europe, especially in France and in Belgium, had a very, very difficult time in the 80s and 90s because of the cult accusations that were going on in the media with politicians. Our movement had a very, very difficult time in France and still has, but it was very difficult in those days.
And so, the need to do communication was a question of survival, of existence, because we were so heavily treated and accused by the media, anti-culture organizations, and governments. So, for me, it was a natural thing to do communication. I always liked it, and I’m still doing it.
It’s something that I love to do. So, you basically started in the community in 97, 98, 10 years or later than that? Yes, I started around, let’s say, committed to communication, the communications department in Belgium in 96, I would say, and then also in Europe with Shona Karishi, participating in conferences and being very motivated and interested in that. Until Shona Karishi stepped down from communications in Europe as the minister, or the director of communications for Europe, then I was asked if I wanted to do it for Europe, which I agreed, I accepted, and I’ve been doing it for many years now, to help Europe maintain whatever communications efforts we’ve done, and to develop into much more professional communications departments and strategies for all of Europe.
In Europe, it’s still very much needed. It’s needed all over the world, actually, but in Europe it’s a question of more life or death kind of thing. It was, at least.
Now, it’s less, but it’s definitely very important to do communications. And then the art part, the art service… Sorry, let me just say one clarification. So when we say that communications was a matter of survival, so generally, what exactly do we mean by that? You’re saying that if we are being pursued negatively, then to actively work to change our perception, that was what was needed.
Otherwise we would be persecuted. So maybe you could just clarify a little bit about what communications involves so that how it helps us survive and eventually grow? In Europe, because of survival, we had to develop a communications department and strategy and the leaders gave support in the early 90s. There was a lot of meetings and the leaders kind of woke up to the importance of communications because of the necessity.
So I was just saying that unfortunately in the past, a lot, but even to the present, communications is mainly seen as an emergency department when we’re attacked, when there’s problems in the media or with governments or like now, for example, attacks in Bangladesh. So it’s much more, it’s seen as a reactive kind of effort and we’re trying in the communications ministry with Anuttama and all the devotees around the world to make it into a very systematic activity of our movement, not proactive. 90% proactive and only 10% reactive.
But we have the tendency to be 90% reactive and only 10% proactive. So we want to switch that because proactive means you will be ready, you will have the relationships, you will have the context, you will have the vision, you will have everything that it takes to help the movement go forward in its activities and its mission. Reactive means you’re always doing patchwork, you’re trying to help solve an emergency here and there.
I remember I had done the communications course with Anuttama Prabhu. It was quite a paradigm opening experience for me because generally thought was that we interact with the world to preach to them and to make them devotees. And if they’re not willing to become devotees, then what is the point of spending time with them? But the idea was that, what struck me at that time is that there will be some people who will become devotees but we want that those who don’t become devotees should also be favorable to us, not hostile to us.
So broadly, if I remember right, communications one of the purposes is to create a receptive atmosphere for our community. Sankirtan friendly world. Sankirtan friendly world.
Okay, that’s beautiful. So yeah, but basically yes, we want everybody to be favorable to us even if they don’t become devotees which is 99.999% of the population in the world. But specifically communications department focuses on the leadership of the world, means the political leadership, the media, the religious leadership, you know, the academics and Hindu organizations as well because they have the keys to open many doors that will make our preaching much more successful, that will make our activities much more successful.
If governments close doors, if the media closes doors, if academics close doors, if all these leaders close doors because of perception or because of things that we have actually done, then makes our preaching much more difficult. So we need to have good relationship with these persons. They have to appreciate our message, our integrity, our, you know, and that’s what we’re doing in communications.
We’re trying to build bridges and relationships with many, many different people and organizations that will help what we’re trying to do in the world, you know, our mission. Okay, so communications is not just say when we have some newsworthy events, we have some press conferences, have some reporters coming in and doing the coverage. It’s having working good relationships with you could say the with the opinion leaders of society or the opinion shapers of society broadly.
Opinion shapers as well as the people in power. Yeah. Media is an important aspect as well.
So we definitely want to have good relationship with the media. Now you were saying, yes, something happens and we do a press release. That’s a specific event.
Yes, we have to do that. But in order to have the media cover your press release or your event, it’s much more easy if you have relationships with them. If you have an ongoing relationship with them, if you know who the journalists are, if you know, you know, if you can contact them, if you have to start from scratch, it’s much more difficult.
So even for media, it’s important to build relationships with them so that we can, you know, we can count on them when we have like now, for example, we don’t have so much media relationships here in Belgium and we sent out tons of press releases yesterday to the French speaking media, Dutch speaking media, English speaking media for our demonstration of tomorrow and Sunday. We hope that they will cover it. We hope some will come.
But because we don’t have, you know, we don’t have the infrastructure, the resources to actually actively cultivate them or have a relationship with them ongoing, then it’s like starting from scratch all the time. It’s much more difficult than having a strong communication department that has an ongoing relationship, not only with political leaders, but also with the media. So media is very important.
As you said, it’s very, very important. That’s okay. So one of the reasons why I was, for me, the paradigm altering experience to do that course is because sometimes or maybe at the early stages in our movement and even at the early stages in our individual Krishna consciousness, we often have a very strong we-they mentality that, you know, we are devotees and they are, I don’t even like the word karmi now.
It is such a, it is we speak in such an erogatory sense, you could say, the rest of the world. So almost we make the rest of the world a bad place filled with maya and then that’s why communicating with them seems to be not only unnecessary, it can also be, it can be seen as unsafe for our own bhakti and our own spirituality. So, was this, the idea of communications itself, was it something which evolved based on devotees experience? You said when you got involved, it was already moving and Sadhguru was taking it forward.
So did you also feel that did you go through that we-they mentality phase and then you had to outgrow it or you never, because you had a liberal upbringing, that didn’t happen for you? Well, this, obviously in the very beginning when you joined the movement, especially in the West, because it’s a very radical change of culture, you know, our eating habits, our dressing habits, our cleaning habits, our cleanliness habits, you know, so many habits change drastically when we become devotees, then there is a kind of like, yes, maybe a little bit fanatical phase or us and them kind of phase because to distinguish that we are trying to become devotees and they are not trying to become devotees. So, I think this, but it’s a very simplistic approach. It’s much more complex like that.
First of all, we are not devotees, we are trying to become devotees. So, devotees who think they are devotees. I was going to comment on that, very beautiful way of putting it.
Devotees who think that they are devotees, they are not very well situated, we are trying to become devotees, it’s a lifetime project. And others might be less inclined or they might be trying to become devotees in different traditions, so we have to respect that others might also be trying to become devotees as much as we are trying to do so in our own tradition. So, everything is much more grey than us and them, black and white, demon and devotee, you know, things like that.
Communications is not necessary for every devotee. First of all, yeah, some level of maturity has to be there, some level of qualification and expertise because when you are interacting with leaders of society, they have certain material standards and of course sometimes moral standards or whatever that you need to reciprocate properly with. So, devotees who do communications have to be able to express themselves properly, speak proper, the different languages that they have to communicate in.
They have to have some general education in many areas, to be able to talk to religious leaders, politicians, academics, etc. So, there is some level of qualification that is needed and of course some level of maturity. We can’t approach these persons in a very neophyte, radical, black and white, neophyte kind of approach.
You have to have a little bit of maturity when you speak with people of standing in society. So, it’s not that every devotee can do communications but many devotees could if they wanted to, if they have a calling for that and it’s a very important department in our movement. I think the topic of today is, let’s say, ISKCON and Hinduism or Hindu organizations because that’s a little bit the aspect of communication that we wanted to focus on today because otherwise communication is super broad and you can talk about 50 different areas and aspects.
That’s true. That’s a good introduction. So, thank you for that.
Now, regarding Hindu organizations, it does seem that we have a how should we put it? We have a strange aversion or antipathy or at least apathy towards those who are closest to us. In my classes, before I was introduced to bhakti also, I used to read quite extensively. I was a reader.
So, sometimes I draw from what I had read in the past in giving my talks and writings. So, it struck me that I can quote from people like Oscar Wilde and I can quote from Shakespeare and I can quote from some William Wordsworth and Abraham Lincoln. But if I quote from leaders outside our tradition, what are you doing? So, it seemed a very strange thing to me when I thought about it.
So, it does seem that we have a lot of hesitation towards that. So, it’s not unique to us. It’s not unique to ISKCON or Hindu organization.
It happens with every religion. Many times, within certain religions, the groups that are the most close to each other are the ones that have the most tensions and sometimes, you know, even wars, whatever, like in Christianity, the Catholics against the Protestants and things like that. So, it’s a common thing that sometimes when people are very close yet different, you have a lot of apprehension.
So, I just wanted to kind of and I’m sure you’re going to ask me the question about you know, about Prabhupada because I think that should be the beginning of our discussion. You know, how did Prabhupada approach this topic of Hinduism and Hindu and of course throughout his books, there’s tons and tons of quotes, we’re not Hindu, we’re not Hindu, we’re not Christian, we’re not Jewish, we’re not American, we’re not Indian. So, my understanding of that is that Prabhupada was obviously establishing a spiritual movement in a very different culture, in the United States, in the 60s, in a very liberal period of history.
Then, he was focused you know, most of his energy was focused in the spiritual dimension of establishing a movement. So, in other words, he was very much focused in establishing spiritual principles of that we’re not this body, we’re a spirit soul. And so, in an absolute, in a spiritual dimension, in a spiritual, in an absolute terminology, of course we’re not Hindu, but we’re not Indian either, we’re not man, and we’re not woman, and we’re not Christian, or whatever.
So, he was trying to establish this principle, which obviously is a very spiritual principle. And he was not so much interacting with society on social, political, you know, humanitarian issues, because he was focused on establishing a spiritual organization from a particular tradition, from the Chaitanya Vaishna tradition, so that his energy was mostly focused on that. But whenever there was a need, that we were attacked, let’s say, externally by court cases, or you know, threats of closing down, or you know, heavy attacks from the external world, he had no problem in immediately using the word Hindu to identify ourselves to something much bigger than ISKCON, because ISKCON was, okay, you know, we think we’re very big, and very important, but you know, at that time we were maybe like a few hundred devotees, or a few thousand devotees around the world, and Hindus were still like, you know, 500 million, or 800 million around the world, so he didn’t hesitate to use the fact that ISKCON was a Hindu organization to defend ISKCON from attacks from the external world, from, you know, legal court cases, or the media, so he was very pragmatic and very, you know, correct in doing so, because socially, obviously, we were seen as a Hindu organization by the external world, that was quite obvious, maybe not by devotees, but by the external world.
That is true. When you’re speaking this, I was thinking about I’m in Mumbai now, the Juhu Temple, when it was attacked, the way we got saved when one government officer had come to demolish it, an influential local politician, and one of the life members of ISKCON called him and he says, you know, in your area, a Hindu temple is being demolished. He’s a hero, how can a Hindu temple be demolished? So he wouldn’t have cared much if, okay, an ISKCON temple would have been demolished.
So he didn’t care for that so much. So I appreciate this point very much that it’s transcendental. So this point that Prabhupada is focusing on the spiritual, so he is not, in that sense, rejecting everything else.
He’s focusing on a particular thing, but whenever other dimensions of reality are required to be recognized, he’s ready to recognize that. Generally, I give another example for devotees who hesitate to say that we are not Hindus, I give another example that it is an offense to say that the dham is in the material world and Vrindavan is a dham. It is an offense to say that the dham is in the material world and Vrindavan is a dham, but yeah, it is in the spiritual world, but in the geography of the world, we are not going to put Vrindavan in China or Pakistan.
It’s going to be located in India. Similarly, Krishna consciousness is transcendental, but in the demographic classification of this world, we have to put it somewhere and that will be put within Hinduism. So it’s not something which… Obviously, on a transcendental level, on a pure devotional level, we’re not Hindu, but we’re not Vaishnavs either, because I don’t think in the spiritual world you have different religions and different denominations, Gaudiya Vaishnavs and Ramanuja Vaishnavs and Madhva Vaishnavs.
Everybody is a devotee. You might have different camps of different Gopis or Manjaris or whatever, but you don’t have different religions, because that’s something from this material world. Different paths, different spiritual traditions.
We have to be a little bit careful with whom we’re talking about and at what level of discussion we’re talking about. Most devotees jump too quickly to the highest platform and they speak from that platform a little bit artificially sometimes to persons who are on this material platform and they’re talking about material issues that ISKCON is obviously involved with, because we’re not aloof from this world. We are in this world.
We have an organization. You might ask, what is in our tradition about working with different organizations? My reply to that would be, well, what reference do we have in our tradition of organizations like ISKCON? There aren’t any references, because now, in the present day, time, place and circumstance, organizations are needed and that’s why Prabhupada created the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. If there was no need of an organization, we would just be Gaudiya Vaishnavas like they’ve been Gaudiya Vaishnavas in India for hundreds of years and Vaishnavas for thousands of years, without need of an international organization to manage the affairs of a spiritual movement.
So, times are different. Now, we do need organizations. We do need advocacy.
We do need to work with others. We’re not isolated in the world. There are many groups, Hindus and non-Hindus, with whom we can cooperate, work together on many, many areas.
So, I think times are different now. I was thinking about what you said about there is a precedent for organizations itself. So, in many ways, we are in uncharted territory and having said that, I’ve been reading a little bit of Indian history and I found that, to a large extent, South India was protected from say Islamic invasion, although some parts were invaded.
So, when I read about Indian history, it seems that say for the Advaitins and Dvaitins, Udupi and Sringeri, they’re very opposed to each other. I could say centuries of intellectual war practically. But, when either of those places were, if and when either of those places were, not Udupi necessarily, not Sringeri necessarily, but any of their associate holy places were ransacked by invaders, Islamic extremists at that time, then they would seek refuge elsewhere and the nearest ashram happened to be of the opposite intellectual camp.
They wouldn’t reject them. So, they would offer refuge and shelter and support. Of course, at that time, overall society was also pious.
So, in that sense, others didn’t have that much difficulties of subsistence. In moments of crisis, then we see more the similarities as well and we also can work together more easily. When things are fine, we focus on the differences and we argue and fight philosophically because we don’t agree.
But, when the potato, when something is burning, then we might say, oh, let’s work together. Let’s see the commonalities. Dharma is common and the belief of the soul and karma and incarnation are common.
So, so many things are common with that tradition that you were mentioning. I think sometimes we have to be pragmatic in certain occasions. Just going back to an earlier point which you mentioned that in general, it’s not just unique to ISKCON.
Most organizations have the biggest or some of the severest conflicts with those who are close to them. So, that is could also be one reason is that maybe because both of them are catering to overall the same people and that’s why they are in competition. In one sense, Protestants and Catholics or even two denominations of Protestantism or two denominations of Hinduism, they are to some extent catering to the same audience.
And in that sense, there will be some competition. The potential audience would be the same. And that is why Samal Krishna Maharaj makes this point in his thesis on the Krishna theology.
So, he said sometimes the strength of Prabhupada’s negative Prabhupada’s negative statements about some other Hindu organizations the Hindu leaders are quite strong at times. But he says the strength of those negative statements was not based on how wrong those ideologies were as much as how likely those ideologies were to take his potential followers away from Krishna or his followers away from Krishna. So, sometimes we may over-emphasize some of Prabhupada’s strong statements and we may think that alone has to be the parameter for deciding how to function.
But Prabhupada also respected other other Hindu leaders, Vedic leaders, whatever you want to call it, Hindu leaders, very interacted with them and I think Prabhupada was, as you said, we have to be pragmatic. Sometimes we focus too much on Prabhupada’s transcendental teachings and neglect his pragmatism. Yeah.
We have evolved, we have matured, we’re much bigger, we’re more interacting with the world. You know, things change and ISKCON will be very different in 100 years from now and in 500 years from now. So, to think that everything is going to be always the same is wrong.
Things change and our approach to things have to change sometimes. I’m not talking about the philosophical truths or the, you know, moral principles, but I’m talking about interacting with the world and issues happening around us. Now, I just wanted to go back to why is it so difficult sometimes for devotees to accept or say that we are Hindu.
Maybe for Indians it might be a little different because it might be more easy for Indians to accept culturally the word Hindu, but in the West it’s very difficult. I mean, I’m dealing with this constantly. Like, for example, just to give an example, I’m the Executive Director of the Hindu Forum of Belgium and people of Asian origin, whether Indian or Bangladeshi or Afghanistani or Mauritius or Nepal or whatever, they don’t have any problem to identify with the word Hindu and being Hindu.
But any spiritual organization, based on Vedic teachings, spiritual practices, who are mostly practiced by Westerners, they have a big problem with identifying with the word Hindu. So we had to make a subtitle of the organization to a platform for Vedic spiritual traditions so that they feel a little bit more comfortable because the word Hindu, that’s what I wanted to kind of say now. Why we so many times say we’re not Hindu is because the word Hindu has been identified with certain things that we don’t really agree with.
So I wrote a little document which is quite interesting. Very basic things that we can refer to when devotees say we are Hindu, we’re not Hindu. So my answer to that is, if you ask the question, is ISKCON a Hindu organization? I would say yes and no, depending what you mean by Hindu, because depending on what you mean by Hindu, that’s what we say, yes or no.
So I would say first the yes parts. If you mean by Hindu a family of Vedic spiritual traditions, yes, ISKCON is a Hindu organization. If you mean by Hindu a spiritual organization influenced by Indian culture, of course we’re a Hindu organization.
We have so much Indian culture in our movement. If you mean by Hindu a spiritual organization trying to live according to Dharma, of course we try to follow Dharma, it’s obvious. If you mean by Hindu a spiritual organization accepting the Bhagavad Gita as authoritative, of course we’re Hindu.
If you mean by Hindu a spiritual organization that accepts the eternality of the soul, Atma, the principle of karma and incarnation, of course we’re Hindu. These are basic Hindu principles. If you mean by Hindu a spiritual organization pursuing the goal of one of the different types of liberation, of course we accept the version of Mukti, liberation.
But then of course the other aspect which we don’t agree with, and we have a lot of difficulty with identifying as Hindu, is when you mean, if you mean by Hindu a nationalistic organization, basically an Indian kind of organization, no, we’re not just Indian. We’re not only pro-India. If you mean by Hindu a sectarian religious organization, no, we don’t want to be sectarian.
We want to be very open. The more sectarian you become, the more limited you become spiritually, because you’re only focused on very sectarian principles. If you mean by Hindu an ethnic identity, like South Asian, no, we’re not Hindu, because so many devotees are from other parts of the world, from different ethnicities.
If you mean by Hindu the belief that God is impersonal and human beings should become one with God, of course we’re not Hindu, if that’s the meaning of Hindu. And that’s the biggest problem devotees have, because the Advaita tradition and to some degree those who worship different demigods, they have kind of identified very strongly with the word Hindu and they kind of almost redefined the word Hindu as being Advaita only or demigod worship. And of course we feel very strongly against that.
So when people mean by Hindu that, then we are not Hindu, of course. If you mean by Hindu a mix of different beliefs and practices, many many Hindus think that Hindu means you accept everything and everything. You accept Vaishnavism, Advaita and demigod worship all at once and it’s all fine.
No, we’re not into syncretic mixture of geologies and traditions. If you mean by Hindu polytheism, worship of different demigods, also we’re not Hindu. And then if you mean by Hindu spiritual organization, discriminating according to one’s birth, not by one’s qualification, but by birth, means the caste system, the misinterpretation of the Vaishnav system.
No, we’re not Hindu. If you mean by Hindu the caste system of birth only identification, we’re not Hindu. So in many ways we’re not Hindu, in many ways we’re Hindu.
So I think the biggest question we have to ask ourselves now, Aziz Khan. This is a very insightful discussion. So I think I’m going to the nitty-gritty of the whole thing.
I think the biggest discussion that we should have, Aziz Khan, because this topic is going on a lot. Are we Hindu or are we not Hindu? Of course, those who focus on these negative things, they’re saying no, no, no, we’re not Hindu. And those who focus a little bit more on the positive things that I mentioned, we have a tendency to say, yes, you know, we’re Hindu.
So my question is that we have basically, if we want to clarify this once and for all, there’s two very good positions that we could take. They’re both difficult. Neither of them are easy.
I would have a tendency to favor the first one that I’m going to mention, which is to redefine what we mean by Hinduism internationally. To redefine constantly, constantly, to make sure that this principle that I just mentioned, that those, that people don’t represent Hinduism as being only Advaita. So we have to make sure that Hinduism includes Vaishnavism, includes all the positive things that I mentioned.
So that’s something we can do, to redefine Hinduism and embrace it in one way, by redefining it. So you embrace the notion of being Hindu and Hinduism by redefining it, but taking all the mistakes and misrepresentations away. If you don’t mind, and it’s a very important point you’re making that the answer is not necessarily black and white.
So it’s almost like you are changing the framework of the discussion. You’re expanding the ambit of the, not expanding, you’re analysing the ambit of the term. But I appreciate that, because these are not questions which can have a it’s not a black and white answer.
It’s a nuanced answer. But can we really, do we have the right to redefine Hinduism? Because ultimately religions are not just prescriptive, they’re descriptive. So the Advaitic tradition is also a part, those who say that God is impersonal is also a part of Hinduism.
It’s like a policy or a strategy. If ISKCON would wholeheartedly or embrace this principle, ISKCON has quite some influence and influence in the world with other Hindu organisations and also with other religions as well. So we could gradually redefine what we mean by Hindu and embrace yes, we are Hindu, but by Hindu we mean this and not this, so redefine it, correct the mistakes and it’s not easy, it’s hard work.
The other option which is more, let’s say, pure let’s say, but also a lot of hard work, I will also mention that because ISKCON has to decide, I think, one or the other one or the other possibility, since so many leaders and so many devotees are against the word Hindu, based on the fact that, because Prabhupada said that we’re not Hindu, that’s one thing, but also based on the fact that Hinduism has been more or less appropriated by the Advaita traditions and by demigod worship, then we could try to distinguish Vaishnavism from Hinduism, like basically create a new world religion called Vaishnavism, which is different than Hinduism, not easy task because in the world Hinduism has quite a lot of acceptance from scholars and from religious leaders, etc. So to read to establish Vaishnavism as a separate religion than Hinduism which makes sense, because then you say, okay, Hinduism are the Advaita the syncretic, the demigod worship is whatever they want to be but Vaishnavs are something else Vaishnavism I’m not talking about ISKCON, because ISKCON is too small and it’s too partial as far as theology is concerned so we have to work with all Vaishnav organizations all Vaishnav sampradayas, it’s not an easy task to unite all the Vaishnavs like, it’s not easy to unite all the Hindus it’s also not easy to unite all the Vaishnavs as you said before, the more close we are the more difficult sometimes it is to work together with them, but that would be an option, if ISKCON feels very strong about not being Hindu and we are not Hindu, then the only thing we can do is by establishing Vaishnavism fully as a world religion full world religion but then you have to work with all the Vaishnav traditions and that’s not easy I can see that you have put a lot of thought in this, so it’s very clear sorry, I just appreciate this that if you don’t accept A, then what alternative is there it’s B and when you realize how difficult B is going to be okay, let’s work with A they both have advantages and disadvantages they both require work but I personally feel that at this moment in time it’s more wise and more easy and maybe even to some degree more acceptable internationally, worldwide is to redefine Hinduism and Vaishnavism is part of Hinduism and we’re not going to let other Hindu spiritual traditions hijack the term Hindu or Hinduism as we shouldn’t hijack it either in other words, we shouldn’t hijack Hinduism as being only Vaishnavism because I’ve seen in international conferences like the world parliaments of the religions that many times Hindu leaders gurus, spiritual leaders, when they are called upon to speak they present their tradition and I’m not talking only about the Veda followers but even Vaishnav followers Vaishnav gurus and leaders they present their tradition as being Hinduism and that’s to me not intellectually appropriate they have to start by saying within the Hindu family of spiritual tradition, my tradition or our tradition, whatever believes in this, this, this, this but to equate Gaudiya Vaishnavism and Chaitanya Vaishnavism with Hinduism wouldn’t be correct, as it’s not correct to equate Advaita tradition with Hinduism, which they do all the time they present Hinduism as being you know, Roman, etc, etc we hear that constantly so both sides have to learn to work together in the sense that we have big differences, theological differences, but we work under a bigger umbrella called Hinduism we defend that notion, but we respect the differences, and we can’t say we can’t appropriate the word Hinduism as being Advaita, or being Vaishnava, or being demigod worship, whatever that requires intellectual honesty, you know and doing the right thing, and cooperating on a practical level with organizations that are philosophically different, because I always tell when I do guided tours in Radesh, I say sometimes for us it’s more easy to have interfaith dialogue with monotheistic traditions from the West, than it is to have interfaith dialogue with Advaita traditions or polytheistic traditions in India but I think we have to separate the philosophical from the pragmatic, the philosophical is philosophical, and it’s about interfaith dialogue and we will have certain dialogues with certain organizations, and we will have other dialogues with other organizations and with some organizations you cannot have interfaith dialogue for example with those who don’t believe in the existence of the soul, or whatever because then you have really no point of, no point in common to discuss philosophically then you can only discuss on the pragmatic level and there we have to be very open we have to be able to work with anybody you know, even Buddhist, or whoever even humanist, who has some values, who has some moral values, some ethical values, if you go to the level of morality and ethics and social issues, and humanitarian issues, and human rights issues we should be able to work with anybody who has, you know, who we agree with, who can work with us in particular projects so, that’s my kind of, to separate the two philosophical, let’s keep it at the philosophy table, and pragmatic, let’s keep it at the pragmatic table, where it’s completely different table that’s so important that actually I worked with Giriraj Maharaj in helping edit his and not edit, some service in his book, on the Juhu project, so he told me one incident, that this Dr. Patel, at whose place Prabhupada had stayed when he initially went to New York he was a yoga teacher Mishra, not Patel, Mishra Mishra Yoga Studio so, after many years he came to meet Prabhupada and Prabhupada had lunch with him and they had a very cordial conversation and then, Giriraj Maharaj he was serving Prabhupada Prabhupada, isn’t he a Mayavadi and Prabhupada said philosophically, we argue like anything, but culturally we are friends culturally we are friends so, that’s amazing on a pragmatic level he helped Prabhupada and Prabhupada appreciated very much what he did for him on a philosophical level he was willing to have a good fight so, you know, we have to be able to distinguish the two, philosophy philosophical differences and pragmatic and cultural similarities, pragmatic means it doesn’t even have to be cultural it just could be like a particular issue a humanitarian issue, human rights issue ethical issue we might agree with some organizations that are propagating certain issues that have nothing to do with the culture that’s what they believe in you know a lot of the vegan movement there is not much religiosity directly in it but they are promoting human elevation of human consciousness by stopping the eating of meat or at least decreasing it substantially that’s a big topic also that we have in our communications field ISKCON and veganism, it’s a huge topic but the reality is that in the west veganism is growing much faster than vegetarianism, much faster and you find now labels, for example of products, food products, you rarely see vegetarian, in the UK you do because there is a lot of Hindus and they are mostly vegetarian I mean, they like to hear the word vegetarian, but in the rest of Europe and America, it’s vegan people are becoming vegan and you have tons and tons and tons of products which are vegan labeled in the supermarket tons, you go to a supermarket and you find tons of products which are vegan, you rarely find a vegetarian label it almost doesn’t exist so they are really spreading and doing a lot of work so if we want to preserve the lack of vegetarian diet that Prabhupada in our tradition embraced we have a lot of work to do to create some alternatives to veganism otherwise we will, you know, beside the deities, we will have to probably become vegan as well, most of us okay, that’s a significant challenge, I think that’s a whole big subject but I was just giving an example of where we may share values and where we can, at least they are decreasing animal slaughter, and that is something which we appreciate so, that’s true so Prabhu, it’s understood at one level, especially when danger comes that we need to work together so you mentioned earlier that you are the executive director of the Hindu forum so maybe you can share some of the activities that you have done with other Hindu activities, I think intellectually or in terms of tradition or precedents, I think we have established reasonably enough that this is important so what are some of the things which we were able to achieve by working with other Hindu organizations that we were not able to achieve okay, so that’s so, yeah, so basically some pragmatic issues or social issues organizational aspects human rights issues, all these things we can work together with other Hindu organizations very easily, I mean very easily we can do it, for example in Belgium the government recognizes religions and gives money for the priests maintains the places of worship for renovations gives education in schools and religions that are recognized, you have time for public television and radio, you can be a chaplain in the hospitals prisons and military, so the government gives hundreds and like almost a billion euros of money to religions of recognized religions and basic, of course ISKCON is not a recognized religion and Hindus are not a recognized religion Buddhists also not recognized, basically there’s many non-recognized religions so, there was no way hold on this is in Belgium, you’re talking about Belgium Hinduism is not a recognized religion, Buddhism also? no, in Belgium the recognized religions are historically are the Catholics, the Protestants the Jewish and the Anglicans because of the king of England, there’s not so many Anglicans in Belgium but because the king of Belgium was related to the king of England they got Anglicans recognized early on in the 19th century in the 20th century, the Muslims got recognition in 1974 mainly because of a crisis, an oil crisis the king of Saudi Arabia kind of put pressure on Belgium and said, look, if you want to get our oil you have to recognize Islam and you have to build a big mosque, you have to allow us to build a big mosque in Brussels, which they did a beautiful mosque in the center of Brussels so and then later the Orthodox got recognition and then later the humanists humanists are a very big group in Belgium the secular humanist traditions and then more recently yeah, they get all these benefits and it’s not just about the benefits which are very big, but it’s also the moral aspect of it, you know, when you’re recognized, you’re considered good you’re contributing to society you’re like a first class citizen, whatever, if you’re not recognized in Belgium it’s not very good, because they in 1997 they did a report on cults, and there’s 189 organizations which were put in that list of cults Islam is one of them and many others, of course Belgium was very black and white it was either you’re recognized and you get all the credit and recognition and money and everything, or you’re a cult and you’re bad and dangerous and etc. So we thought in the early days when we were put in that list, you know, there’s no use to fight what the government did, we have to try to become recognized, and there’s no way we would become recognized as ISKCON, not just because we’re small, but because the Belgian government has made it very clear that they did not recognize specific denominations, they forced the Protestants to work together, they forced the Muslims to work together, they forced the Jewish to work together, they forced the Buddhists to work together they have to have a common platform, even if they have very different denominations and organizations, that’s the policy of the Belgian government so from a policy point of view and also from a pragmatic point of view because ISKCON is not that big in Belgium it’s maybe 800 to 1000 persons who practice Christian conscience or who are sympathetic to Christian conscience, while there’s 25 thousand Hindus in Belgium, so it’s a difference of 1 to 25 so from a pragmatic and from a policy from the government point of view, we said well we have to work together with the Hindus so we did, we started in 2007 the Hindu Forum of Belgium and ISKCON played a leadership role, because, you know, and that’s what I will speak a little bit about later about the situation which is happening now in Bangladesh, ISKCON can play a leadership role because we have certain qualifications, certain assets that Hindus sometimes lack, and we can help them, and Hindus have certain assets and qualifications that we don’t have, that can help us so if we work together nicely, which I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s always a challenge, but we can get mutual benefit, so in Belgium we decided to work together, we created the Hindu Forum, there’s 12 different organizations 4 are ISKCON and 8 are non-ISKCON but ISKCON has a leadership role clearly, clearly, clearly sorry, so when you say that I just find it revolting almost revolting with a strong word, how dare any state government not recognize the ancient religion, we have the 4th biggest religion in the world if not the, I mean 3rd probably, 3rd biggest religion in the world and there are over a billion people following it more than billion, you would say so, I mean, what criteria does the government use for deciding that somebody I know China doesn’t recognize Hinduism, but that’s I thought it was like their authoritarian kind of streak, are there many countries in the world which don’t recognize Hinduism as a religion? well, depends what you mean by the word recognize first of all, in Belgium there’s the freedom of worship in the constitution and the European European fundamental rights so anybody can worship in Belgium that’s why this can exist, we have a non-profit organization, we can exist and there’s the Baha’is, and there’s the Buddhists, and there’s the Jains, and there’s the Sikhs, and there’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many other organizations, they can exist, so you can worship but to get a recognition means more than just we recognize in Belgium, recognition means you have access to public funds you have access to many facilities which they don’t give so easily so it’s like basically you get recognition for public subsidy or public spending to get money from the government, so we applied we applied in 2013 the Hindu forum, we’ve been waiting for many many years to get the first stage of recognition is a small subsidy for our secretariat which we asked in 2016 and for one reason or another it’s dragging on, dragging on, dragging on so now we’re at a point where we’re putting real pressure we wrote a letter to the minister, the new minister we wrote a heavy letter that, you know, now we want an answer, are you going to give the subsidy soon or not because, you know, we want a yes or no if it’s no, we will do whatever we have to do and if it’s yes, ok, we know he will do it within a short time so probably he will write us back in the next few weeks saying, yes, in the beginning of next year we’ll give you the subsidy, etc, etc the Buddhists are also waiting for 13 years to get the full recognition so that shows how we can work with Hindus that’s a very specific case of Belgium, other countries have different arrangements every country in Europe has a different state church relation, it’s not all the same Belgium is like this, so we work together with the Hindus and I think this model could be used in many other places in the world, we have established in Europe several Hindu forums which are connected with where ISKCON is connected, for example Hindu Forum of Britain, ISKCON was a very important founder and member of Hindu Forum of Britain you have, we’ve created also Hindu Forum in Sweden there’s a Hindu organisation in Spain, there’s a in Holland there’s the Hindu Council that existed much before us because there’s a big Hindu population in Holland, so there’s many possibilities to work together now that the present president of Hindu Council of Holland is a devotee from ISKCON for the first time and they work as a president of this important organisation because it’s the biggest Hindu population in continental Europe, 250,000 Hindus in Holland so I think it’s to our advantage to work with the Hindus, but as I said we have to philosophically redefine it we have to learn how to work with Hindu organisations on certain things we agree, on other things we don’t agree when it’s common interest like advocacy or human rights or social recognition or benefits or all these kind of things, we work with a bigger body which is Hinduism when we want to make one of our points clear and they don’t share so much the importance of that point we do it separately you can be both, you can be Hindu and you can be ISKCON at the same time, you can work together with other Hindu organisations for some issues and you can push your issues separately on the side.
Just to give you an example in Europe there’s a very big organisation, it’s called KEK it represents all the Protestant churches of Europe, which is a lot like 100 and something organisations it’s millions and millions and millions of people and it’s funny because their office in Brussels right next to their office is the church, the Evangelical Church of Germany, which is a member of the KEK, but they have their own building next door to do their own advocacy in their own lobby they have no problem to work with the KEK for certain issues and they have no problem to push on their own agenda and points on the side so I think ISKCON has to learn from that that we have to learn how to be able to work full heartedly with Hindu organisations in certain umbrella organisations and platforms and also do our own advocacy separately, it’s not one or the other it’s one and the other that’s my point it’s not black and white it’s not grey either that’s one of the fears that devotees may have that we may lose our identity in the kichidi but we can maintain our identity while working together I think the faith that we’ve come out of our younger phase and we should feel that we’re mature enough to be who we are, represent what we represent and at the same time work with others for common issues even for our own benefit but also for common issues I think we have to come out of that isolationist and fearful of this, fearful of that I think you can be ISKCON and be also a very important leader in the Hindu platforms Hindu umbrella organisations you can be both, no problem ok so you mentioned 3-4 things what we can work with is advocacy human rights I do remember that when our manor was under threat, it was a lot of Hindus came together I believe that time the manor was the biggest Hindu temple in UK so we worked together that is one example of we being protected so what is the we would have never been able to save the manor if it was not for the help of the Hindus, I mean the UK the UK has been able to work with Hindus and that’s why they are so successful, otherwise if they would have completely disconnected themselves from the Hindu community ISKCON I don’t even know if they would be around they might be around but very very very different than what we know it today much much much less influential much much less established than what the UK, ISKCON UK is now so working with Hindu organisations means what does this entail practically so do we for example go to their centres and bow down to their deities or how do we deal with people whose ideologies are different, so do we go for their festivals well you are bringing again the spiritual side because I understand you are fully absorbed in spirituality you are a monk, you are a full on preacher so you are more focused on the spiritual, so on spiritual level I think we have to learn how to be respectful I have been to Hindu temples we respect as Vaishnav we respect Lord Shiva, we respect the demigod, we respect we respect everything so we have to be respectful, it doesn’t mean that you have to give your heart when you bow down temples of Devatas is not that much of an issue you can always pray to them in a mood that they are devotees of Krishna but what about say centres which are actually promoting Advaitism how do we I don’t think we need to be involved in philosophical promotion because we are not going to speak and if they have like I don’t know what their spiritual activities might be but if we participate in some of their usually if we participate in something spiritual it’s in an interfaith type of dialogue so the context is interfaith dialogue because I for cooperation on social issues, humanitarian issues, human rights issues, we don’t need to discuss or participate in religious functions or spiritual programs so I think it’s two different two different things so they are also clear of what they are expecting from this kind of interaction so just interfaith is one thing intrafaith is also one thing like intrafaith means interfaith with your own tradition, organization but they are very similar intrafaith, interfaith and cooperating with organizations for particular issues particular campaigns or topics is another thing so with Hindu organizations there are many issues with Hindu organizations there are many issues that we can for example the recognition of Hinduism and ISKCON in a particular country the respect of ISKCON in a particular country that’s what the UK did ISKCON would not be so respected if it wasn’t the support of the Hindu community and Hindu organization the defense of human rights so many places ISKCON has been attacked in Kazakhstan in Russia in Hungary and without the help of India or Hindu organizations it would have been very difficult to protect those rights so we definitely need to work with them for that but we have to also learn how to not just ask for their help when we are in need but we also have to offer our help when they are in need because you know sometimes we want their help but we don’t want to give our help and that’s not part of human interaction human beings all these people are not silly they know if you just want something from them and you are not willing to give something to them they will not appreciate forget about the philosophy, forget about everything it’s just a human behavior so if you want to help you have to help also participate or be concerned or whatever you can do but if it’s just one-sided then people will say they want our help all the time but they are not willing to help us at all why should we help them? that’s a common human thought, isn’t it? so we will come off as very opportunistic in that way yeah so relationships are both ways, you know, if we want to help, if we want to work with Hindus we help them, they help us, we are all happy so Prabhu, you are going to mention about the castle in the background little bit you can talk so it’s a very interesting story and it’s a little bit relevant to today some devotees have reacted negatively why Radhidesh has the colors of the Indian flag oh really? I didn’t notice that ok and I’ll tell you the story of course we are not nationalistic it’s not there to promote India necessarily though we don’t have anything against India, we love India we go to India so it’s not neither one extreme or the other we don’t marry ourselves with India but we definitely don’t have a problem with India but in this case it’s very interesting because you might think why ISKCON putting the colors of the Indian flag on its castle, on its facade it wasn’t that we chose to do it, we got a phone call from the Indian embassy our friend, the cultural attaché Abhishek, saying that the Indian government, like one week before the 15th of August, which is the celebration day in India the Indian government, the ministry of foreign affairs probably the prime minister of India asked all the embassies, all the ambassadors around the world to illuminate with the Indian flag with the colors of the Indian flag an iconic building in that country to start, to mark to mark the beginning of the 75 years of Indian independence celebrations so the ambassador of India in Brussels thought, I will never get an iconic building in Brussels in three days, you know, like the Atomium or the Palace of the King or whatever, something like that it’s impossible, or the ambassador of India in the United States to get the White House or the Capitol or the Empire State Building or the Tour Eiffel whatever, iconic buildings in that particular country, that requires weeks and months of preparation so he said, I have two options in Belgium either the Jain temple, which is very beautiful it’s a real Vedic temple, Jain temple near Antwerp or Radhidesh, he had just been to Radhidesh a few weeks before, he liked it very much so he said, or Radhidesh, which is more typical of Belgium it’s a castle, medieval castle whatever, blah blah blah, so he phoned me and I said, yeah, no problem if you pay for the lights that you have to put in it’s a few hundred euros that it costs so then they contacted him, it was just three or four days before the 15th of August, so it was the middle of the summer, everybody’s on holidays in Belgium, so it was not easy to get a company that was very close to Radhidesh, just five kilometers from Radhidesh who has the equipment to light the castle so they came and they lit the castle and Radhidesh became the iconic building in Belgium to represent the Indian flag for Independence Day, for the celebrations of India, etc, etc so, and it was posted in the government official things, Twitter and all these things in English, so it was all over the place so for me it was a question of, it was an honor that the Indian government considered our small little temple castle in Belgium as an iconic building in the country to illuminate with the Indian flag, so out of reciprocation, out of respect out of appreciation, we of course agreed, as I said before, plus we don’t have anything against India on the contrary, we like India we’re constantly going to India so there’s no problem to have the Indian flag on Radhidesh, as it wouldn’t be a problem to have the Belgian flag, if the Belgian government, if the prime minister of Belgium would call us, can we illuminate your castle with the Belgian flag for Belgium Independence Day of course we will say yes why wouldn’t we say no you know, we live in Belgium, we you know, we’re part of the country and like that, so that was a story behind the colors of the flag because somebody would say, why are you coloring Radhidesh with the Indian flag, we didn’t do it it was a request from the Indian government and it was a very, we felt very honored to be able to do it. Yeah, and this is a wonderful way to reciprocate, like you said human interaction means, we have give and take, so they are requesting something from us, and it’s an honor for us also, and if we do it, then we also develop a relationship to that it’s wonderful. Exactly, probably next year will be the atomium, because they have a whole year to plan it but this year, because of the short notice we were chosen so it was time, place and circumstance that’s exactly what communications is about this was the right time, the right place and the right thing to do to reciprocate with the Indian government we were very happy that Modi glorified Prabhupada and that the Indian government made a beautiful commemorative coin so why wouldn’t we reciprocate with them with a small request like this, it would be very, very one-sided, if we want them to glorify ISKCON and glorify Prabhupada and give us facilities and love us and support us, and then when they ask something, we would say, no, no, we have nothing to do with India that would be very, very inappropriate behavior so we could help Hindu organizations in many ways, so one very clear example is what’s happening now in Bangladesh now Bangladesh, this story of Bangladesh has been going on, I’ve been hearing it for decades I’ve been, you know, as Hindu Forum of Belgium or Europe, we’ve been involved in other times where there have been attacks on Hindus, somewhere or other ISKCON has never been attacked at least not to the scale that it was attacked last week but now it hits ISKCON just like it hits every Hindu temple and people for decades now so now we’re part of the same suffering so for me, it was a golden opportunity to since ISKCON became aware and conscious of what happened, how horrible it is, the situation in Bangladesh not just for us, but for others as well it was a golden opportunity to try to work together with Hindus, of course, when these things happen, everything goes very fast, so you don’t have much time for planning and all that, but I did develop a plan which was, you know, plan to put maximum pressure on Bangladesh, which would have two steps, one step was immediate, which was related to the demonstrations and the letters that had to be given and all that to really work together with, wherever there were Hindu organizations, ISKCON should put all the energy to work with them to write letters, meet the ambassadors do demonstrations together on a common day or similar days, let’s say and then a second step is to put real pressure on the Bangladesh government to do what they have to do as a government one of their first duties is to protect its citizens, especially its minorities so they’re not doing that for decades and so it’s time now that we put real pressure on Bangladesh to do what they have to do, so this was a golden opportunity to really work with Hindu organizations on a big level to really change what’s happening in Bangladesh, or at least try to change, at least try to do the needful to try to change because it didn’t happen only to ISKCON, it’s been happening to Hindus for decades now, and I think we have to learn how to the same way that we’re suffering in pain for what happened to our temple and to our devotees, we have to also feel some pain for those Hindus who are suffering and try to help them on a bigger scale because it’s been going on for decades, you know, it’s like nothing has really changed in Bangladesh, it’s just like a broken record, it keeps happening every few months or a year or two or whatever So what you are saying is that we’ve been quite candid over here that this particular incident in Bangladesh is not just one-off, maybe this hit us, but if you consider the population of Bangladesh Hindu population at the time of Indian independence, at the time of its own independence from Pakistan and now there’s been a huge significant demographic decrease and that’s because of various reasons it’s not just killing, but it’s also just things were so bad that people immigrated or many were forcibly converted especially the incidents, I talk with some Bangladeshi devotees and devotees didn’t experience this, but they know about Hindu, sometimes girls get abducted and they are forced to marry the abductor and rapist and then they become like second or third wife of the Muslim family and then all the children become Muslim so it has been going on for decades actually, what you said Yeah, it’s actually a tragedy it’s a tragedy, it’s basically like a genocide but done in a different way it’s done gradually without much awareness of the world, the western world and I can tell you frankly that western politicians, western organizations even western media, western human rights organizations they are very very little aware of what’s happening to Hindus in Bangladesh, very little mainly because the human rights, this brings us to another issue which is I’ve been analyzing a lot for many years, of course on the one hand Hindus have a tendency to not be able to work together because of these philosophical differences or whatever differences they can’t get together on pragmatic issues so the lack of unity and cooperation to work together is not just us, it’s common with many other Hindu organizations that’s one big problem, and another big problem is funding funding, yeah so you’re saying that it’s not just ISKCON other Hindu organizations also don’t want to work with each other? yes, well to a great extent yes, otherwise if the Hindus would be very united without ISKCON, they would be doing much better on certain advocacy issues than they are doing now so I think ISKCON could help to unite them, could help to give them leadership, not that we take over, we shouldn’t take over, we should work together with others but we should give what we have, if we can give leadership and common vision and unity, let’s do that, but that means more sacrifice, because to be a leader and to unite others, you have to leave behind your own prejudices or your own interests or your own preconceived ideas or your own attachments or all that, so leadership requires some effort now the other big problem, why Hindus are not having a big impact in the world, you said it’s the third largest religion, so it’s not a lack of people, it’s not a lack of money there’s enough people and there’s enough money within the Hindu communities worldwide, but there’s a lack of funding, you know, there’s very very very very little funding of Hindus Hindu businessmen or Hindu organizations or temples or whatever, to advocacy you know, very little advocacy, very little money to advocacy the only organization I know which gets substantial advocacy in Hindu, I mean I’m not talking about India, but outside of India is American Hindu Foundation they’ve learned how to get funding from wealthy Indians in America for the causes they work for, many different causes they work for on behalf of the Hindu community with advocacy, but here in Europe I tried visiting very prominent Hindu business people in Europe to get funding for Hindu Forum of Europe, we have so much we could do, so much we need to do but almost zero funding not zero, but you know, almost zero, and it’s not just for Hindu Forum of Europe, it’s the same for practically every advocacy platform so how are we going to change how are we going to change the western mentality of politicians and NGOs without proper advocacy proper advocacy means you have an office that can prepare things, write things, send things go to meetings, travel you know, you need a budget, if you have no money to write letters, send letters if everything is done because of some crisis, like now Bangladesh okay, ISKCON put some energy there we managed to make some signs, did some demonstrations some funding must have been there otherwise we couldn’t even do that but it comes just when there’s an emergency, some little funding is given So, Prabhu, advocacy, do you mean the same thing as communications department in ISKCON or is advocacy, because advocacy seems to be like it almost seems like advertising, does it have a negative connotation No, no, no, in the West advocacy has quite a positive connotation, it’s basically advocacy means you’re you’re working on particular issues that you’re trying to create awareness so you’re an advocacy, you know it’s a little bit better wording than, for example, public relations or external affairs, things like that, those are a little bit sometimes more commercial so advocacy is more for like, you know humanitarian, religious social organization that are trying to promote certain things so yeah, definitely communications has two aspects one is advocacy, which is external and one is training and education, which is internal like a ministry in ISKCON so internally we try to help devotees to get trained by courses and resources journals, magazines guidelines, websites you name it we try to help internally our movement to have proper communications training so that they can have proper strategies and devotees doing it properly advocacy is the external part when we actually interact with the world for different issues so one of our advocacies is the Hindu communities, Hindu organizations and these platforms they’re not about philosophical unity they’re not about philosophical discussion we shouldn’t discuss philosophy in this, you know, let’s say American Hindu Foundation or Hindu Forum of Belgium, Hindu Forum of Europe we don’t discuss these things these are religious affairs from the different organizations that you belong to if they want to have interfaith dialogue amongst themselves, it’s a whole different ballgame than advocacy just to give you an example of the Jewish a very good example, the Jewish, they also have very different religious perspectives, you have very orthodox Jews, very very orthodox Hasidic, whatever you want, and you have super liberal Jews, super liberal, super progressive, and in between you have everything you can imagine every Jew has their own synagogue they belong to, their own community so they have their very clear distinctions as far as worship and understanding of the scripture and all that but when it comes for community purposes they unite like anything for religious, they don’t agree, and they don’t agree, and they don’t agree simple as that, but when it comes to like, if a mosque a synagogue is attacked, or a Jewish museum is attacked, or a Jewish school is attacked, all the Jewish communities will work together, they give a lot of money for advocacy, in Europe, they are amazingly, amazingly successful with advocacy, why? first of all, they had the holocaust, that’s one big thing, but they know that without advocacy, you you don’t have a voice when something happens to a Jewish institution they immediately can contact the prime minister, the minister, they have constantly security in their places of worship in their cultural centers, governments spend millions and billions of euros to protect the Jewish, why? Because of advocacy and because of the feeling that, and because of the feeling of duty that they have to protect them from attacks so we’re hoping that at least the Bangladesh government will learn a little bit how to protect these minorities, because you just put one policeman one military in front of each temple, especially when there’s attacks, it doesn’t cost them very much, and if you have one policeman, one military in front of a temple, the mobs won’t attack so easily, 90% of the cases will be avoided, because you know, to have to attack a policeman or a military man is a different thing than to attack a monk like you, or to attack a temple, it’s more easy, but to have to fight with a policeman who has a gun or something, it’s a different story This is powerful, a lot of points I would like to reflect on here, so first thing is I never thought of the differences in communication as two aspects, training internally and advocacy externally So for example, the communication seminar that I attended the ISKCON communication journal you’re writing That’s why ISKCON communication needs a double budget Ok, yeah True So now, is it that, so that was one point that’s a very good differentiation to understand what is happening, now beyond that, you said earlier that we don’t lack we don’t lack actually money, it’s not that Hindus don’t have money or don’t have numbers, so why is it that the funding doesn’t come I don’t say that Hindus are hard-hearted and don’t care for others Is it that our religious priorities because of the culture are different, that we will fund temples in a big way, but other causes don’t seem sacred in that sense.
Is it because of a cultural sense of what is a worthy object of charity or what is the reason for this or is it that we are not yet recognized that we live in a hostile world where if we don’t do these things, we will be in trouble, like obliviousness or is it what are your reasons, understanding of the reasons for this? I think both I think the Hindus are quite pious people and they obviously have a tradition of supporting temples and sometimes humanitarian causes, but mostly temples many times the temples do the humanitarian causes, especially in India, so that tradition is very much there now the tradition of advocacy is a western, it’s a modern thing just like this organization, just like ISKCON itself, tradition it’s not part of our tradition to have an international organization institution, this is a modern phenomenon so the advocacy is a modern phenomenon and governments international institutions, media reciprocate with good advocacy. If you have no advocacy you’re just not even in the radar screen it’s not that they’re even against you they just don’t know about you and if they don’t know about you, they don’t care about you because they don’t know so you’re not saying that necessarily the media is biased against Hinduism, because that is what the perception is that if there is some some attack against Muslims or some attack against Christians there is so much media coverage of that I cannot say people are more or less biased, but I cannot I can definitely say it’s not the main reason why it’s not that the worlds are against the Hindus, forget it that’s not true, it’s not true Western media Western governments are not anti-Hindu they’re not pro-Hindu they’re not anti-Hindu, they’re just not aware they’re not aware of the things because the systematic advocacy has not been happening I sent a whole, this report that I sent you I sent it to some friends, I went to meet them and none of them knew about how horrible the things are in Bangladesh none of them or they vaguely knew something vaguely, but nothing substantial why? Because we’re not united we don’t have funding and we don’t do it systematically, like now we did all the demonstrations which is fine, like we’re doing one tomorrow we do one on Sunday so the moment of demonstrations is coming to an end, let’s say in one week or ten days it’s finished, because it happened in the past, so it’s finished but now a systematic campaign should start from a worldwide campaign should start to pressurize Bangladesh to do what we’re asking them to do and if they don’t do, threaten them with sanctions or threaten them with lack of cooperation one day we already found out from a politician in the UK, that the UK gives six or eight hundred million pounds or something per year just as aid, just help not business or loans or anything just to help Bangladesh so the western governments you know, institutions the EU, United Kingdom, United States Canada, Australia New Zealand, you name it those countries that are meant to care about human rights, they could put pressure on Bangladesh and say look, it’s your duty as a government to protect your citizens, your minorities and if you can’t even do that then why should we have business with you? I mean it’s a basic thing every country in the world has to protect its citizens and every citizen should feel safe in his country that he’s not going to be mobbed or attacked this looks very similar to the pogrom that happened in Europe in the late 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, in Poland, Lithuania, Russia, and it’s a very sad moment in history of Europe, the Holocaust was a sad moment, the pogroms were a sad moment what’s happening in Bangladesh is a sad moment, but we have to create awareness, if we don’t create awareness then nobody will know, or very few people will know so this is this is both sobering as well as you could say energizing because if we just say that the media is biased against us, what are we going to do about it? so it’s in one sense it’s good to start not start with the assumption that the world is bad and is against us the world doesn’t care because we haven’t communicated, so at least that vision helps us do something and certainly there could be elements in the media that are hostile to us but how is that ever going to change unless we change it unless we do something to change it advocacy is hard work if you want to succeed you have to do your thing well, systematically persevere, insist and for all that you need funding if you have no funding, that means your communities don’t really care because we’re in a world of advocacy of you know it’s all a globalized world the standards are the same you have to I mean the Jews are experts the Christians of course are very good even the Buddhists are very organized in that they had quite some success I heard in regards to things that happened in Bangladesh we have to learn from our Jewish brothers from our Christian brothers, from whoever advocacy is very important okay, so what you’re saying is that just as Hindus have suffered persecution in Bangladesh, Buddhists have also suffered like that and Buddhists have been able to put some pressure on the government yeah, and Christians also of course Christians and Buddhists but they are much less population I heard it’s less than 1% of the population of Bangladesh so it’s a different ballgame in the sense that Hindus represent still a large minority and you know it’s a much bigger scale the attacks and the the suffering of the Hindus so now what you told earlier about so you said that your naive ideas about how politics works that was removed by your political teachers but you could say now that the real politic that is what we also have to be aware of and we have to use that, like you talked about economic sanctions or at least withholding aid this is the language that people that governments also cannot neglect yeah, it’s difficult because as devotees who are not devotees I didn’t join the movement to do politics otherwise I would have remained in politics but sometimes it’s required for institutions like ours to do social pressure, to do demonstrations to have a certain advocacy plan and strategy because we are in the world if we don’t want to interact with the world if we just want to be 100% spiritual then we might as well move to an ashram in the Himalayas and forget about being in cities all over the world and preaching and trying to change the world and interacting with the world so when you interact with the world there will be moments of crisis, there will be moments of tension and that’s why communications are so important so yeah, maybe the leaders of our movement don’t have to be involved so much in, let’s say, politics because their goal is, their purpose is more to be spiritual leaders, but the communications department could, you know, if we had proper advocacy we could do tremendous work on behalf of our movement to change things and to improve things for us and for others, in this case we would work with the Hindus, so we would improve the situation for others not just ourselves so yeah, funding is so important, until we learn how to fund an important department like this, we’re not going to go, because like now, you know, I have a whole idea of what strategies could be done, but if there’s no funding, then what can you do? It’s just a dream, it’s a complete dream. So, now, just to understand this a little bit more clearly when you talk about strategically working so, you know for for promoting advocacy maybe we’ll come back to that a little bit later.
See, the two extremes, among the reactions that I have seen in the devotee community one is the media is biased against us, and the other is, you know, Islam is an extremist religion, and this is what they will do. So, now, in one sense, both of these are paralyzing responses, and what can we do about it? And what we are, what you are saying is that, yeah, okay, even if Bangladesh is a prominent Islamic is a predominantly Islamic country, but still the government has a duty to protect the citizens, and without getting into the motivations of the people who committed the crime, we can focus on what the government could have done to prevent it, and what we could have done to ensure the government did those things. So, it’s a very focused, and I would say constructive channeling of our energy.
Yeah, we’re asking, in our letter to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, we’re asking four basic things. There’s more also, but we’re asking four basic things. One is protection of Hindu places of worship and centers, and even businesses, like neighborhoods where there are a lot of Hindu businesses, they should be protected by the military or the police, or both.
One other thing we’re asking is that justice is imparted where there are cases where the culprit of killing is identified, or the culprits of destruction or burning or all that are identified, they should be, actually, justice should be imparted, proper, impartial justice. And then, two, reparations for the families who lost persons from these mobs, and also reconstruction of Hindu temples. Like, you know, our temples should be protected by the Bangladesh government.
That should be the minimum things that the Bangladesh government does in order to rectify their lack of protection before these things happen. Because this is not new. This is not a new thing.
This has happened for a long time. So, you know, like here in the West, they don’t only put policemen when a Jewish synagogue gets attacked or a Jewish museum gets attacked. The Jewish museum here in Belgium got attacked a few years ago, and they have permanently military in front of the door now, forever.
So the government puts two military with machine guns in front of the Jewish museum forever. So, let’s say, the biggest places of worship of Hindus in Bangladesh should have protection all the time, constantly. Maybe not all the temples, because there might be hundreds of temples, but all the major temples should be protected.
You know, that will dissuade the violent radical Islamists from attacking, because they might attack anyway, but at least there will be much more, much less cases and much more protected. You know, it’s like that. I mean, radical Islam is a phenomenon.
It happens not just in Bangladesh, but in many other countries in Asia and also even in Europe. So the governments have to do the needful to protect from those violent extremes, extremists. That’s a basic duty.
And I think the more, you know, government should protect all its citizens, but I think real advancement of a democratic and civilized government is seen when they protect the minorities even more. So governments that protect the minorities, which are weaker, which are more easily targeted, they should be even more protected by governments. That’s like a very basic thing, because the majority is a little more strong anyway, more powerful, so they might need a little less protection, of course, from robbers, yes, and criminals, yes.
But they will not get attacked by, you know, there won’t be Hindu attacks on mosques in Bangladesh. That’s true. That’s obviously.
That will never happen. Yeah. So, Pru, this is an important point you’re making, that you’re saying that the government protects the Jewish places, the Jewish museum almost around the clock.
I don’t think it happens in India. Indian temples, even big temples, temples have to have their own security. Of course, India has a huge population, it could have a different dynamic, but this is remarkable.
Well, here in Europe, it’s like, you know, people cannot have their own guns and machine guns and all these things, so it’s only the military and the police who can do that. So the governments are more involved here in this security issue than maybe, let’s say, the United States. United States, you know, you could have somebody outside with a gun, whatever, maybe it’s different.
But in Europe, it’s like that. Yeah, they give protection. They spend, just now, there’s one program that the European Commission funded, a pilot project of, they funded with 25 million euros, which is training and education and giving advice and many things to protect places of worship in seven European countries.
They did the presentation here in Brussels a few weeks ago. So this is just a pilot project. So if it’s successful, they will put much more money to do it all over Europe.
So to help places of worship to have better security, to protect more of these places. I mean, the participation of the security forces of the government is one aspect, but the communities themselves, they can do things. They even talk, they even have the architects of Europe, the Architect Association of Europe involved to give advice to places of worship, to worship how they can build or make adjustments in their structures to have more protection.
So they’re really thinking of how to help places of worship to protect themselves. So it’s an important, you know, if we have to live in a society that people feel safe to go and worship, if we can’t even go and worship anymore because places are being attacked, then we will become savages in a short time. So, this is, so these four demands which you mentioned, they’re quite reasonable requests, and they basically could say, so you have a realistic expectation that they will listen to us? I mean, we always should I think they’ve been watching all the demonstrations around the world, which ISKCON very well organized.
They were not huge demonstrations, but they were synchronized all over the world. And I think all the letters we’ve given to them, I think, and especially in India, what’s happening in India, I think the Bengali government is definitely aware that, you know, there’s more and more awareness because of ISKCON to a certain degree. But I think in order for them to really do it, they will have to feel the possibility, the pressure of possible sanctions.
If they don’t feel that something might happen, they might not do it. They might just do a little show now to pacify everybody. But, you know, these are very simple things they can do.
You know, to do, to recover from all the what happened, and also put people to protect from now on. At least for five months, six months, everything should be protected. It should not happen within the next few months.
At least, nothing should happen in the next month. So, now, you are primarily focused in Europe, but have you also worked with the devotees in India? Is the advocacy among ISKCON in India, is it growing? Or it’s also in a stage which is underdeveloped? Well, in regards to cooperating with Hindu organizations, I think the situation of India is very special, very different. First of all, it’s massive.
It’s a massive country of so many people, so many aspects, which we don’t have around the world. So, I think the cooperation with Hindu organizations probably has a different flavor in India than it has around the world. The funding also probably has a different flavor.
I do think ISKCON Communications India should have proper funding, because it’s such an important department. UDHC is doing a very good job, and Rajendra Nanda probably did it in the past. So, I think ISKCON India should give a proper funding to communications.
They can do a tremendous service for the movement in India. But then, India is special, because, for example, you have very powerful Hindu organizations, one in politics, which is the government, BJP, Hindu, and is in charge of the whole country at the moment. You have VHP, VHP, which is a very influential Hindu organization.
And then you have RSS, which is also very influential in India. So, in the West, many times, these organizations are not portrayed in the best light. There is bias against them, probably from previous governments from the time of Congress, and how the Western liberal media sees religion and everything.
So, there are different reasons why that is what is there. But, I think, regarding us, regarding ISKCON, I think our position in regards to these organizations should be very balanced, very pragmatic, very respectful. Yeah.
I think what you talked earlier about compartmentalization. In other words, we should not be married with them, but we should not be antagonistic to them. There are many issues in which we can cooperate with the BJP, with the VHP, and with the RSS.
And there are many issues in which we might not agree. First of all, because it’s not our nature to be so much involved in society and politics. So, we might say, well, we’re neutral in that regard, or our focus is spiritual.
They will respect that. We’re a spiritual organization. That’s obvious.
And there are certain issues we just might not agree. Maybe certain policies and issues that they embrace that ISKCON might say, oh, that we don’t agree. It’s not that we have to agree with everything BJP, RSS, and VHP does.
Because some things we do, and we work with them, and some things we don’t. Sometimes we might even have to be vocal about something that VHP or RSS or BJP embrace. So, we have to have our own independence and autonomy.
But I think they are very powerful organizations that we have to learn how to work together with for certain causes, for certain issues. That’s so truthful. I hope to have podcasts with Indian leaders also in the future.
are there any concluding points that you’d like to make? This has been a very illuminating discussion to understand, especially the point of you could say knowing our purposes and being able to focus on particular purposes and particular interactions. That is a very important point, not to reduce everything to philosophy and philosophical differences or similarities alone. That’s a very resourceful way of looking at things.
I think from a pragmatic point of view communications is very important to help our movement in its spiritual goals. So, I really request I really would hope the leaders would acknowledge it and give it the proper blessings finances and autonomy or let’s say empowerment that it needs to do all that we need to do for the movement. That’s one thing.
The other thing I would say is that in regards to Hindu organizations, we have to really play a leadership role in working with them on many causes, on many fronts because we will both benefit. The Hindus will benefit and ISCO will benefit. It’s win-win.
Hindu organizations need some of our expertise and qualifications and we need a lot of their expertise and qualifications. So, I think if we work together everybody will benefit. Hindus will benefit.
Devotees will benefit. ISCO will benefit. Thank you.
So, what can individual devotees do? Many of the viewers will be individual devotees. So, what can they do in this regard? Is there something which we can, maybe we can say that we can be more cordial in our dealings with people from other Hindu organizations and family and relatives who are connected with other Hindu organizations. But is there something individual devotees can do? I think as devotees, I think we’re too philosophical and maybe too spiritual at times and everything, all our interactions with the world are, I mean, it has some good aspects, of course, to be very spiritual, to be very philosophical, but sometimes when we have to be pragmatic in things related to this world, we should not forget that we have also a human dimension, a material dimension, social dimension, etc.
We have to learn how to work properly also with ethics and morality. And sometimes we have to leave the philosophy and the spirituality aside because you have to deal with things which are not intrinsically philosophical or spiritual. They’re social, they’re about our well-being as an organization or as an individual.
Like, devotees who are being attacked in Bangladesh, beyond their spirituality, it’s their physical bodies that are being destroyed or threatened. So we have to be able to take care of that as well. Prabhupada was very pragmatic.
He would tell devotees, take care of your health. We should not neglect our certain things that we have to do in this world. So I think devotees sometimes have to leave the philosophical debate for the philosophical arena and be nice persons, nice human beings when it needs to be just human interaction.
Care for others, get their help to help us for our moments of need and things like that. Pragmatic. It’s so important.
Some devotees might find it quite outrageous to say that we should, how can we leave our philosophy behind? Not behind. Sometimes you have to leave it on the side. Yeah, leave it aside.
I was taking your position to the extreme, but you’re not saying that. But the point is that the philosophy itself, we can say, is expressed at different levels in different ways. So even Prabhupada, when he would deal with his devotee disciples’ parents, he was not directly preaching philosophy to them.
He was just being warm and cordial with them and he was connected at a human level. So what you say that it’s that, it’s not that we, to put it another way, don’t be too philosophical or don’t be too spiritual, but we can broaden our understanding of what being philosophical and spiritual means. Philosophical and spiritual doesn’t just mean reducing everything to ideological, intellectual issues.
It means knowing how best I can serve Krishna in this situation. Maybe how best I can help this person come closer to Krishna. So, that’s a very important point and I think if we focus on, we’ll find many examples of Prabhupada also doing this.
I was thinking that, about working with common causes, when devotees were in Jagannath Puri and they were not allowed to go to the temple, I think Prabhupada had devotees approach the Shankaracharya over there. And Shankaracharya said that, yeah, these are genuine devotees. They’re following the four elements of the chanting, so they should be allowed.
So, Prabhupada was not, Prabhupada was, that pragmatic aspect of Prabhupada, sometimes we forget that. So, that balance is very much required and I think this talk will, like I said, the communications course opened a lot of new dimensions for me at that time. This talk will open a lot of dimensions for our viewers.
So, towards the end of the talk, I’ll just try to summarize and maybe after that, if you have any concluding words, you can speak that. Will that be okay? Yes, go ahead. So, we broadly discussed today about working with other Hindu organizations for protecting or advocating shared causes.
So, you told about your story going up in a liberal family in Uruguay and then coming to New York and then again having to go back there. They required a remarkable spiritual quest. So, we’ve been across the world, isn’t it? So, you’ve met devotees closely in France and then you settled in Belgium.
Communications became your major service because at one time, because of cult, acquisitions of cult and other things, it was a matter of survival for us. So, broadly, communications could mean endeavors to create a Sankirtan-friendly world. So, it focuses especially on leaders in society who have power and who can open doors for us to do Sankirtan or who can close doors.
So, it could be politicians, it could be media, it could be academics, it could be other religious leaders and if we are too isolated in terms of just we will practice our Bhakti and not care for the world, then we will, a small number of people will become devotees, but when problems come, we will be on our own and so, communications involves training devotees internally of how you can present in an appropriate way because leaders of society will often have their own expectations and their own standards and moral standards of how to interact and then there is advocacy. So, advocacy is not a negative thing. It’s in fact more positive than public relations.
It is basically somebody who supports a cause that is important for them and opposes or protests against something which is against that cause. So, in the modern world, this is, in today’s world, it’s extremely important. Even though there is no precedence, the institution itself has no precedence, but today this is important.
Otherwise, people don’t know we exist and they don’t care and we discussed about, so if we have to do any advocacy and exert any influence, ISKCON alone won’t be able to do that because we are, especially say in Europe, you talked about how we are just a tiny minority in a minority religion. So, we have to work with other groups and if you work with Hindus, then we have only two options. Either we work with Hindus or we say segregate from Hindus and become, try to have Vaishnavism established as an independent religion, which is far tougher.
So, then we had this very good discussion about, are we Hindus or not? So, what do we mean by that? There are certain aspects of Hinduism which we do not agree with and we can be clear about that. So, the caste by birth and things like that and the Advaithic conception. So, in the West, for various reasons, Hinduism has been equated with Advaithism.
So, that term was monopolized by them. We cannot monopolize by going rather extreme. But we can recognize that we are a part of Hinduism.
So, one important point was that we don’t need to be aware to be pragmatic. So, there is a form of pragmatic. Redefine, redefine, redefine the word.
Yeah, redefine the word. So, that means there are areas where of philosophical discussions and philosophical debates but there are areas where we are shared causes and there is interfaith means we come together and discuss our philosophies but advocacy means that we don’t get into philosophy also. We don’t need to get into even religious forms of worship.
It is basically social causes, humanitarian causes, human rights and for those, we can work together. We give the example of how our temple in Britain was protected and how slowly now in Belgium, we are moving toward the first step of recognition by the government which can lead to later funding and with respect to the Bangladeshi issue because we have these Hindu forums. So, we were able to create, we were able to do work with the broader Hindu forums like you are going to meet the Bangladeshi ambassador over there and you can create some influence because we are a part of a large group.
So, although we are having advocacy. So, we have numbers, we have Hindus are not poor especially in the western world. Hindus are quite well to do.
But unfortunately, In India, there are also many Hindus who are not poor. Yeah, of course. You know, in India, there is this, the Indian Premier League is a cricket tournament and it has just started 10 years ago.
It has become the wealthiest sports tournament in the world now. So, money is not lacking that way. So, but the understanding of the importance of advocacy is not there.
So, that is, because we may out of piety think that giving charity to temples and religious causes directly is what is important or is sacred. But you need to expand that. And when we do advocacy, the basic idea would be that if we don’t do that, we will get into trouble and we can’t have a reactive mode of functioning.
We need a proactive mode where 90% proactive as you said. And to that end, if we recognize that this is also a part of our seva, the devotees may not want to get into politics and have political influence but that is the way the world works and Prabhupada was aware of that and Prabhupada was transcendental but was also very pragmatic in doing things, doing what was necessary for protecting the movement. Arjuna was very pragmatic.
Of course, Arjuna was pragmatic. So, I think this specific Bangladesh issue was very grounded approach that instead of presuming that the media is biased, it could well be that we haven’t done enough advocacy. So, like you said about Jews, if one temple, one synagogue is attacked, they all come together and then they exert pressure right up to the highest echelons of power.
So, that way if we assume that we have not done enough advocacy and we focus on that, then that’s something which is a solvable problem. Calling the media biased is not a solvable problem in that sense and the other is okay, even if we say that radical Islam is there and Bangladesh is Islamist country but still, it is there due to protect minorities and if we could have sufficient pressure, say if they feel the pressure of possible economic sanctions, then the requests which you have made are very very grounded that justice, protection, reparation and restoration. So, let’s hope that this works out and this many many devotees can feel inspired to contribute towards the service and individually also become more you could say, as you said we don’t have to be too spiritual or reduce our conception of spirituality to only philosophy and philosophical confrontations but know that we have a human dimension and human dimension means we take from others, we give to others and we have a social dimension, humanitarian concerns, so we work in a multifaceted way and then we can create more Sankirtan friendly world at least a less Sankirtan unfriendly world in some parts of the world.
At least if devotees I mean some devotees might be by nature like preachers and sanyasis so then obviously they have to, they’re more focused on spiritual philosophy and activity. But if somebody is doing communications he might have to sometimes put aside a little bit the philosophical aspect of his life and spiritual aspect of his life to focus on the questions at hand the issues at hand. Now, advocacy I think is very important because it’s the issue that we’re presenting things we’re tackling issues, we’re presenting our movement what we represent, so that’s the advocacy but another aspect which is very very important in this area of communications is relationships.
If we build real relationships with real people who might not they’re not becoming devotees but we appreciate the person we have a relationship with them then it becomes something very solid we can count on their help, we can count on their support, we can count on their advice, we can share many things with them, so relationships and advocacy are very important in this external communications field. Yes Prabhu, that’s so true and relationships take time, you said it’s hard work from a spiritual organization but it might also be somewhat unglamorous world. Till we develop the relationship with influential people it’s very important.
Thank you Prabhu for this extraordinary piling service that you’re doing and for giving expanding perspective so that devotees can also deal with realities rather than superimpose one’s own conceptions on the situations. You summarized it very nicely. Thank you very much.
I look forward to a podcast on art and Krishna consciousness in the future. Thank you.