How to respond to the Muslim attacks on devotees in Bangladesh

Podcast:

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
No, I feel that we should all feel angry.
If we don’t feel angry, then where is our devotion? If the devotees are being attacked, if the deities are being desecrated, the temple is being destroyed, if we don’t feel angry, where is our devotion? Lord Narasimhadev, he felt angry when Prahlad was being threatened. Now, we may say, I am not Narasimhadev. Obviously, we are not.
That is true. But anger can also be a sign of devotion. When do we feel angry about something? When we are invested in something.
So, if somebody feels completely indifferent, okay, these things keep happening all over the world, maybe those parts of the world are terrible, we start thinking like that, that is very apathetic. And that is not at all a healthy emotion. So, having said that, just like in today’s class I said that, that we feel emotions, but do the emotions control us so much that they determine our actions? No, we feel emotions, but then after that, we see what is the best way I can serve Krishna over here.
And then what is the best way I can help in this situation? So, broadly speaking, in general, the Vedic, broad Vedic culture, we could say there are two dimensions to it. There is the Shastra and there is Shastra. So, Shastra is wielded by the Brahmanas.
And Shastra is used to protect people from misconceptions and to give them right understanding. And Shastra is used by the Kshatriyas, that is used for defence, for protection. So, and even not just for defence and protection, it is also used for punishing those who are wrongdoers.
So, any healthy society, any functionally healthy society needs to have both the Shastra and the Kshastra. It needs to be the Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas. So, at one level, as devotees, we need, now Shastra or Kshatriya, the Kshatriya method of dealing with things, that is not just about warfare.
Kshatriyas are also about diplomacy. There is diplomatic pressure that can be wielded. So, now there is a lot of discussion going on within our movement at this stage among the leaders.
So, currently there are multiple plans. The devotees are being encouraged in various parts of the world, especially where there are dangers, that they should get some weapons for self-defence. Maybe the temple should allot some group of people who can be trained in self-defence a little bit.
You know that Prabhupada when he was in Mayapur, at that time devotees had guns to protect themselves. And also devotees at a coordinated level are working to maybe have protest marches and kirtans, which will go to the Bangladesh Embassy. They are planning this at least in 20 different countries, where ISKCON has a significant presence, or 20 different places, not in 20 different countries, where they march to the Bangladesh Embassy and try to create diplomatic pressure that way.
So, we have to channel that energy in a constructive way. So, the Kshatriya dimension of our movement, we have significantly neglected that. And that needs to be developed.
So, Kshatriya doesn’t just mean you taking up weapons. But it means, you could say, in one sense, in a rhetorical way, throwing our weight around. You know, having contacts and using the contacts to influence.
Because the diplomatic pressure also can get things done. So, that’s one aspect to it. Another aspect to it is that, from a Brahmana perspective, we need to do three things.
First is that we need to look at the appropriate scriptural sections so that our own faith is not damaged by this. Or the faith of those around us is not damaged by it. Yes, this is horrible.
And we may say, if somebody is a devotee serving Krishna, how could something like this happen to devotees? Well, the material world is a terrible place. And we see in both the major wars, Mahabharata and Ramayana, we see that there were great souls who were on the side of virtue and they were killed. In Ramayana, Jatayu was killed.
In Mahabharata, Abhimanyu was killed. And even before that in the Ramayana, it is described that when Lord Ram came from Ayodhya, he came out and he came to the centre of India. In Maharashtra, there is a place called Ramtek.
And he saw in Ramtek, there was like a pile of bones. So, those were basically bones of the sages who had come to perform hostilities. And those sages had been devoured by the Rakshasas.
And their bones had been spit out by them. So, basically horrible things do happen in the world. So, the protection, Krishna’s protection doesn’t always manifest at the material level.
Krishna’s protection is always there but sometimes it is at the spiritual level. So, Jatayu died in the arms of the Lord. Abhimanyu, he died for the cause of the Lord.
And that’s why he was elevated to an auspicious, most auspicious destination. So, if somebody lays down their life while serving the Lord, from an external perspective, it is very painful and we all would like to prevent it as much as possible. But we understand that our faith should not be damaged by this.
Krishna’s protection sometimes manifests at the material level, sometimes it manifests at the spiritual level. That’s one aspect of the Brahmana response. Second aspect of the Brahmana response is that we need to avoid getting too caught in specific, you could say, sectarian conceptions.
What do I mean by sectarian conceptions? There is a tendency, ok, this religion is a horrible religion. Everybody in that religion is bad. So, we have to see it in terms of the three modes of material nature.
We see it not in the contemporary religious landscape but we see it in a philosophical perspective. That all over the world there are people in goodness, passion and ignorance. And people in Rajasthan, Tamas will use aggression and violence to try to get their way.
So, these people in Rajasthan, Tamas are there in every demographic group. Now, of course, in some demographic groups, the leaders or the people who are influential in that group may also be in Rajasthan, Tamas. And then that whole demographic group may act in a very destructive way.
But the point is, if we start labelling, this particular group is horrible, even if they are acting horribly, we cannot paint everyone in one brush. So, that kind of, we have to use philosophical perception. We see, it’s so amazing that Vishwanath Chakra Thakur, he wrote his commentaries on the Bhagavatam and the Bhagavad Gita and his various other books, Krishna Bhavanamrut and others at a time when he had come to Vrindavan primarily to restore Vrindavan from the depredations of Aurangzeb and others.
Rupa Goswami, Sanatana Goswami, they came when Akbar was ruling. And Akbar was, he was not exactly broad-minded. He was not as broad-minded as he sometimes painted in mainstream history books.
But he was definitely not as intolerant as Aurangzeb. So, with him, the Goswamis restored Vrindavan quite wonderfully. Not that he helped actively but he didn’t hinder.
And the Goswamis managed to have a reasonably good rapport with the authorities. They also linked with the Rajputs. So they worked out things quite well.
But Aurangzeb didn’t care for anything. Aurangzeb devastated Vrindavan anyways. So Chakravartipat came back, came there and he restored Vrindavan to at least a portion of its glory.
But in not one of his purports, anywhere in any of his books does he talk about how horrible the Muslims are, how horrible Aurangzeb was. No. He talks about how in this world is Adhibhautiklesh and there is great suffering because of that and we have to practice Bhakti to transcend it.
So he did what was needful at a practical level to restore Vrindavan to its glory. But he didn’t let that contemporary situation consume his vision. He didn’t let it consume his consciousness.
So we use Shastra Chakshu to keep a philosophical vision of things. Philosophical vision means that this is a part of the Adhibhautiklesh in the world. The more people are in Rajasthan Tamas, Adhibhautiklesh will increase more and more.
And the people in Rajasthan Tamas may be from a particular group. And yes, first thing I said is we need a Kshatriya response. I am not denying that.
But the point is if we let their Rajasthan Tamas draw out the Rajasthan Tamas within us, then we won’t be a part of the solution. We will only further aggravate the problem. So that’s the second part that we don’t paint everybody in a negative brush.
And third is that as devotees, we need to work to, we need a collective spirit in which we work. So that means that there are some situations where we see differences. Say now, right now, as devotees, many devotees are, sometimes we are very opportunistic.
And we may say that, you know, we are not Hindus. We are transcendental. We are Krishna conscious and Krishna conscious beyond Hinduism.
But then when this kind of situation happens, we say that Hindus are not a threat. So the Hindu government should protect us. Hindu organizations should protect us.
So we can’t be opportunistic like this. Yes, we are transcendental and we acknowledge that. But transcendental doesn’t mean that we don’t belong to the demographic categories of the world at all.
So we may say Vrindavan is, one of the offenses to Vrindavan is to say that Dham is in the material world. Yes, that is true. But if we are to put Vrindavan on the map of the world, we are not going to put it in China or Pakistan.
Vrindavan is in India, isn’t it? So yes, to say that Dham is in the material world is wrong. But from the material world’s perspective, it is at a particular place. Yes, Krishna consciousness is transcendental.
But to say that we are not Hindus and make that as a preaching plank to attract others and then jump towards the help of Hindus, we come off as very opportunistic. So, and that alienates people quite a bit. So we need to also learn to work with others.
Others in the broader Hindu community. Yes, we may have philosophical differences and those philosophical differences need to be dealt with. But at the same time, there are many cultural causes where we can work together.
In the past also, when our Bhaktivinayana temple was threatened. At that time, the devotees positioned it as a threat to the biggest Hindu temple in UK at that time. And that galvanized the entire Hindu community and that helped a lot.
Similarly, when the Bhagavad Gita was banned temporarily in Russia. At that time, it was shown in the Bhagavad Gita as the sacred book of Hindus. How can it be banned? It created outrage in the parliament and then the Russian government dropped it.
So, as devotees, sattva means that we also should see commonality between others. Not just commonality with other religions or other communities. But even the broader Hindu, broader Sanatan Dharma community, broader Vedic community.
And we build bridges so that we have resources to draw on that we are not isolated. So, yes. And this is very painful.
And I think this Kshatriya and the Brahmana response together, Shastra and Shastra, that is what will help us to move ahead from this. Thank you, Prabhu. And there are moderates and there are fanatics in each, I think, religion, right? Yes, of course.
Sattva guna are moderates. I have a Muslim friend who told me that it’s easier for me to discuss things with moderates from other traditions than with extremists from my own tradition. What happens is that, yes, people in sattva guna, they can have discussion and they can have resolution.
But otherwise, it’s very difficult. Thank you.