Is dandiya rasa considered imitation of Krishna’s rasa-lila — is it allowed in ISKCON?

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Question from Vishal Gupta In India during Navratra and other times there is the dandiya or asa garbha is performed is this considered to be imitation of Krishna’s pastimes and we say that asanila should not be imitated so is garbha or dandiya performed within ISKCON or is it allowed to be performed in any program under ISKCON’s patronage answer traditionally there has been the culture of reenactment of the lord’s pastimes so there is a Ramlila which happens in many parts of the world especially in Varanasi it is very famous and people get transported into the mood of the pastimes when they observe these pastimes being enacted and similarly there is Krishna lila also enacted through dramas and now in Vrindavan there is a tradition as there is a tradition of Ram there is a tradition of Krishna also there in Vrindavan so in this tradition what would happen is say for example in Ramlila for a particular period of time a child is made into Ram another child may be into Sita and then actually the understanding is that Ram enters into their body and acts through them so they are actually worshipped at that time it is not that they become God but the idea is when they are going to perform this pastime they are going to do it in a devotional mood and some kind of Avesh enters into them so the idea of this idea is to some extent present even in even in the Vrindavan enactment of Krishna’s pastimes so the whole devotional mood is recreated over there but unfortunately this idea of Avesh was taken by the Sahajiyas and distorted so they not only enacted the childhood pastimes of Krishna they would enact Krishna’s Rasa Nila and they would go further and distort things and often there would be illicit connections between men and women and when this was happening there were some Sahajiyas who rationalized it saying that actually it is Krishna and Radha who have entered into us and they are enjoying through us it is not that we want to do this it is they who want to do it they are enjoying through us and in that way in the name of rationalism lot of immorality came to society so as a response to that our Acharyas Bhaktivinoda Thakur and especially Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Srila Prabhupada have strongly spoken against the enactment of the pastimes in which a particular character becomes Krishna and especially the Rasa Nila pastimes are performed so in the early days of ISKCON some devotees went to Vrindavan for the first time in 1960s and then they came back and they performed a drama like that Prabhupada was present and Prabhupada where it’s a drama in which a particular character was made into Krishna and particular character was made into Radha and they were worshipped also and then they performed the drama Prabhupada watched the drama but afterwards the next day he told that we should not do this so in general the Dandiya is although it’s a part of the Indian tradition it has been substantially misused and it has been and even now it becomes a license for the kind of activities which people normally would not do so therefore it is best not to imitate such pastimes and certainly in ISKCON Shri Prabhupada Shri Prabhupada was quite strong that we avoid anything which will make us sahajiyaic and this kind of pastimes are prone to make us sahajiyaic so there has to be extreme caution to be practiced to be with respect to repetition of such, with respect to reenactment of such pastimes and as far as it happening in broader society we have to see according to time, place, circumstance in some places, in many places you could say that it becomes a license for male-female contact and then it just becomes sensuality and that certainly is unfortunate and regrettable perversion of a very sacred act in some places it might be going on with some level of sanctity so we don’t have to make it a license condemnation we would like to give proper education so there is a education that needs to be given so specific practices which may be wrong, if you simply start condemning them then that becomes a problem because for those people there is a certain amount of tradition and sentiment which comes with tradition associated with it and people can feel very offended if we tell them that you are simply imitating a pastime, this is a deviation no, there has been a long tradition that has been going on and for a long time it was going on properly but it has been grievously misused and the danger of misuse is always there and therefore there has to be extreme caution so rather than focusing on condemning a particular practice our focus should be on giving proper education and when the education comes up, the proper understanding comes then either that particular activity which is done in the mood of imitation will stop or at least the perversion of it will be stopped so our focus should be on getting proper understanding and sharing proper understanding Thank you