Should devotees be promoting any particular candidate during political elections?

As Prabhupada wanted ISKCON to be non-political, how should we respond when some devotees send emails promoting a particular political party?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Question. Some devotees send emails supporting a political candidate from a particular party and urging devotees to vote for that particular candidate.
ISKCON as far as I know and the way Srila Prabhupada wanted it is not affiliated with any particular party. So is it right for devotees to send mail supporting a political party like this? And how should we respond to such emails? Answer. Srila Prabhupada established ISKCON so that it would be a spiritual organization meant to share a spiritual culture.
And that’s why he never became very excited about any particular political party’s promises. When Srila Prabhupada was in India at that time for the first time the Congress rule was vowed to be overthrown and the Jana Sangha was going to come to power another alternate to Congress and people were quite excited about it. But Srila Prabhupada at that time minimized it and he said that ultimately as long as there is no change of consciousness there is not going to be any lasting improvement.
So that is one perspective that Srila Prabhupada did not consider political changes to be very important. At the same time Srila Prabhupada also wrote in his books about how a Rajya Rishi should be, how the political administration should be when a God conscious king is ruling the world. So that occupies a significant section in his purports and his teachings.
So in that sense Srila Prabhupada did not want Krishna consciousness to operate in a vacuum, divorced from the reality of the material world. So now we have to interact with the material world and that means we have to share Krishna consciousness in the material world and that means we have to interact with material forces, political forces. So for example if the government is say aggressively atheistic or religiously fanatical for some other religion say aggressively atheistic as it was in Soviet Union or say it is aggressively fanatical as it is currently in Kazakhstan then the devotees are often persecuted over there and to say at that time that we are not interested in politics is suicidal.
We are not interested in politics but if political forces are going to affect us then we have to take them into cognizance and act accordingly and make appropriate response. So that means there are two extremes one would be that we completely say that we don’t care about politics the other extreme would be that we identify ourselves with one particular political group but that would undermine our philosophies that would go against our philosophy because every political group has its own vested interest and has its own ideologies which are usually not in harmony with Krishna consciousness. So we have to avoid both these extremes.
So institutionally ISKCON works non-politically. Whichever government comes to power ISKCON will work as a law abiding organization which offers contributions at a social, cultural, educational and spiritual level to society and ISKCON tries to work amicably with whichever government that is there and institutionally ISKCON is non-political, not affiliated with any political party but that does not mean, Srila Prabhupada did not want that ISKCON sort of legislate the thought of all its members. Srila Prabhupada wanted that by studying the philosophy of Krishna consciousness devotees should become independently thoughtful.
Independently thoughtful doesn’t mean independent. It means that we study scripture, we are always dependent on scripture but based on study of scripture we understand based on our experience, our observation, our understanding of the current society how best scripture can be applied in today’s society. So based on one’s independent thoughtfulness some devotees may feel that a particular political party or a particular candidate is more favorable to Sanatana Dharma and there can be objective evidence to support that also or even if we don’t consider Sanatana Dharma some people may feel that there is one particular candidate who offers better prospects for governance even at a material level.
Material level management is also important so that the material functioning happens well. If devotees also want to share Krishna consciousness they want to build temples, they want to start outreach projects. If those projects get caught in bureaucratic red tape because of lethargy and corruption and other such administrative incompetence, cases of administrative incompetence then that is undesirable.
So from the point of view of better material governance and also from the point of view of more hospitability and congeniality with Sanatana Dharma if some devotees feel that individually they would like to support a particular political party and a particular candidate then that freedom is up to them and they may circulate mails. So it is not that they are doing something which is anti-ISKCON but it is not officially what is done by ISKCON. Now when some other devotees receive such mails when we receive such mails what should be our response? It’s not that we blindly accept that or we blindly reject that.
We blindly accept that thinking oh this is a mandate come from a senior devotee therefore I have to accept it. Nor do I blindly reject that considering ISKCON is a non-political organization so somebody who is talking about political things has deviated and therefore I reject. No, we use our intelligence, we use our God-given ability to think and reason and based on that we decide whether it makes sense and if it does then accordingly we can vote for a particular party and that particular candidate.
So now when we decide that whom we are going to vote for I have answered another question should devotees vote in democratic elections I won’t go into the full answer but again that is a matter of individual discretion and generally devotees should act as responsible citizens so devotees may vote also. Now the important point in this discussion is that when devotees are going to decide whom to vote for then generally we read newspapers, we read magazines, we see reports on TV we may hear the speeches of the politicians and then based on that we will decide so these are all various inputs that are going to decide our opinion. Then similarly we can take what we get from devotees as one more input.
Now naturally because it’s coming from devotees so we may treat it a little more authoritative but we don’t have to take it as a final authority as an instruction coming from the spiritual master. We can take it as one input, an important input and based on our own independent thoughtfulness we can decide whether we want to support that candidate or not. So institutionally ISKCON is non-political.
Institutionally ISKCON will work with whichever political party comes to power but individually based on considerations of better material governance and greater hospitality and congeniality towards principles of Nathana Dharma devotees can choose which party to vote for and they may at individual non-institutional level advocate through emails or through one-to-one discussions. certain the candidature of a particular person but this should not be seen as an institutional position nor an institutional fiat or institutional binding instruction and certainly this sort of discussions should not dominate our time that we spend in association of devotees especially when we are having Krishna Katha discussions they should not become political Katha that may become Prajalpa so that may be one issue that we discuss occasionally to understand the situation better but our primary focus should be on understanding Krishna conscious philosophy, purifying that and sharing that message of love and purification with others and additionally circumstantially whenever required we can discuss this occasionally and some devotees may even want to do this more and they may already have had some interest in politics more interest in politics than average and they may have even had some political ambitions and that’s why they may be more politically interested so we can see that as those devotees individual interest and not necessarily see that as something which is a central aspect of Krishna conscious philosophy and in this way we can take that as one input and accordingly decide our choice during the elections