Should one not become an IAS officer because one will get the karma of the people under one’s jurisdiction?

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Does that answer your question? Hare Krishna. Question? I aspire to become an IAS officer, but my mother, who is also a devotee, and I am also a practicing devotee, my mother says that an IAS officer is like a king for an area. And the king is responsible for the citizens and the king gets the karma, gets part of the karma of the citizens.
So, today, in all parts of the country and in all parts of India at least, there are four regular principles which are being openly broken and all the bad karma of that which is being done, if a person is in administrative position, then that person will also get the karma. So, therefore, she says that I should not aspire to become an IAS officer. So, what is the proper understanding about this? Answer? There is the principle of karmic entanglement, no doubt, but there is also the principle of taking up responsibility.
So, now it is, at one level it is true that, yes, the administration in India is very messed up and there are a lot of problems with it and as you said that the regular principles are being broken, but does that mean that because of that we should stay out of all positions like this? Then, firstly, an administrative officer, say even if somebody is a district collector, a district collector is not exactly like a king because a king usually is a sovereign. A king has, at least within the jurisdiction of the kingdom, very strong authority and today the IAS officer doesn’t have that level of authority. Usually the IAS officers are subordinate to the politicians and the politicians can transfer them and even termination is not so easy but they can always transfer them and so generally speaking the highest political authority in an administration is not the administrative head, it is the political head.
So, it may be the MP or the MLA and not necessarily the district collector or the district district chief or the chair administrative department. So, first of all, that comparison that the IAS officer is like a king is not true. More we could say that the IAS officer is more like the king’s advisor.
Now, as devotees, at one level we want to practice bhakti and we want to share bhakti with others and that we can do directly by ourselves becoming serious devotees and directly sharing Krishna consciousness by teaching its message. That is one level of practice and that is good but along with that we also know, we also recognize that there are the mainstream structures of power that are there in society. So, for example, there is the Krishna consciousness movement which is sharing Krishna consciousness with a significant circle of people around it and that is good.
Along with that there are also the other structures of power wherein Krishna consciousness does not have much presence. So, for example, now there is the media, there are newspapers, there are televisions. So, now in the newspaper and the television, now if some devotee enters over there, now someone may say that oh a newspaper, that newspaper is actually just mostly filled with prajna and it’s filled with filled with sexual imagery and other frivolous activities and innocent trees are destroyed for manufacturing the newspapers and therefore if a devotee gets in the journalism in the media then that devotee is a part of the sinful world and therefore one should not get into that.
So, then if we don’t get into that then there will be no chance for us to reach out to the broader society. The newspapers are the medium by which we will reach out we can reach out to a far larger number of people than what we can reach out through our own other means, our own direct Krishna conscious means which are available through the Krishna consciousness movement. So, yes if we are in a newspaper media we cannot say that I will join a newspaper only if that newspaper makes a resolution not to publish any sexually explicit ads and not to not report anything about sexual imagery and things about sexuality or anything like that.
No, then one will have to create one’s own newspaper and then that newspaper can have its own reach. But if one wants to influence the broader society then there will be give and take. Give and take means if we want a voice there we can’t expect them to change entirely.
We may also have to adjust accordingly and that is fine. If we are going to reach in a particular forum and present in a particular way then we have to choose which battles we are going to fight and when we are deciding which battles to fight we have to choose our battles. Just like Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu when he took sanyas from Advaitic sampradaya at that time his focus was not on directly changing that sampradaya itself at that particular point.
When he took sanyas from Keshav Bharti as it was a very ecstatic occasion Keshav Bharti was also in ecstasy but he did not try to go to Keshav Bharti’s associates and his Keshav Bharti’s teachers and try to reform Mayavad at that time. No, there he just used that structure of power which was existing. Mayavad Advaitavad had tremendous respect in the society at that time although that had waned slightly and bhakti also had been gaining mass appeal as well as gradual intellectual respectability but Chaitanya Mahaprabhu basically used that structure of power at that time and then thereafter after taking the sanyas he just focused on sharing Krishna bhakti widely with others so at that time one may have to nominally when he is receiving the sanyas from Vedic sampradaya, at that time he doesn’t have to go about and challenge the teachings of that sampradaya.
That he can do at some other time later. So similarly when as devotees we are negotiating with the existing structures of power so that we can get some foothold there then we can’t expect that structure of power to change so suppose some spiritual teacher they get an opportunity to appear on TV for an interview now on that TV they may get some 30 minutes and the remaining out of 23 and a half hours may be 15-16 hours may be just sensuality being depicted and they say oh this TV industry is so filled with contamination degradation that if I become a part of it then I will become contaminated so better let me not be a part of it then we will miss the opportunity to share Krishna Bhakti through that forum so Prabhupada even went to the Avalon ballroom where there were just hippies who were in antara gaha of course Prabhupada was cautious at that time and he was transcendental so he was not affected. So there is the, Prabhupada recognizes the danger of being affected at the same time he also encouraged devotees to be adventurous in sharing Krishna consciousness in whatever way is practically possible so with this background in mind let’s focus on the the specific of IAS officer so we as devotees especially if somebody is trying to enter into grahastha ashram then each devotee according to one’s nature and according to one’s disposition has to decide how best one can contribute according to one’s talents, one’s interest, one’s inspiration so there are many people today who have no very deep rooted career aspirations in the sense that yes everybody may imagine a glamorous career most young people imagine that let me go to America and then that is because that’s what is the glamorized definition of success in today’s society but that may not be what is truly their deepest aspiration and that may not be what is their own inclination or their talent also so some people are a significant number of people really don’t have any burning will to pursue any particular career so for such people then they can if they don’t have any special talents or any special inspiration like some people may be very skilled in art, some people may be very skilled in music, some people may be skilled in leadership or whatever in management or whatever if there is no such thing then it is best to pursue a career if one is introduced to bhakti before one starts pursuing one’s career then one can just pursue a career which is not very demanding so for example a devotee may take a teaching profession and may go into become a teacher or a professor and that way one can get more and more time for the practice of bhakti and for the practice of bhakti and for the sharing of bhakti so that is one way of acting and that is especially good if one doesn’t have any special zeal to do any particular thing but it says somebody has a zeal, somebody has a great zeal and also has the ability millions of people young students may feel that I want to become IAS officer but one also has to be honest to see what is one’s intellectual ability so if one has the inspiration as well as the capacity to pursue a particular ambitious career choice then whatever complications are there in that career choice one will have to deal with them and one should not shirk from them just because of the fear of karmic entanglement because if we have certain very deeply rooted aspirations we cannot wish them away and later on if we don’t do it because of our bhakti and if we later on come to blame bhakti our practice of bhakti for that then that will create unnecessary negativity and we may even blame devotees who gave us that advice that should not happen we should know that it’s our decision and is it that one who can practice one who can have a low profile career and focus more on direct practice and sharing of bhakti is it that that person is more serious about bhakti than someone else who pursues a more high profile career? Not necessarily because rather than saying who is less serious or who is more serious we can see each one of us how best we can practice bhakti in the long haul sustainably so if someone feels inspired to say become an IAS officer then yes one may not be able to stop the breaking of the four regulatory principles because that will often not be in the jurisdiction of power of the IAS officer but still there is significant amount of good that one can do from that position so for example there are institutions of dharma there are programs which propagate the true message of dharma and one may not because of being in a secular governmental structure be able to directly support them but one can at least not at least avoid the many unnecessary obstacles that come in when the government authorities are apathetic or antipathetic and if there is at least a sympathetic government officer that is itself very helpful so yes Krishna there may be some karmic entanglement that happens but Krishna also says all endeavors are covered by faults in this world there is no endeavor that is free from fault and that’s why if we try to find an endeavor that is free from faults we are never going to find anything like that instead we should focus on trying to see how best we can use our talents our intelligence for contributing to society and for ultimately either directly sharing or indirectly facilitating the sharing of Krishna’s message now as far as the karmic entanglement is concerned if there is a direct if there is direct breaking of the regulatory principles in a particular activity then that is something which devotees should preferably avoid so for example if if one gets the opportunity to become a chief officer of a of a beef manufacturing unit then certainly one should avoid that but if indirectly that is what is happening within one’s jurisdiction that is not something which is one directly responsible for now we see the example of Rupan Sanathan Goswami who not only who actually became who became Muslims, they were Brahmins and for a Brahmin at that time to become a Muslim was was a very big thing considered a very great degradation and that’s why now the point here which you are making is that they did that because they felt that that’s the best way they could serve the Nawab Hussain Shah who was quite a brutal ruler he wanted them in his administration and he said that they felt that if they are there then they will be able to check his depravity then they will be able to protect the Vaishnavas in the Vaishnav culture there and they did do that they themselves had to give up the external forms of Vaishnavism and they had to dress, they had to rename themselves as Muslims and they had to adopt the external Muslim cultural forms but their hearts were devoted to Krishna that was of course an emergency and what they did was also an emergency emergency measure but the point is that they did not shirk from that if that was what was required for the sake of duty so rather than making a blanket ruling that because there will be karmic entanglement so I should not enter into IAS one should have a more balanced and broader assessment of things how deep rooted is my aspiration how how much am I capable in terms of talents and inclinations and abilities to do this and how strong is my devotional commitment how much will I be able to persevere in my bhakti even in such situations and of course we also need to take the guidance for making these assessments we will need guidance of devotees who know us personally and even when we take up such a service if we take up such a service we should do it with the blessings of some senior devotees and in general there will be different devotees who will have different moods and different focuses so some devotees just focus on the direct devotional modes of outreach and some devotees may be more inspired and inclined towards indirect modes of penetration into mainstream society and using the mainstream modes of outreach even if the message that we are sending through them is not as direct or as explicit or focused as it might be directly so if we are going to go into such a vocation then we need to take the guidance from those devotees who understand the value of these kinds of outreach and they can guide us accordingly so that we can also protect our bhakti, we can minimize the karmic entanglement and at the same time be effective in the administration in whatever vocation we are in.
Thank you. Question from Keshav