The Monk’s Podcast 42 with Srinandanandan Prabhu – Protectinag dharma – Threats and Opportunities

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you very much for joining today for the monk’s podcast hare krishna glad to be here thank you bro it’s uh you know i my first encounter with you was through your evidences of vedic culture’s global existence oh yeah yeah where you talk extensively about various features of say architecture and literature and culture across the world that remarkably resemble or point to the vedic tradition so then since i have seen several of your books and then when i came to detroit i met you when you had come to pune also i met you once so yeah that’s right i remember we went we traveled from uh what was it from uh chalpiti down to pune yes that was when i was doing that uh lecture tour i can’t even remember that was like 12 years ago or something wasn’t it it was a long i think i definitely 12 13 years ago i met in rada govinda temple and then he traveled together so i would like to begin by asking that you know you have taken a particular you could say approach to outreach that is somewhat distinctive sometimes say as a movement we have we have distanced ourselves a little bit from hinduism and and tried to portray ourselves as universal or as krishna consciousness as somewhat different from hinduism whereas you focus a lot on the threats to hinduism from say christian conversion and other things like that so how did you evolve this approach or how did you choose this approach uh well you might say it chose me because uh basically i started writing back in 1986 87 in a very simple way and uh i started you know producing different books that i felt were good for westerners i wanted to approach the western audience quite honestly more than uh more than the indian indian audience but then i came across information about how the vedic culture disseminated around the world and you could see it in different cultures like that and i thought you know this is a good idea this is a good uh approach to show and build confidence in other people uh and devotees as well about the proficiency of vedic culture and other cultures and uh so anyway i wrote that book proof of vedic culture’s global existence and oddly enough it also became recognized by a large indian audience uh so much so that uh i had one friend of mine uh sanyasi friend and he said you know one of these days uh you’re going to be called to come to india and speak on these things and i thought yeah sure right you know and it happened it was like several months later that uh i got a notice some from some friends of mine uh and they wanted me to come to india to participate in some rss shakas and conferences and things like that so i they provided my way uh they bought the ticket and everything and uh so then i came to india and the thing of it was what happened was that they said okay uh now we’ll want we want you to speak at some of these things i thought oh okay well i didn’t know that was part of the deal and then suddenly i’m uh wait a minute when they invited you they didn’t tell you they wanted you to speak or why would they invite me because they wanted me to participate in some of the functions so their idea of participating like conferences lectures things like that and uh i’ve been invited uh practically ever since then almost every year to go to different conferences uh but this one was uh arranged and uh scheduled by the rss oh and uh so how did you know about your book was your book self-published or you got it published from some mainstream publisher or how did well originally when i started publishing i formed my own publishing company was it the global relief network or something you yeah the world relief network that was my personal publishing company uh because i had a friend uh david frolly you’ve probably heard of him of course yeah he told me that you know uh it’s hard to find a publisher that’s interested in publishing philosophy which is very true uh so you almost have to do it yourself but then as this book came out more and more people kind of grasped it and took an interest in it and so that’s how some of the members of the rss found out about it in fact they ordered a case of my books about 30 books and they were having a conference i think it was in may of 19 2000 i think it was and they distributed copies of that book to all the prominent people that were at that conference and then from there they asked me to come i think it was in june or something like that a few months later and uh to participate in some of their meetings and then when i got there they said that’s when they said we’d like to have you speak at some of these things too and so i didn’t know it but they arranged a two-week tour through different towns and villages well i should say different towns and cities uh with the professor subash khak so we traveled together by train bus everything we were together for two weeks and i was speaking every night and uh so you know i i had never spoken in front of a indian audience before so i wasn’t exactly sure how to approach it but uh by the time i got to vijayawada uh i remember i was i was speaking so forcefully that when after the conference somebody came up to me and you could always tell how your reaction how effective your speech was by the reactions of the audience afterwards and this man came up and he says you know when you were speaking i thought you were like the return of vivicananda of course we’re not trying to be vivicananda but the point of it was to them that’s a very high compliment of course yeah and uh so then i realized wow something is really happening here and so subash khak would give a lecture on more of the scientific aspects of vedic culture and i would give a talk basically from the heart about how influential vedic culture was to me and other people that i knew about and so that was very uh convincing to them and they liked it and uh and as i became more used to speaking to the indian audience i became more bold about it and and uh and they had they were attracted to that how a westerner feels about their culture they were very interested in that because one thing i was told too is that when he was the prime minister at the time he said you know you westerners can say what we cannot and i didn’t know what that meant what does that mean what we westerners can talk about the vedic culture in a way that the indians cannot and then i realized yeah a lot of times swamis that speak in front of an audience they’re expected to say certain things you know they they you know what they’re going to talk about or what they’re going to uh can try to convince you of but for a westerner to come it was a totally different thing why would a westerner who’s grown up in an affluent materialistic culture come to india and talk about how grand and how great and how influential the vedic culture is so that’s what i understood where now i can see i could see where i could say things and westerners can say things but sometimes i mean if it’s done appropriately and diplomatically we can say things that the other people cannot say and be more convincing about it because we have no agenda so to speak and uh that caught on quite a bit so i went through that whole uh tour and then uh just several months later they asked me to come back yeah just a minute sorry i’ll just backtrack so you said you wrote the book in 1986 and then i first started writing books in 1986 okay the first book was the secret teachings of the vedas oh okay then after that came the universal path to enlightenment and then after that came the vedic prophecies uh after that came the uh how the universe was created and our purpose in it and so it kind of developed after that and there was a few more books and then in 1998 i think it was that’s when i wrote proof of vedic culture’s global existence oh and that’s basically what opened the doors i mean that book the thing of it was when i wrote that book i didn’t think too many people would be interested i thought it was a topic that should be told but i didn’t think too many people would be interested in reading about it so i wrote it in kind of a very informal way i didn’t use i used a lot of references but i used i put a lot of the references in the back of the book whereas opposed i didn’t use a lot of footnotes and things like that biggest mistake i ever made because i didn’t realize that this became one of my best-selling books and it’s still a very a good seller today even though afterwards 10 15 years after that i started putting together another book called the mysteries of the ancient vedic empire and in that book i used completely different information completely different references and i used a lot of footnotes and you know uh quotes from different sources to show exactly where all this information was coming from so that was done much more academically and i’d say and uh yes that’s how i got started basically okay so then all this time from 1986 since 1998 there was no practically i don’t think there was amazon or ebooks so how did you publicize the books because self-publishing now is much easier than it was at that time so well what i did at first was i um i formed it as part of a home study course so i had a book i had tapes i had the transcriptions of the tapes i had other notes and then a test that you take and then you get a certificate and i i would advertise in magazines of course back then there was much fewer magazines to choose from than there are today and uh so i would sell a few copies of the course but i found where most of the people uh they were just interested in the book so i thought okay well that’s good enough that’s fine with me uh but then what happened was uh later on there was a company called baker and taylor and they started ordering copies of books and now baker and taylor is a major book distributing company and they sell to a lot of bookstores university bookstores things like that now when they started ordering the book then i thought okay okay i gotta take this a little more seriously and so then in uh 1987 i went to india and i completely redid the book i did took half of it and put it into one book with a travel section with a bunch of pictures of india and then i took the other half of the book and came out with the universal path to enlightenment and it was about that time where i got an order from a company i’d never heard of before called amazon and they were wondering okay well what’s the discounted price can we order it you know sure no problem with that and i was thinking what is amazon anyway you know and i had no idea what it was and uh so but later you know as it developed you know i realized what amazon was amazon became much a bigger company and and now i sell most of my books through amazon yeah so it uh it kind of let me know that you know this is this is i should need to take this more seriously than i was so that’s how that whole thing developed and then when i came to proof of any culture’s global existence that’s when that was about the time amazon started uh getting into the uh publishing business not just the book selling business but also the publishing business in about 19 or no 2005 or something like that and so and then uh well maybe a few years earlier and then a few years later they came out with the kindle which was like a completely new market area so then i started reorienting my books to also sell not only in paperback but also through kindle which practically doubled uh the the book sales that i was doing and so then you know you have to keep up with the technology and all this stuff and now i sell more kindle editions of my books than paperbacks so it’s been a gradual evolving process which kind of developed into a cottage industry for myself you might say so anyway it’s been a very interesting process but the one of the reasons why i started writing books was because i felt like i was never a very good speaker i wasn’t very good at giving lectures at least that’s the way i felt and of course but this time i’ve given hundreds and hundreds of lectures to many different places and venues but so i wanted to come out with the uh philosophy in a way where i could get around that problem and so instead of you know being a speaker i became a writer and like i said i was writing mostly with the intention of reaching a western audience which means you have to take this high level philosophy and simplify it so people can understand it don’t use too many big words don’t use too much sanskrit things like this so that people can you know absorb themselves into it without getting frustrated or bored or distracted and then they put the book down because then you don’t know when they’re going to pick the book up again especially with westerners like that so anyway that’s how i got started but so to answer your question how i got started with preaching to the indian audience is that after this tour in 2000 with professor subhash khan i started seeing various needs of how the indian audience needs to take more pride in their culture become more protective of their culture and so i started to change the purpose of my writing for an indian audience instead of just a western audience because they i didn’t realize it but they also liked the way i was writing and they felt uh you know some connection with it they felt some pride in it and uh so that’s how my audience became instead or the book writing became geared from a western audience to a more indian audience now it’s pretty much half and half generalized like that uh but that’s how i got started with becoming invited almost every year to come to india either for a lecture tour or to participate in conferences and things like that uh so it’s been quite a door opening uh means of uh preaching work like that yes so for when you came to india in 2000 and you said you spoke from the heart about how vedic culture has benefited you and others so was that the time when you started speaking more broadly about vedic culture and not specifically about krishna consciousness because say when you’re addressing the rss what kind of topics would you speak to them because sometimes because sometimes i’m well i would always yeah i would always present myself as being a devotee a disciple of shilpa and they all respected that because quite honestly many people feel and view iskcon as a prime agency if i can call it that for preserving and protecting vedic culture we of course we we preach krishna consciousness but they also see that as part of vedic culture which it is there’s no harm in saying that and uh so because of that i could give a more well-rounded view and dissertation on what vedic culture has done for me what you know because obviously i was looking for a higher level of spiritual life anyway at the time when i was a teenager and uh which led me to bhagavad gita which finally led me to joining the ashram and uh developing myself like that so i would talk about how what vedic culture has done for me what it’s done for friends what it’s done for western culture how many people have been attracted to it and like that how it’s given me the understanding of who and what is god what is the soul what is reincarnation and karma all these different things which it holds the roots of the vedic culture holds the roots of these things coming you can always find you know information about this in new age books but the fact of the matter is the roots of all this information come from the vedic tradition itself and when i would speak about these kind of things and what it’s done and how it’s uh given people the means for being happy and understanding and a purpose in life and the means to reach their highest potential they would become fascinated because here’s some westerner that and nobody has really spoken about this kind of thing before reaching their highest potential because i’ll tell you right now even in india you can see this where the western youth has are the indian youth have become very westernized yes in the sense that they ask they don’t just take to evading culture or hinduism because their grandmother did it or their parents told them to do it now it’s like it’s the mantra what’s in it for me which is a typical western approach nobody’s in the west nobody’s going to take to something unless they can understand how it’s going to improve their life and what they’re going to get out of it and indian youth are the same way they ask themselves the same question so you have to approach it and give them that means of understanding how vedic culture can do something for them how it can be applied to their life how can it become more how their life can become more fulfilling by utilizing it and how they can reach their highest potential by utilizing the different avenues of spiritual development and also the other avenues like vastu shastra ayurveda jyotish all these different things that the vedic culture is known to have in their own lives to improve themselves whether it’s be improve their health improve their emotional status or state improve their intellectuality and ultimately improve their spiritual progress all these different things can be attained through the vedic system because that’s what it’s for to raise everybody up to higher and higher levels of reaching their potential and so when i would approach this kind of thing yeah people would become fascinated by it so when you talk about say this what is a pragmatic spirituality or which is what attracts people now not many people are interested in philosophical spirituality per se that as you said what’s in it for me so now in terms of pragmatic spirituality say we can as a movement we as a conmemorator can talk about how you may have some bad habits and you can give those up and you can easily become free from those so when you talk about reaching your potential what exactly did you mean by that is it that see there is a genre of self-help spirituality and where you talk about motivation and achievement and i noticed that christians have used self-help spirituality a lot in fact before being introduced to krishna consciousness i used to get a lot of self-help books and i saw many christian authors i think there was norman vincent peale who wrote the power of positive thinking and books like that so when you are talking about right attaining your potential i have not seen you writing too much in the self-help genre so there are i think some books which go in that genre but your genre is not exactly that so when you talk about reaching your potential so one could be like a self-help genre the other could be more like a behavioral genre where you say you have bad habits and things like that but what do you mean exactly by reaching your potential well it’s like i’ve come out with a few books called one called vedic culture the difference it can make in your life and that was back when i was the president of the vedic friends association and i collected our articles from the likes of uh you know michael cremo subhash khan jeffrey armstrong uh patichi matura who’s an ayurvedic practitioner uh chakrapani ulal who’s a vedic astrologer howard beckman who’s a vedic gemologist you know and so basically what i did was i collected all these articles to show and put it into a book called vedic culture the difference it can make in your life to show the different avenues that the vedic tradition offers that you can use in your life to bring yourself up to a higher level of understanding who and what you how you got here but also how to use jyotish for example to improve your life how to use ayurveda to improve your health how you can use the different aspects of uh you know karma yoga jnana yoga astanga yoga bhakti yoga mantra yoga all these different things to increase your spiritual development so uh it depends on what book you look at of mine that you could say it is either self-help or not help self-help you know i’ve uh i don’t approach it as self-help i approach it as the what the vedic tradition can do for you i always approach it through the purpose of promoting the vedic tradition not that just so there’s a self-help book you know there’s hundreds of those out there so i don’t i don’t want to be like another one of those uh but you know and it’s uh interesting enough i’ve got some good reviews on that book in fact i’m just redoing that book now uh to come out with a uh another version of it which will be uh published through amazon at a less expensive price more availability like that so uh but in my own example uh before i joined the ashram back and when i was just in my early 20s um i used to be a musician and as a musician sometimes you get together with other musicians and you would you know smoke a few cigarettes or this or that and but in the meantime i was always going to the temple this was when i was living in boston i was always going to the temple and so that’s when i started chanting at least two rounds every day i would spend and then four rounds every day so i’d spend an hour every day one half hour reading bhagavad gita which soon developed into an hour of reading every day and even more than that and then a half an hour at least chanting but together with those two things together that really started to purify or spiritualize my consciousness and i could feel an inner power within me and the first thing i said well i can feel this inner power this inner strength what am i going to do with it which okay this must have been about 72 73 and uh so first thing i’m going to do is i’m going to quit smoking and i did i just kept chanting and it gave me a higher taste and i just gave up smoking altogether so even if i was with other musicians jamming and things like that i didn’t have a taste for it and so gradually by engaging in krishna consciousness it’s not that you have to give up bad habits it’s just that you rise to a higher level of perceiving yourself perceiving who and what you are so that you naturally give up some of these bad habits it just it you just it’s a natural organic change that takes place rather than forcing yourself to you know i gotta you know change my ways or i gotta change my habits that just becomes automatic who needs it who needs to smoke a cigarette i just the idea was that whenever i had a taste for a cigarette i would think to myself well you just had a cigarette it might have been days since i had one i just had a cigarette what’s good there’s another cigarette going to do and i just became like yeah what the heck shanhari krishna and and rise above the whole uh attraction of that and i just gave it up completely and so the point of it is if i can do it anybody can do it this is indeed the potency and the power of krishna consciousness and the hari krishna mantra anybody can use it so i would talk about this you know include at least this kind of aspect in my own preaching work and it became very effective people became attracted to that so you would mention specifically about chanting hari krishna or you talk generically about yoga and meditation and mantra chanting and worship of the vedic deities yeah yeah okay yeah basically i would start very generically when i give a talk to an indian audience i would talk very generically but then sometimes especially when i was especially when i was on that uh tour with the chaupati devotees i would go into uh uh different universities and they would say that they couldn’t come into the university where i could because i didn’t have a shaved head where if they came in they would you know the university would frown on it or tell them to leave and uh i remember in one place uh where was it somewhere in uh i think it was mumbai but we went to an iit camp uh campus and i went in the devotees had to stay in the car because they couldn’t be seen because the campus the college had become upset because they had been making too many devotees that were leaving the college so they didn’t like that so i would go in there and i would speak i would speak very generically and then come up and become more specifically but in the questions and answers they would specifically ask about me what was my spiritual practice what did i do and i would be very specific i chant hare krishna i am a disciple of shila prabhupada i you know been reading bhagavad-gita for years you know you should do the same thing and so once they started asking asking questions hey there is no more generics involved there is no more holds bars for so to speak i would just come out and be straight with them and of course then you know what’s the college going to do at that point i can’t do anything they’re asking me a question i’m giving an answer a personal answer so uh that’s how i approached it and it it worked very well and then then we would go and uh meet at somebody’s uh college uh dormitory room or not dormitory but college uh room and in one of the hostels yeah hostels like that and uh and then many people would show up all these people would show up it was supposed to be it was i think it was just off campus so they could still get away with it but many people would show up and then i would continue giving a class giving answering questions and things like that that’s one of the greatest things i found is that you know these uh uh camps as they call them in mumbai especially by the uh chalpiti devotees they would have all these camps at these college uh and universities where they would have people living together and they would uh go to college but come back have a morning program an evening program and have a couple maybe a couple uh people there that would cook for them and stuff it was very effective in giving the means by which people could become krishna conscious while they’re still going to college and preparing for their future it’s a very good way to make devotees because i’ll tell you right now i’m getting a lot of reports from places like delhi mumbai where people i just got a report yesterday where a girl who’s a nice hindu girl vegetarian she goes to college what happens she comes out being anti-hindu eating beef giving up all her hindu practices and also criticizing your parents for observing whatever traditions they still observe from the vedic tradition so it’s these colleges which are actually in the influence in the atmosphere there which are actually taking people away from the tradition of vedic culture and the indian customs that they’re grown up with and so you know this is becoming a very difficult thing and a very sad thing when i get so many reports through my contacts with social media where many people and the youth especially are giving up their vedic traditions and the customs and the hindu practices that they’ve had so it’s a very sad thing but you know these camps that they have at these colleges in the universities in mumbai is a very effective way to bring people in and teaching them how to maintain their culture maintain their practice in a practical way where they can still prepare for the future and have a marketing skill of some kind so this is very effective i really appreciated that so i was i really like being a part of that uh tour where i could see many of these kind of things going on yes true in fact we call them as bases or youth centers basically and i was also introduced to such a youth center itself when i was in a college we converted really yeah i mean we converted the room where i was staying into such a youth center used to have programs at my room and then my room partner i we all started practicing seriously started sharing also eventually yeah that’s true so yeah and look what happened to you now it’s krishna’s mercy came through that so yeah here there is there is something which i observed initially and then that is a question which comes up to me also at various times that say we as a movement often sometimes do interfaith programs with other religious groups so we have a christian vaishnav dialogue and then we also have a muslim vaishnav dialogue happening so we seem to be much more sympathetic or ready to dialogue with with non-vedic traditions if i may use the word non-vedic in a specific sense inclusive sense we could say everything uh there’s a different terminology but say with other groups within the vedic tradition sometimes uh we seem to criticize them quite strongly and we have a somewhat by we i’m talking of the movement uh it’s called as a movement we seem to have a somewhat tense relationship with them and some some of the prominent leaders of modern day the modern hinduism sometimes we are quite critical of them and so this is uh so this is i think where you chose a distinct approach so why do you think if we have evolved in such a way that you know we can we can dialogue with and appreciate non-vedic groups but we keep a distance from or even criticize other vedic groups well i think one thing is uh i well one thing is prabhupada was always very uh cautious if i can say it that way about associating with impersonalists and i i totally agree with that because impersonalism itself cuts off your relationship with krishna simple as that but at the same time we can agree on so many other things we can agree on the basics of the philosophy we can agree on the need to preserve and protect the tradition and know how to promote the tradition so that we can perpetuate it that’s what i call the four p’s or four purrs for me is protect promote preserve to perpetuate the tradition because in this day and age i can tell you right now many hindus are not into the idea of promoting their culture but like you know as well as anybody you might have the best book available on a particular topic but if nobody knows about it nobody’s going to buy it so the same thing goes we may have the best tradition and the best culture available but if nobody knows about it if nobody knows how profound it is how deep it is nobody’s going to take it seriously so on the basic level we can all get along with uh shaivites uh brahmanandis shaktas uh you know all these people and all these different sects within the vedic culture because it’s all part of the vedic tradition the vedic tradition itself and many people don’t see this was always to meant to take you from wherever you are and bring you up to a higher level of understanding a higher level of development no matter who and what you are what your background is so this is the thing and we have to understand we may be so sympathetic to trying to get along with christians and muslims but do they feel the same respect for us not always we can find that basically they respect us as long as they can try to can have a position of convincing us that we should become one of them but at the same time when it comes to preserving and protecting the vedic culture why can’t we work with other traditions other sects within the vedic tradition to help protect ourselves because i can tell you right now if one aspect of vedic culture is under threat under attack we all are maybe we as vaishnavs or devotees are not getting attacked right now but don’t think we’re not on their table you don’t think we’re not on the plans of what they can do to get our property to get our temples or to make sure that somehow or another they can have some control over us because i can tell you right now there was like 10 years ago i was invited to participate in a conference at tirupati when there was a swami swami probably an impersonalist but he went for six months on a padyatra from village to village to village and by doing that i joined him on the last few days of that and we we went from village to village we sat down and ate with uh other hindus uh other people that were in the village and we he brought by that process he brought 10 000 people to tirupati in a rally to convince the government to hand over the control of 30 000 hindu temples many people haven’t even heard of this but there’s a state law on almost every state in india which allows the state to figure that if they can judge that a temple is not being appropriately managed they can put in their own people into the board of directors of that temple and begin to take it over and adjust the management of it and those people that they put in there can be christians muslims or whoever people that don’t even give a damn about the condition of the temple or the upkeep or the maintenance or anything like that and so we established we had a big rally where 10 000 people paraded through the streets of tirupati and because of that the the the state government gave back or agreed to give back 30 000 temples that they were in control of uh but they kept 2 000 of the most profitable temples in other words those temples that were making the most money and bringing in the most money to the they still kept 2 000 of those so the whole idea was that sure we got back 30 000 of those temples and that was in the state of andhra pradesh and what happened was that uh kamal kumar swamy was going to go on another six month pariyatra and they were going to have another get together a year after this and to once again try to convince the state government to give back the remaining 2 000 temples so these are problems these are issues that are going on in india that unfortunately many people don’t know about so this is one of the doors that opened up for me to help in this way simply because i became more receptive or more open to working with people from whatever lineage they came from it doesn’t mean i watered down my philosophy it doesn’t mean i watered down my uh krishna consciousness or anything like that but it showed that we could work together on the basic level of preserving and protecting uh the vedic tradition and uh one thing that uh that did happen was that a very prominent sanyasi swine under swine swami swati who was from point batura uh he liked what i did and because of that he helped he helped support me for five years five years he had his organization send me a check which helped pay my rent because i was living in an iskan house but i still had to pay rent to the temple and so he supported me in that way and i you know i’ll never forget him for helping me out like that but he was the one that started what was called the acharya sabah and this acharya sabah included 200 200 of the most prominent uh acharyas and spiritual leaders in in india the only uh requirement was that your institution had to be at least 200 years old and so they and they were from all six you uh shivites tantric it didn’t matter they all came together and spoke and dealt with issues that they were all dealing with to provide the protection and the promotion of the vedic tradition in india and i remember one friend of mine uh karnam aveti swami he went to one of these acharya sabahs but they wouldn’t let him in and uh he called me up later on he said i want to thank i said thank me for what because i wanted to go to this acharya sabah but they wouldn’t let me in and so then they i said but i know steven that and they said oh okay they let him in and uh for that reason he wasn’t allowed to participate but he could be there and watch how everything proceeded and uh so i think it’s one of those things that is is very commendable in the sense of bringing in so many different people to work on the issues that affect all of us doesn’t mean we try to convince one person or the other that i’m right you’re wrong you need to change your sect or lineage or whatever we don’t do any of that stuff there’s mutual respect 200 they built a platform where 200 uh yasasan sat on a platform for all 200 of these acharyas and they would all give talks and discussions about what to do about particular issues especially when dealing with the government control of hindu temples and things like that so the point of it is the government can’t be trusted quite honestly even the indian government and i’m not talking about modi in particular i’m talking about state governments because some of these state governments are indeed um headed up by say uh people of other religions and people who really don’t care about the longevity of uh vedic culture they want to know how they can utilize the properties the assets of the temples for their own purposes and this is one of the things why they like to take over the temples the temples may begin to crumble from lack of maintenance but oh while they had this 30 acre section of land we can sell that use that money for our state uh purposes or from the personal purposes of the government leaders and things like that that’s what’s been going on and uh that’s just one of the aspects of uh that i wish uh devotees would also see as a uh thing that could affect them also just like mayapur you know wouldn’t the state love to get their hands on that property especially the more it’s developed well we can make sure that that doesn’t happen but it doesn’t mean it’s not on their drawing board so to speak so uh i mean we have a lot of work to do i mean just like you probably know that there is a group of comedians in india which are very anti-hindu of course comedians always have to have something to laugh at something to make fun of but some of them are directly and purposely criticizing hinduism and vedic culture so and there was you probably heard that there was one movie in tamil nadu which was very derogatory towards krishna of course that’s another state where uh the different religions are coming very prominent i mean i could be very specific about this if you wanted me to but i won’t go that direction too much in this talk but um so one uh writer for the hindustani times who was a young girl came out and talked very negatively about krishna and said yes i know mythology and this and that fortunately the hindus who have a bad habit of simply staying asleep when these matters come up they got together and they forcefully made her apologize for what she said and she also lost her job now this sets an example that people need to have a little more respect for what they say and what they do regarding their uh attitude and their comments about vedic culture uh because uh even in kerala the hindu prominence the hindu population has decreased to such a degree that they’re no longer a majority that’s from what i’ve heard anyway from kerala it’s mostly marxists communists muslims and christians now so what this means is this a is this a bad thing well it’s certainly not a good thing because when uh students for example object to say a professor’s view on hinduism you know he’s a hindu he promotes it and when the students objected that he didn’t lose his job or even getting beat up or stoned in the streets is anybody going to do anything about it no because he’s in a he’s become a minority so this is also something that we have to be careful of we have to make sure that vedic culture remains a dynamic and thriving uh culture within india and keep it as the homeland of vedic culture so that we can all participate in whatever way we need to uh and so that krishna consciousness can come to the fore of preserving and protecting promoting and perpetuating the vedic tradition and so that means we should the point is we should never take too much too much pleasure in winning a battle if it’s not clear that we’re not we’re winning the war there’s a war that’s going on the war of kurukshetra you might say is still going on we have to make sure that okay we’ve uh won a battle we’ve got we’ve distributed so many books so many people are coming to the temple we’ve got a brand new temple in this city or that city which is great it shows the power that iskcon has as it’s coming through palpad from lord krishna lord chaitanya but we should not take too much pride in that thinking that we have won the war because the war is still going on as i’ve been explaining all these issues all these challenges which are still happening within india we have to make sure that we can also understand and how to tackle these issues one thing for example i’ll tell you i did two tours of the northeast of india no because i would like to reflect on some of the issues you mentioned before you move forward so i appreciate this metaphor of battle and war what you said lastly that there is a particular particular cultural setting that allows us to easily or at least without too much difficulty share krishna consciousness share krishna bhakti and we take it for granted but that itself is under threat is being challenged so now with respect to some questions about this we with respect to this hindu temple that was in your books that i read it for the first time and then i did some further research can you hear me yeah go ahead i’m just listening yeah then i did further research and saw that that that is quite an alarming fact so how did this actually happen that the government can take over hindu temples it can’t do that to mosques and churches so is this a flaw in the constitution or is there a legal loophole because it seems scandalous at one level that they could just take over temples and the way you put it in one of your books is quite graphic that that they may take they may take the dakshina that a hindu worshipper may have given to a temple and that may might be used actually to to build a structure for some other religion or fund something like that so what what is the legal how is this happening actually well it’s a state law it’s not doesn’t have the constitution but each state can pass its own laws to be able to do this so you have to take it by a state by state uh uh view of it so basically the if the state can prove that the temple is not being managed properly then they will take over the management is it like that right and then what is the basis for saying that it’s not being managed properly they do some investigation to see if funds are not being managed or what does not being properly managed mean it’s could be anything it could be anything that they want you know if a state uh uh chief minister or something like that has a uh um an allegation against a particular temple then he can say well they’re not treating certain people fairly they’re they’re not managing properly they’re not managing the funds properly or whatever so they do a certain investigation and whether the temple is actually accused uh guilty of that or not they can be accused of that so that the state can come in and say well we’re going to change the management of the temple and we’re going to put in some of our own people to watch over how things are happening and uh then they can put in whoever they want and once they do that they can decide for themselves and whatever they weigh whatever they will uh whatever way they want to uh do as they wish so that’s the way it works so this is uh in which all states is it in most of the states or is it more yeah well when i was first starting to do the research i found that it was i thought it was just in a few states but actually it’s most states that have this as a law that they can fall back on it’s not that every state uses that law okay but many states can if they want and many states like andhra pradesh and others they are deliberately using this law to the max or at least they were until uh you know people started to really object but the objection means to be it has to be organized it has to be coordinated so that means like we had 10 000 people come to tear buddy to uh object to this thing it has to be impressive enough that where the state government begins to think okay okay we got to relent to their demands that without that a few people can’t do anything i mean you might have a few lawyers like uh uh super money swami or somebody like that that can come in and get into uh uh the legalities of something and bring it to court but unless you have some uh you know emphasis and power behind you uh they’re just they’re just going to laugh in your face so bro in principle they could do this even for churches and mosques but they do yeah well remember that well they don’t do that because that is considered a minority so they won’t do that for a minority but remember propod specifically uh established is gone as not necessarily a religious organization or even as a temple he established it as an educational institution so that the state regard has a completely different view of an educational institution this is the difference however that doesn’t mean that it has not that certain states have not already taken over particular educational institutions they can still do that if they want but it’s a little different so uh so propod was very intelligent in that way but you have to learn how to strategize and all this stuff so you can avoid uh being easily manipulated by certain institutions and uh government so for example now say in andhra or south south india so are the prominent temples with hindus say for example thirupathi there’s a thirupathi trust so is that run by hindus or is it independently run by that temple’s tradition or is it run by the government how is it uh well the government has tried to make some influence in there specifically and and uh but it is still run by the ttd the tirupati temple uh trust and uh so that is an independent body it’s it’s made of hindus or it is it is yeah okay made of hindus but even though the government has tried to infiltrate it in different ways but what they’re really doing is they’re starting to allow churches and mosques to come into tirupati and buy up portions of land to establish mosques and maybe christian institutions nearby which then has more in an increasing influence in the area so this is what’s another thing that’s happening and uh many hindus may object to that but like i said if they’re not if the objection isn’t organized it doesn’t have enough power behind it it has no effect quite honestly and so this is another challenge even just a tirupati which is a long-standing you know very wealthy very prominent temple it’s still under a threat you might say to different degrees so are there any prominent temples that have been taken over by the government or most of the prominent traditional temples are still with hindus for example south india has a lot of sacred places i can’t say for all states but i know in andhra pradesh uh you know and some of these temples may be very small some of them may be more established uh but like i said they had over 30 000 temples which were under government control so which that is amazing so that agitation you mentioned which year was that where there was a walk several years ago yeah it was maybe about 10 years ago or so maybe a little bit more than that okay so and that was very effective that was very effective yeah another point you mentioned about say um comedians satire satirizing or you know deriding mocking uh mocking personality sacred in our tradition so there are two distinct aspects to this one is that we do want to ensure that there is no uh no blast no unfair criticism or as you say mocking of sacred personalities at the same time there is there is the provision of freedom of speech so now sometimes in the media a some people say that you know we are not like the intolerant abrahamic religions so we don’t know some people compare and they say that nobody would criticize the sacred personality of other religions because they don’t because they will take action which is true but then at another level when when there is opposition done like this often the media portrays as you know we are being intolerant that there is threat to the freedom of speech so where do we draw a line so that we don’t want to first of all be intolerant or appear intolerant but at the same time there is a limit for freedom of speech so so how do we ensure that there is also a issue of public relations or optics that if we come off as intolerant that also becomes a problem so any thoughts on this why are you worried about looking intolerant you’re already viewed as intolerant are you kidding you’re already viewed as communal you’re already viewed as sat trying to saffronize india you’re already viewed like that like that so the point of it is is that at least we should have the gumption that when somebody unnecessarily criticizes hanuman for example or lord shiva or anything that we stand up and say no this is hurtful you’re going too far with this it’s time to stand down make your jokes about something else sure you can talk about uh you know different characteristics or habits of hindus or indians in general but when you deliberately talk about uh uh the the uh uh or try to mischaracterize different deities different images or krishna or whatever in uh the arena of public opinion then that’s going too far the problem is you have um the media itself whether it’s the wire whether it’s the hindustan times whether it’s so many of these newspapers are anti-hindu to begin with so whenever something happens if it involves a person of some other religion they say oh the hindus were very bad toward that person you know all you know something should be done but if somebody of other religion does something to the hindus uh they either ignore it or they think they act as if it wasn’t such a bad thing because i hear all the time i get news reports about bihar bengal where the muslims are tearing down uh businesses that belong to hindus houses that belong to hindus burning them up or in pakistan where they’re kidnapping the girls and turning them into muslims or raping them and or forcing them into marriages things like that it’s going on on a continual basis how much do you really hear about that you don’t hear about it unless you’re connected to the right outlets or the right uh newsletters or things like that uh because and this is something so the point of it is don’t worry about what you’re being thought of because they don’t think of you very nicely anyway the point of it is it’s time to protect and preserve our culture just a minute here when you say you are you referring to any person who is following vedic tradition are you referring to iskcon or when you are not what are you means any yeah you means anybody anybody you you as a indian you as a hindu you should need you we should all work together to preserve protect promote and perpetuate our culture that that that part is perfectly fine we all are doing our part but when you say you are already seen as communal you’re already seen as saffronizing the country so you know there are there are different organizations that are perceived as anybody who can be viewed as a hindu whether you’re devotees non-devotees or whatever if you’re viewed as a hindu then you’re already viewed in that light no you would no you would say at least by those people who are anti-hindu they already see you like that yeah you know okay let me put it this way say for example in the public eye the rss has a particular image even if you say the media is biased whatever it is you know we cannot we all like you said uh there is there is a larger reality which we have to deal with and say if we even we grant that media is biased still within that biased media say the rss has a particular perception and say is gone has a particular perception particular image and the two are not the same so so when you say i don’t think is gone is being ever seen as you are communalizing or something like that so no for example when i hadn’t talked to anybody about that well generally we are we get opportunities to go to various forums is gone is seen as fairly there is a concern that we may make you into brahmacharis but we are not seen as a hindu hardline organization as such maybe not hindu hardline but once again if you’re trying if people view you as an organization trying to make more and more brahmacharis you know how many letters i get from people that are scared that if my husband joins is gone i as a wife will be left alone who’s going to raise our kids he’s going to take sannyas i mean they many people just take these images and just go to the extreme with it i mean way out of the ordinary but many people they they are worried that if people join is gone the next thing they’re going to do they’re going to move into the temple and they’re going to leave their family and uh not only the parents are worried about their children but the wives are also worried about their husbands so this uh it depends on who you’re talking to about what view people have of is gone i can tell you that right now and uh and sometimes obviously it’s misconstrued you know our purpose is misconstrued it’s not clear uh so they may have different views of the rss but they also don’t know that maybe the rss is also distributing hundreds and hundreds of plates of food to people during this uh pandemic lockdown they may not know that is gone is doing the same thing which creates a very good positive image but at the same time some people feel that well it’s for uh it’s not just out of the kindness of their heart but they’re trying to gain favor so that it will join is gone you know people don’t realize you can join is gone and still live at your home and continue working keeping your job things like that uh it’s not a what you feel but people get scared about it yeah so what you are saying is that our focus should be primarily on as you said i like this four piece protect preserve promote and perpetuate with the culture and not so much on our public image you know well that itself will give you the proper public image yeah i’ll give you an example see i’ll give you an example that some there are i was once invited for a program with on the topic of ram fact or fiction and i was asked to speak on that it was a general hindu gathering and i was told that subramanian swami was going to be there and i was going to speak with him and i was happy to have that forum and i know that he’s a he has a lot of influence but later on what i came to know was the whole program was for building the ram temple ayodhya and in that context they were asking whether ram is fact or fiction so i have also been writing books maybe for the last 15 years and maybe they’ve been the last 7-8 years i have started entering into the mainstream mainstream publishing industry my four or five of my last books have been published by mainstream publishers and they reach they can reach a much broader audience right and what say if i only through amazon or through my speaking tools distribute so when i had this opportunity this was about maybe five six six or six or seven years ago that was the time when i just entered in the publishing industry and my agent who was getting me to the publisher he told me that you know you right now have a squeaky clean image and if you are associated with hindutva right wing then many publishing doors will close for you so then i had to at that time make a strategic decision then i talked with the devotees and even within iskcon there was some concern that see i am perfectly fine speaking on a topic of whether ram is ram is real or fictional and i got a good amount of research done for that but when it is presented within a political context i don’t i have no opposite i mean i would we would all love to have a ram temple in ayodhya but when the issue is is becomes politically volatile then when we commit to a particular cause we also close certain doors so some doors open and some doors close so i was advised by not only my publisher but also by several iskcon leaders that you know better don’t participate in that program so of course in retrospect i am not sure whether it would have had that much effect or not because it was just one program but my point is that the public perception also matters in terms of what doors open and what doors close so now you have clearly in a sense carved out a niche for yourself that there is a large audience of people who are concerned about the broad vedic culture and you are reaching out to them in a significant way so how is the in the the strategy that you adopted for reaching out how is the broad vedic culture how is it seen in the devotee community either by the movement’s leaders or the individual devotees how do you find their response it’s almost like i have two lives i have one life as shri nandanandana chairman of the board of the outreach temple there in the farmington suburb of detroit and i told our sankirtan department which was headed up by uh dave madhav to start a preaching center in uh ypsilanti ann arbor yeah uh both of those are doing very well uh but then i have another identity and it also often happens where if somebody asks uh well who are you oh i’m shri nandanandana but most people know me as steven knapp oh you’re steven knapp so this whole other identity as steven knapp is one that’s more closely known by the hindus and i’m more well known as steven knapp because the hindus read my books so when it comes to those kind of doors those kind of doors open for me where if i’m going to be sensitive about uh say preaching and krishna consciousness or something then i’ll just go as shri nandanandana you know yeah but if i’m going to be more forceful in my preaching about hindu culture and stuff like that then i go as steven knapp so these two have never been in conflict they have both of them have their own space and they’re operating that way is it like that yeah it seems to i mean that wasn’t intentional that was not an intentional plan of mine but it just happened that way because when i came out with my first book of the vedas i wrote it under the name of shri nandanandana but you know most westerners they can’t even pronounce that that’s some indians can’t even pronounce it so i thought no better i uh republish it under my legal name of steven knapp and so that’s how the division got started so for you you’re known as chaitanya turan you know and whatever you do that’s what you’re known as but for me i already have i’m in a unique position in that way i’m already have two different identities practically and so it depends on the function it depends on the venue how i present myself and in that way under steven knapp i don’t care what doors close because i know i know what doors will open because of the way i present this philosophy into who i present it to and i can tell you right now i it’s been a fascinating ride because there’s many things that have happened to me that never would have happened without that possibility just like in the northeast i did two tours of the northeast region back in the winter of 2000 and the winter of 2001 and i became very uh appreciative of the position of the indigenous people in assam sikkim nagaland arunachala pradesh manipur places like that and i became a very very strong preacher when i was up there doing that and i was really hoping that more and more devotees would understand what’s going on up there how vedic culture and how the indigenous tribes are under threat and fortunately bhakti purushottam swami has taken it upon himself to work up in the northeast regions which gives me great pleasure to see that and if i if i was younger of course this whole pandemic thing is slowing things down but if i was younger i would love to go up there and spend some time with him working in his projects working in his temples that he’s establishing uh to help preserve and protect the vedic tradition and the indigenous tribes up there in that region because they’re very sweet people up there they’re very nice and they’re very innocent in a way yes two days ago i had a podcast with bhakti purushottam maharaj also and he’s he’s actually pioneering that and he has been able to do a lot of work yeah that’s true so now this i mean we can be explicit over here you had mentioned that point earlier so so now coming to this point prabhu that i don’t want i don’t want to offend too many people let’s put it that way you know so so just leading from the earlier point which you mentioned that there is a bigger war going on and we often are caught in say winning our small battles without understanding what is happening in that bigger war so you know i grew up in a christian convent school i was educated in the christian convent school and such schools are actually quite respected and my parents i was born in a brahmin family so but they felt that we would get good education i would get good education and at least in my school there was no explicit christian proselytization there was prayers which were in english and they were generically to god so i grew up with a you could say a appreciation for christianity not as part not a not that i wanted to ever join that but i grew up with appreciation for that but over the years especially say when i read your books and then i read some other books i saw the magnitude of christian conversion that is happening and that is also so broadly if you want to consider the bigger war i think there are three four different things that are happening one is just the westernization in the sense of materialism spreading second is there is the so the materialism is just gross sensual temptations that are there coming up so much that people go away from religion and dharma at large second is the leftist intellectual propaganda which which sometimes is quite sophisticated and which intellectually which intellectually denigrates and destroys people’s people’s inclination to even explore what to speak of practice and that is coming in to some extent even through the educational channels then third is the challenge from other religions and within this i would say that christianity and islam there is a difference so christianity often comes in through the strategy of humanitarian aid whether it is schools whether it is food for the poor people and you know credit needs to be given where credit is due i have traveled to some villages and i met some christian priests in some ways they are very dedicated they actually go to a village and live in a village we’ll come to that later but that is one threat and that the fourth is just like say i would say not all of islam may be radical but there is radicalization happening significantly in islam and i was told that saying even in mayapur not in our temple premises but there are areas in the broader navadvip where devotees cannot publicly go into harinam now because there are more of and there are too many muslims over there and we just can’t enter that area what to speak of do harinam over there so these are the four broad threats that i see and we as a movement focus primarily on the first that there is so much materialism and sensuality and but we neglect the other thing so what are your thoughts about these four is what do you think about this analysis and then we could go further into each of these well your analysis is very good i’m glad you brought all those things up because uh quite honestly i don’t hear that very much from devotees especially i hear that from other hindus uh indian hindus who are concerned about these points uh but many people in this gun don’t seem to be aware of it or they’re not concerned about it uh and of course let’s face it you know we all want to just focus on krishna and you know i’m turning 70 years old so i’m becoming less involved in these kind of uh wars or battles you might say i’m i just want to i want to focus on krishna and make sure i don’t have to come back here but in the meantime though i’ve written my books i’ve written crimes against india and the need to protect its ancient ancient vedic tradition which has a number of points about what you just said the different battles that are going on for vedic culture but the last section was different uh processes different uh uh plans action plans of what to do about it and so these are all things that need to be considered uh for example when i was in the northeast uh uh some people were telling me the different aspects because let me put it this way first it seems like islam is radical and more so in certain areas of india not all over not everywhere that’s true and the conversion tactics that are being conducted by christianity is in certain areas more than other areas and for example some schools are very good indians often like to put their kids into a christian school because it’s english based they learn the english language it’s very important so they come out they’re very prolific in english that way and uh and they can get which helps them get a good career uh in other areas though i’ve heard where some english christian schools if you talk in your own native language you’ll get beaten up or uh hospitals in uh dimapur for example in nagaland they were christian operated and they give hospital care to anybody especially pregnant ladies and this one lady went into a hospital she was about ready to give birth and they said yes yes we’ll give you prenatal care we’ll give you care with the birth everything you just sign these papers and what the paper said basically is that i am now becoming converted christian and so when she read that she said no i don’t want to sign these papers uh the hospital said well if you don’t gonna sign these papers you have to go out you have to go someplace else which she had to do so there’s different and and i can talk a lot more about the you know the techniques that are used i read about this in your book crimes against india so how is this legally possible to it’s a it’s a i think it’s a even a taxi driver or a rickshaw driver if the rickshaw driver discriminates based on religion there could be a there could be consequences of that there is no religious discrimination that we allowed so is it that how could these hospitals get away with something like this well quite simple who’s going to do anything about it that’s the point if they think they can do if they can think they can get away with it they’re going to until something comes about it and you know the the objection has to be legal and it has to be forceful well for that you got to have a team you got to have a group of people that are willing to do this and if there’s no such group or team then they’ll get away with whatever they can they get away with many more things than that because when you’re in a like nagaland is 90 christians so when you’re in a an area like that who’s going to object to what tactic is used by whether it’s a hospital school or anything else so you’re in a difficult situation so the best idea is if you’re in nagaland to make it easy become a christian if you’re in pakistan best thing to do is probably become a muslim you know so that’s how it works that’s how uh these whether it’s institutions hospitals or whatever that’s how they get away with things yes cool it’s just like okay in mayapur in certain areas uh where you can’t do harinam how is that allowed who’s going to do anything about it so this is the thing that we’re dealing with the thing that bothers me most is that we have to understand that the more these groups or religions can get away with these things the more this is going to spread to other areas of india and we have this so it needs to be prevented it needs to be nipped in the bud so to speak so that it doesn’t become a habit or a means by which that religion or uh government or marxist philosophy or whatever it is continues to spread unabated and until hindus know how to stand up until devotees know how to work with other organizations to stand up to this kind of thing then people are going to try to get away with as much as they can and that’s what all i’m saying is this is a not a one-man operation it’s maybe not even a one organization operation it’s an operation it’s a concerted effort which needs to bring together as many people as possible and that means we can also extend a hand of welcome and cooperation with other organizations with other religious factions as well as long as we’re all on the same page of being part of the culture and work together you know we’ve seen that when they tried to close down the temple in london that london yeah when they tried to close that down all the hindus came together and gave support to the devotees and that’s what made the whole thing change and turn around so we can do that in other situations as well there’s no problem with that in fact it comes to our favor it comes to our benefit in order to be able to do that yes i’ll tell you that that is one thing before i go on that is one reason why the muslims were successful when they first started to invade india because that was back when india was simply a series of princely states and they would at first when they came into india they were repelled but they came back with bigger and bigger forces so what happened was they would attack one princely state and they would attack it rob it you know infiltrate it and whatever but the other princely states would think well they’re not attacking me so i’m okay what do i have to worry about but that’s exactly how they conquered parts of india is they attack one princely state then go to the next go to the next where if everybody if those princely states had gathered together combined their forces they could have easily have prevented the attack and the incursion of the islamic forces at the time so we need to make sure we don’t make the same mistake again so we all need to work together about this doesn’t matter like i said it doesn’t mean we water down our philosophy doesn’t mean we stop our books distributing techniques our harinam techniques uh doesn’t mean we change the temples to make them more hinduized or anything like that if some devotees want to put it that way but it means we can simply work together on the basic level of helping preserve protect promote and perpetuate the vedic tradition yes you know one reason i read in tamal krishna maharaj’s book on prabhupada it’s an academic book the living theology of krishna bhakti so he he addresses this question that prabhupada’s his critiques towards vedic traditions or other expressions of vedic tradition seem to be more strident than towards non-medic religions also and he he gives this very interesting explanation that it was sometimes prabhupada’s critiques were based not so much on how say uh how wrong a particular tradition’s beliefs or practices were but on how likely they were those that traditions beliefs or practices how likely they were to take his disciples wrong that means how likely they were to take them away so for example gaudiya mutt is a very close to us they’re almost like our cousins but prabhupada spoke sometimes quite strongly against gaudiya mutt also are some of the leaders of gaudiya mutt specifically so that was a very interesting point that prabhupada statements wherever he has been strong it’s more for protecting the faith it’s not protecting the faith or protecting the commitment of his committed followers it may not be so much as an assessment of those those particular teachers or those particular traditions it’s more that you don’t go in that direction but uh what do you think about this because this was quite a sensible explanation because otherwise also i think uh okay i have another point but do you want to respond to this before well i think what we’re talking about is more for experienced devotees anyway i mean you have to be able to be strong enough to stand on your own foundation you’re not strong enough to stand on your own foundation then yeah better just to stay in the temple read bhagavatam read bhagavad-gita and become strong become firm in your faith and firm in your conviction as to the tradition that you follow uh and not everybody is able to do that you know but at the same time if we’re all respectful to each other it doesn’t mean like i said in the charia sabbah it doesn’t mean that one acharya is trying to convince the other charia that he’s superior or my lineage goes back more years and years does or anything like that we have mutual respect for each other and we’ve worked together based on that mutual respect however if somebody’s thinking that oh maybe i should join the gaudiya ma or maybe i should join the ramanujacharya lineage or something like that because that’s also a tradition which has a different view than we do uh then there could be a problem with that but uh for those of us that are strong in our conviction and stuff we can work with other people and i have many times but i’m still as strongly convicted to this as uh anybody uh you know i just wrote my book bhakti yoga the easy path of devotional yoga uh just a couple years ago and that is strictly the idea of what bhakti yoga can do for you does do for you and how it gives you the uh epitome of spiritual realization it’s kind of like uh i was just reading the krishnasandarbha by jiva goswami and i was reading and now i’m reading the bhaktisandarbha of jiva goswami and he he it’s interesting because he does the exact same thing that i’ve done which is you establish a point and then you make so many quotes from the vedic literature specifically shri bhagatam to establish the authenticity of what your premise is or what your statement is and uh you know you do that you study like that and you become very convinced about what you’re doing and the conviction of who krishna is and the conviction of what bhakti yoga can do for you okay so if i understand right what you’re saying is that uh initially if somebody is coming to into the krishna consciousness movement they need to focus and ground themselves in their conviction their practices and then over the years those who are already committed can can see the bigger picture and then see what they feel inspired to do that okay this is this is a big battle this is a bigger war and i want to play a part in this war so right okay that makes it’s like any it’s like a new brahmachari you know a new brahmachari what do you have to do you have to protect him and you generally have to protect him from uh too much association with women otherwise how is somebody going to be a brahmachari so the same thing goes you know you have to be you have to give that beginning devotee protection until they become strong in their convictions and understanding of what krishna consciousness is how it’s different from others and what it has to truly offer the practitioner and so that’s just a basic part of the bhakti program you might say okay so i’ll come back to this point a little later but so strategically aligning for say fighting the bigger battles now i have seen an increasing awareness even among the broader uh broader leaders in our many leaders in our movement of how challenging things can become in the future so specifically some devotees tend to feel like i have been parts of even in india i have traveled a little bit i have seen various communities so there are there are some devotees who would like to do mass out you could say not so much krishna conscious outreach but as dharmic outreach and some of them start feeling that krishna consciousness is too otherworldly that we make too many demands in terms of say chanting 16 rounds following four regs and the number of people who are actually going to come up to this level is going to be relatively few and therefore apart from this outreach where we we say make people committed is called devotees you know we should do broad outreach where we just inspire people to maybe follow basic aspects to start following and respecting basic aspects of dharma like say avoid meat eating respect cows respect the vedic idea of deity worship and so more like generic raising of consciousness and there are some devotees who feel strongly that this is what we should be doing and in some ways if if say devotees even when i read your book i say about crimes against india and i saw what what is being done then sometimes we start feeling that by practicing krishna conscious what am i really doing now there are so many things which are going wrong and i am spending so much time in my sadhana and this and that so what what was a concern for many devotee leaders is that if there’s a choice between say protecting the broad dharmic culture and hearing about threats to that that in a sense agitates the mind a lot and that can incite people to action much faster than even devotees they can be incited to action much faster than still you know maybe maybe become a pure devotee or learn to give up the sense gratification or things like that so what what can happen or that is a that is a fear in a community that i was quite often a part of that if people if this starts propagating much more then many more people who could be devotees will get caught in these things and their focus on their sadhana their focus on their their personal spiritual growth that will shift to more of a generic dharmic outreach which is not a bad thing from a broader perspective but still from the movement’s perspective from the institution’s perspective that seem to be like a erosion of its resources so there are two distinct anyway would you like to respond to this concern such concerns well basically if you’re not purified how can you purify others if you’re not purified how effective are your actions ever going to be don’t think that you can wake someone else up if you’re still half asleep you know you have to become completely awake you have to become purified and that’s what vaidhi bhakti is all about if you’re not willing to follow it don’t expect to have so much result from your own actions and if you want to also purify the planet you have to become purified by your association others can become purified as well but in this day and age we’re having you might say we’re having a time where we have specialized preachers different preachers can preach in different ways certain preachers uh maybe run a bhakti program other preachers may write books maybe other preachers uh go out and do book distribution door to door other preachers may lead uh harinam uh parties uh sankirtan parties like that so we have different preachers who are capable more capable of doing different things it’s not everybody has to do the same thing and there’s only certain people that probably take an interest in the type of preaching outreach program that we you and me are talking about so don’t expect everybody to be qualified for this or even take an interest in it uh i think people should be aware of it but then there should be a program with the appropriate people who can handle this kind of activity this kind of outreach this kind of uh working with other institutions not everybody’s going to be able to do that so you have to be mature enough to recognize the quality of the individuals in the service that they’re capable of doing and take it from there and that way those people that are not inclined towards this or that are plugged into the right activity where they can continue to engage in their devotional service to become increasingly purified it’s like some some people are they look like motivational speakers they may have the means to attract people through that kind of preaching but that doesn’t mean we remain motivational speakers we have to also reach a stage where we can give people the direct means of becoming fully krishna conscious we can’t deny that and this is one of the things that the temples are for so people can engage in activities which purify them and lead the way to becoming fully krishna conscious that’s why it’s always said you know you you you’re a bhaiti bhakti for now then you graduate to become a baba bhakti then later graduate to become a prema bhakta you know there’s got to be this ladder of step-by-step progress by which we’re not stuck in simply outreach preaching or motivational speaking or this kind of thing we have to understand what the full map of bhakti yoga is so that we understand what is ultimately expected of us and naturally there’s going to be those people who are new to krishna consciousness who may not be able to follow the four regulated principles that doesn’t mean we change it and say well if you can follow uh no illicit sex then that’s good you know no one of the processes is no illicit sex this is one of the processes that you have to establish so you know depending on how you’re able to understand and participate will also depend on where you stand in the whole process of bhakti yoga i mean i was just reading in the krishna sandarbha where uh vedi vyas gave all the different vedic literature to all his disciples who were able to then give it to their disciples and distribute it amongst humanity but he waited until finally narada muni told him that he should write the srimad bhagavatam but who did he give the srimad bhagavatam to shukadeva goswami and why did he give it to shukadeva goswami because he was the only one who did not have any material desires in other words he was the one that was only able to understand the full gamut of srimad bhagavatam because of his lack of material desires in other words if you’re filled with material desires you’re not going to understand the vedic culture the vedic literature that deeply you have to reach a stage where you can realize that you’re no longer motivated by material desires i was reading krishna jiva goswami’s preeti sandarbha and i’ve read the bhaga you know the tenth canto of the bhagavatam i’ve read a krishna book uh several times but when i read the jiva goswami’s preeti sandarbha he would take a verse from the tenth canto and explain that here’s the devotee here’s his service this service establishes this relationship with krishna and because of this relationship he experienced or she experienced this ecstasy and i’m thinking to myself i read that verse i had no idea there was so much depth to it so the point of it is the more purified we become the deeper we can understand and the deeper we can relish the pastimes of krishna and what bhakti ras has to offer this also has to be included in everybody’s understanding of what bhakti yoga is we can’t just uh focus merely on the uh battle uh of taking on the challenges uh that the vedic culture is uh forced to deal with we have to realize that we may also as iskcon we may also have to deal with these challenges but that’s still the point of the whole bhakti yoga is to become completely purified so that we can relieve ourselves of these material desires so that we can spiritualize and purify other people around us and so that ultimately we can enter back into the spiritual world this is the point we have to understand this should not be uh watered down it should not be ignored and it has to be discussed from bhaiti bhakti to raganuga bhakti like that yes so what what you are saying is that i like the example of a specialized service so sorry so i like the example of specialized service so every service has these challenges say if you want to build a temple fundraising brings its own anxiety and if somebody cannot take up that anxiety and it’s taking up that anxiety agitates them so much that they stop doing their sadhana then maybe that is not a service they should take up so similarly if uh if hearing about the broad challenges to dharma and uh and say all the crimes against india what you talked about if reading about all this starts agitating people’s minds so much that they can’t focus on their core bhakti practices then maybe this is not exactly the service that they should get involved in exactly that’s exactly right okay so i think this idea that it requires a certain strength to get involved in this kind of awareness it also takes a certain kind of strength to raise the funds to build a temple yeah you know so everybody has their own strengths their own abilities uh their own means of uh helping with the culture and so those is what needs to be recognized and so that person can be engaged in that way and thus do the most practical thing he can for the movement uh for iskcon and for uh vedic culture in india so this has to be determined by someone who’s mature enough to recognize these things and that was what actually guru kula was for guru kula always meant that the teachers understand the proclivities the intelligence the talents the abilities of the student to direct him in the right way that was what varna ashram is really all about and so that’s the purpose but also in the temples we can establish varna ashram right now right here it doesn’t have to be an agricultural project it can be understanding what the proclivities what the nature is what the intelligence level of all devotees are so that we can engage them in the right service so that they can be properly service uh properly engaged so they become enthused enlivened and making a great contribution to society to the society to iskcon and in this way always feel motivated to keep progressing and keep uh keep helping others and keep working up the ladder of the process of bhakti yoga so and the leaders have to be qualified in order to do this yeah you know so i mean this is taking me to further point that you mentioned that when when there are islamic invaders it was the indian states were quite isolated so there are some we could say there’s some inner weaknesses so when i mentioned those four four challenges or four threats probably we could add a fifth one that there are some vulnerabilities or weaknesses within us itself which make us make us weak and one point which i have noticed say in the last few years i also studied the the kind of writings that say christians do when they are preaching in the west and christians do when they’re preaching in india so what so there is a significant amount of difference and one of the things that they target substantially in india is the caste system and because of the caste system say the lower castes are discriminated against and then they start feeling that maybe we will have a better place for ourselves in some other religion now significantly i think what you write in your book is that the car the caste system is more of a it’s more of a regional consciousness than a religious consciousness that means that even if a person gets converted to christianity or islam still that caste hierarchy remains and a person from a lower caste doesn’t necessarily get all the privileges or rights even if they convert to another religion so it seems that that problem is not solved but would you like to speak something about this challenge particularly yeah i dealt with that in my book called casteism is it the scourge of hinduism or the perversion of a legitimate vedic system and uh basically it all started with shringi shringi when he found out that parikshit put a snake around his father he abused his position and gave a curse that he never should have given yeah and uh that’s when the abuse of caste or i should say egotistical brahmins came into being and that’s basically what the caste system’s casteism is it’s uh egotistical brahmins who think their positions are superior superior above everybody else and that they should get more honor and and uh respect than everybody else that was never uh and and of course then you had the english who uh manipulated that and took advantage of that and uh caused more divisions amongst the indian society because of that and still in some areas the uh suburban or the uh rural areas that caste system is still implemented to some degree when that was never the case at all the caste system as far as i’m concerned you could throw that in the dumpster and and uh burn it and send it away forever so we need to be able to understand show people what the casteism is meant to be which is the bharanashram system bharanashram system is very flexible and the bharanashram system is if a brahmin born person is not qualified he can operate as a vaisya or even a sujur where the sujur is qualified he can also rise up to be of course we don’t have those problems in iskcon so i always say well if somebody is feeling that they’re uh persecuted for being lowborn or this or that i forget that man just join iskcon you know we don’t have any of that problem with us and uh everybody’s treated fairly everybody’s treated with the means by which they can all rise to higher and higher levels of spiritual understanding and that is really what the varnashram system is all about whatever your position is you can rise to a higher never higher level of occupation a higher level of spiritual understanding like that simple so uh it’s a problem though it has been a problem yeah you said something about a dumpster why didn’t get that point what did you say throw take casteism and throw it out the window oh take casteism put it in the dumpster close it up never let it come back because it is a perversion of a legitimate vedic system called varnashram they are not the same and this is another thing that needs to be understood casteism and varnashram are not the same in varnashram no one is given an occupation based on hereditary where casteism that is what it means oh your father was this then you become this too because the problem is okay if my father was a doctor and i don’t want to be a doctor that means i still have to be a doctor because if i have if i’m forced to be a doctor i’m probably going to be a lousy doctor because my heart’s not into it so okay do something else then you know so this is the problem with the caste system and uh it’s misused in some areas still today so it has to be changed and uh and it’s not easy because anybody who has influence and power never wants to give it up simple as that yeah and what you said anyway you can read more about that in my book casteism is it the scourge of hinduism or the perversion of a legitimate vedic system yeah yes so i think what you said lastly about you know in krishna consciousness we transcend this that is something which is very practical because uh that although krishna consciousness is very prominent in india really i have never seen any caste consciousness if if a person is dedicated to practicing and sharing they get the empowerment they get the facilities and they then grow grow in their personal spiritual growth as well as growing their capacity to service so even while being in india and while we could say actively preserving and preserving vedic culture it is possible to completely break free from the fetters of the caste system and uh the krishna conscious movement is actually a living demonstration of that definitely well let’s face it if there was any casteism involved if pralapad if pralapad any inkling of casteism you’d think he would ever come to america there’s no way so naturally he uh preached to the lowest of us uh without the idea that all these kids are just mleches to begin with they’re never going to grow up to be anything you know they’re never going to understand spirituality uh he took the orders of a spiritual master and and look what happened so many people would become uh very qualified devotees uh spiritual teachers uh it’s totally amazing yes that’s true so i would like to conclude i mean we had a long discussion i had told you one and a half hours i’ve taken more than that much time of yours but uh would you like to say if people want to connect more with you is your stephennap.com that’s the main resource through which they can connect with you yeah my website is uh www.stephen-nap.com or there’s another one called stephennap.info stephen is s-t-e-p-h-e-n and nap is k-n-a-p-p of course probably most of your viewers already know that and uh i’m also on facebook and things like that uh but uh and that’s all the connections i don’t have a whatsapp number or anything like that like i tell people there’s only so many ways i want to want to be connected to the matrix so this is it the websites facebook email that’s that’s it you know so uh and i i answer my emails uh pretty regular and uh but don’t send me a message on facebook because i only get to those maybe once a month because i just don’t think about it uh and i’ve i’ve got more than almost 40 paperback books plus an additional uh dozen ebooks kindle ebooks and i’ve got a lot of free ebooks on my website i’ve got almost 250 articles on my website and then of course all my books have their own web page where you can look at it view the contents and understand how to order it and all my books are also available on kindle in india and i also have a few books uh that are published through uh jaco publishing in mumbai that are available in india as well such as secret teachings of the vedas uh avatars gods and goddesses of vedic culture and uh the one book called seeing spiritual india which is uh in india called the spiritual handbook or seeing spiritual india handbook or something like that which is interesting because i just got uh just several months ago i just got pictures uh from people who saw that book secret teachings of the vedas in the bookstores at the air in the airports of india so uh and that’s just straightforward preaching that’s straightforward krishna conscious preaching that still was able to get out into the uh airports of india and uh many of the other bookstores so uh doesn’t have anything to do with uh the challenges or the of india or vedic culture anything like we’ve been talking about simply straightforward preaching and so there’s a place for it you know if you present the philosophy in the right way you can have it uh presentable in many many different venues which was my whole goal because i was never very good at going door to door salesman calling people on the phone or you know i was just too introverted too shy so the whole plan was okay how do i get around that you know and this is the uh system i came up with and so far it’s worked pretty good and it’s still going on strong yes well it’s remarkable that uh you know although you have worked as a single individual not only have you written a lot of books but actually you have created a whole legacy of influence and i had mentioned to you that there is this book on the what was that uh american veda which is so that is a book about various spiritual how indian spirituality has penetrated in the heartland of america so in that book also you are mentioned as like a researcher who has had a significant influence through the net so it’s very how you took this service and it’s a big legacy that you have created by connecting many many people toward dharma and toward krishna so i remember when i remember i i went to see bhakti tirtha swami before he passed away and he was saying you know i i’ve i’ve had a whole team of people helping me produce books and here’s srinandana working by himself who’s published as many books as i have he was you know being humble about it but uh yeah it’s uh it’s definitely become a like a cottage industry to me to some degree but i’m starting to slow down like i said i’m turning 70 this year i’m starting to slow down with my writing my lecturing my traveling and basically i just kind of like of course in this lockdown there’s not a whole lot you can do anyway but i’m just starting to uh stay in my cave so to speak my bhajan kutir and just read and chant and uh just really try to get more and more absorbed in just understanding and meditating on the pastimes of krishna i love it but thank you very much for uh this nice conversation chittenditaran and uh hopefully if we start traveling again i’ll see you back in uh when you come through detroit again yes true can i just summarize because we went over a lot of topics i’ll tell you we covered a lot of ground actually that’s true so we started by talking about say your journey of how you took up this service it just organically that opportunity came when you wanted to write just it’s interesting that you wanted to write for a western audience but then you got a opportunity especially through that book on israeli culture’s global existence to a doors open to come to india and then you found that there is because you are a you are a non-indian you are a west american you could speak things which would indians couldn’t speak there greater authenticity was there because greater weight was there and um you there is a niche where we could speak about uh i like the phrase i develop your potential or reach your potential which could mean different things which could be getting free from bad habits to experience inner power get a sense of meaning and purpose in life it could also mean self-improvement in some ways but so that is very generic language so by using that kind of language you’re able to reach a larger number of people and then that whole genre of service development then we talked about when especially in india there is this whole possible threats of temples being taken over and that’s uh that is a bigger bigger war which we shouldn’t be blind to while we are fighting our specific battles of directly sharing krishna consciousness and then in that bigger war so we as a movement focus primarily on say the materialism and westernization but there are other threats also there is the leftist intellectuals radical islamization christian conversion maybe internal dissension because of caste systems so now taking up these battles or choosing choosing to fight in these bigger wars it can be seen as a specialist service and those devotees who are grounded in their own sadhana in their own siddhanta in their own practices and convictions they can take up this as a service without making becoming inordinately agitated by it and if we do this there is a lot of opportunity where we can we cannot we can find common ground and we can spread dharma and get people favorable to come to krishna eventually and while there are differences say between us and other vedic traditions but for we don’t have to we don’t have to water down our specific philosophy but still we can work on common ground and then by working on common ground we can we can do things like say we protected the london iskcon temple we can protect things which we would not be able to do individually and then lastly you talked about how within now our heart has to be connected with krishna you mentioned your study of the sandarbhas and how if unless we are pure we actually won’t be able to substantially purify others so we and we also discussed about how the caste system is a big problem in india but krishna consciousness is a direct solution to that problem because you just transcend caste consciousness and everybody can become happy and empowered as a devotee so are there any other major points that i left out to you oh you’ve got a good memory chaitanya charan that’s a good summary oh we could always go on talking but maybe we can do it again sometime yes thank you very much for your time and you’re sharing your wisdom and experiences through it’s wonderful glad to glad to be here glad to help out thank you jayashila prabhupada jayashi