When cities were present in scriptural times too, why does ISKCON criticize urbanization?

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Hare Krishna question there were cities in ancient times too even we see in the Mahabharata, Ramayana that Bhagwat in the description of cities so then why is the Krishna consciousness movement so much against cities and so much talking about establishing farm communities and glorifying village life answer no the Krishna consciousness movement the bhakti tradition is inclusive bhakti is something which can be practiced everywhere whether it is in the villages or the cities and it is not that the bhakti culture is a game, bhakti wisdom and the bhakti tradition is against cities per se the point is that whatever is favorable for bhakti we practice it, whatever is unfavorable we put it aside so now yes it’s true that in the past there were cities also Hastinapur, Indraprastha when the Mahabharata for example describes how the Pandavas were given the forested deserted almost like haunted area of Khandavaprastha as their share of the kingdom and then the Pandavas converted that into Indraprastha, a flourishing city where all the four Varnavas were living prosperously and the Pandavas built magnificent palaces but Mahabharata talks about all this in a laudatory tone, laudatory means very positive tone so it does not disapprove this urbanization and the deforestation that was necessary for that urbanization so the point is that it’s not that the bhakti culture necessarily has to be against urbanization at the same time there is a difference between the urbanization that was there in the past and the urbanization that is there today much of today’s urbanization is parasitic whereas the urbanization in the past was symbiotic now symbiosis means that two organisms live together and both benefit each other whereas parasitic means that one organism lives at the expense of another and exploits its host organism so to some extent to a large extent today’s city so now every economy if you look throughout history there will be this distribution of rural and urban urban landscapes so there will be some cities and there will be many villages the important thing was the villages were largely self-sufficient communities and that way they were not affected by the upheavals that took place at the national or the political levels so whether one king ruled or another king ruled they basically gave a certain portion of the taxes to the ruler and they got the protection whatever was needed and they lived their own lives so there was no disruption of their livelihood because of this kind of situation this kind of situation means because of the change of political upheavals so basically they were self-sufficient village communities and the cities were the places where there were visible strongholds of power and they offered protection and security to the larger village community so there was prosperity in villages if you see the Bhagavatam or the Mahabharata they describe prosperity they describe it in both terms at one level the gold and the ornaments and the prosperity of Dwarka is described and at another level the prosperity of the farms in terms of they having lavish crops in terms of grillery and that all the cows are giving lots of milk so there is, there are both descriptions of urban prosperity and of rural prosperity in the Mahabharata or the Bhagavatam whichever we want to look at, both scriptures at the same time as I said, if you look at the modern urbanization there are ways in which it acts parasitically that means the way today’s socio-economic structure is that in many places farming has become an unviable option, financially unviable option and the government’s focus on equating development with industrialization leads to often neglect of farming and then there is mass migration of people from villages to cities and often the standard of living that people have in cities is terrible that they live together millions in slums and they have to drink dirty water, breathe polluted air and eat substandard foods and this still because there is certain infatuation with city life and although the standard of living overall in the cities of the people may be poorer, much poorer than what it was for them in the villages, standard means the health and the hygiene and things like that, but still people come to cities because that’s what is glamorized and that’s what they are infatuated with so this is not an economically sustainable model and often the cities also require so much resources that those resources get drained from the neighboring rivers, for example some cities they create so much affluence into the rivers that and they send those affluence into the rivers that the neighboring villages they can no longer be sustainable, they have to take in the polluted water and then the people get sick over there, the crops don’t grow properly, the greenery over there dies and then the cows don’t get anything to any pasture land, so this is how what I’m saying that in many ways today’s urbanization is parasitic, in fact that is how most of the Yamuna has got dried and contaminated and polluted and according to UNO according to United Nations it is basically one of the dead rivers that now plans to try to get fresh water back in Yamuna but the point is that this is what has happened, so there is this parasitic mode of urbanization which is undesirable, so now when there is a critique, when Srila Prabhupada criticized the modern lifestyle his point was two things first is that there has to be an adequate respect given to simple living in harmony with nature and in proximity to nature and as Prabhupada said that if you have a cow, if you have a patch of land and if you have Krishna that’s enough for living so as he wanted some devotees to demonstrate this and within the broad devotee community there will be different devotees with different levels of inspiration different, not only levels, different kinds of inspiration so some devotees may feel inspired to take up this model of self-sufficient eco-friendly farm communities and develop that and that is very good because that the world so there are some people, a good number of people who are interested in eco-friendly living and if they see how spirituality fosters eco-friendly living then they will become attracted to spirituality also through that, they will become attracted to bhakti through that and that will also there are people in the villages and they can also become attracted to bhakti if their financial and other needs are taken care of through the help that is offered by devotees by establishing these communities and sharing the know-how for establishing these communities with those villagers and this is what many farm communities are doing so there will be some devotees who will be inspired to do that and now some of those may be so zealous that they may equate the practice of bhakti with this and they may say that in the cities it’s not possible to practice bhakti only now that is an extreme statement, bhakti if it is transcendental, if it is transcendental to all material designations then it is also transcendental to the designation of being an urbanite, bhakti can be practiced by anyone and everyone wherever one may be in wherever one may be, one may be in a village or one may be in a city, anywhere one can practice bhakti, so yes we may say that oh there are so many artificial things in today’s world but yes most of us have grown up in a culture where these artificial things have always been there and they are just a part of our fabric now and to give up those things and to live for a few days it may be a relief but after some time it may well be a loss sometimes when the mobile rings too much we get too many messages, too many mails I just don’t want any of this, I want to be alone but for most of us a few days alone it may be rejuvenating but if at all rest of your life stay you stay without this we may find it quite boring, we feel that I am missing so much I am missing so much in my life, so if we have grown up in a particular culture particular way of living it’s not that we have to necessarily give it all up for the practice of bhakti we just have to bring Krishna into that and there are many wonderful ways in which we can bring Krishna into our practice of bhakti and those are what as devotees who are living in cities we can come up with those so yes there are now through the internet and through social media so much devotional outreach is also happening so one thing is there will be the critique of urbanization is because it is parasitic and we would like to demonstrate symbiotic modes of living also along with that while that is required, that will require focused attention and some devotees will do it but along with that within the urban structures also devotees can practice bhakti and create devotional subcultures wherein they will demonstrate how to practice spirituality even within the urban centers so that way we all can practice bhakti so we should avoid infatuation with modern urbanization but so if you are too infatuated we will think that oh if we just get a better gadget, a faster car if we can just get a bigger house then oh that’s not all that I need for getting becoming happy that sort of infatuation is an illusion but if we so by our philosophical study by our purification if we can break free from that infatuation then thereafter we can ourselves practice bhakti within the urban structures also and we can share bhakti also widely so when Prabhupada asked where can we, where is the best place for building a temple, you know he said a temple is like a hospital, so what is the best place for the hospital, where there are maximum patients so he said in the cities, in the cities that’s the best place for the temple to be, that’s why we will build the temples, Prabhupada said so Prabhupada wanted temples to be in the cities and that means that the devotees will be living in the cities, it’s not that everybody who is connected to the temple is going to live in the temple and be renunciate, the devotee is living in the city in other places and then they will be a part of the urban socio-economic structure and he also expected them to practice bhakti there and he has given us the wisdom in his books and those who have followed him they can share that wisdom with us, so we have to avoid the extreme of condemning urbanization per se but at the same time we also need to avoid the contemporary extreme of being infatuated with urbanization and we focus on utilization, on utilization and spiritualization spiritualization of the rural life through self-sufficient, eco-friendly Krishna-centered farm communities and spiritualization of the urban life by showing, by exemplifying how we can practice bhakti even within these urban settings, thank you So