Please Don't Send your Children to India
BY: RADHA GOVINDA
Feb 13, INDIA (SUN) — I would like to give a few comments about sending our children to live in India. I have lived in India for more than 15 years and from my own experience, India is not a place to send children to for living or studying. In fact, India is not a place westerners should plan to spend long periods of time in or to retire in. It is a third world country with extremely high crime levels. The criminal justice system does not exist here. Police are completely inept and corrupt. There really is no reason that children should be sent to this country to live, unless you want to ruin their lives. I cannot even imagine which sane adult would send 10 year old kids to study in a gurukula in India. It is insane and needs to be stopped.
For the record (those who have lived there will know exactly what I am talking about) Vrindavan is one of the more dangerous areas in India. There have been a number of devotee murders there over the years. This isn't the first time it has happened. The entire city is run by criminal gangs, and there have been shoot-outs all over the place. There are gangs who daily rob cars at gunpoint on the way to Govardhan and other outlying villages. The police don't do anything about it because they get their cut from the gangs.
Once you step out of the "civilized" area of Vrindavan you are in some backward town where anything can happen. It might as well be Afghanistan with the number of Muslims around you. The uneducated people in these villages have no respect for human life, and on top of it they hate the westerners. In the front they smile and talk nice, and behind they all hate you with your money, fancy buildings, a/c cars and high lifestyles. If you don't know that the locals hate the westerners, then you haven't lived there or don't understand the language. They only see you as a big dollar sign. If they could get the money by robbing you they would happily do it.
The type of criminal activities that go on throughout Vrindavan and Mathura can't even be described. Anything you can imagine is going on there, in fact that's the specialty of these places. It doesn't happen there like "it happens everywhere". We are talking about a super concentrated criminal environment, where nearly every temple is a brothel and every person a gangster. The temples and maths are all run by criminals, and they show Deities just to add a few more gold rings to their fingers. All the shops in Loi bazar have to pay their monthly taxes to the gangs. If you buy a house from someone in Vrindavan, congratulations: you will most likely have to buy it a second time from one of the gang leaders who claims it as his property.
Devotees read about Vrindavan from the Krishna book, and then they visit expecting things to be like that. This is kaliyuga and things are corrupted. Nearly 100 years ago, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura said he couldn't find a single Vaishnava in the whole of Vrindavan. What do you think you will find there today? And what do you think your 10 year old kid is going to find there?
If you send your children to stay there you are just destroying their life. Put them in a good school in their home country and let them get a proper education. When they grow up they can visit India on their own choice. If you think they are going to find something spiritual in Vrindavan at the gurukula you are sadly mistaken. They are going to learn how to cuss in Hindi, how to take bhang and smoke ganja, how to hang out with low life criminal vrajavasis and go to prostitutes. That's what happens when you send a young western kid to live alone in a third world country. Add to that the chance that they are going to be molested, and you have really done them a favor.
Stop thinking that spiritual purity exists in some special "holy place" in India. There is nothing that you can find here that you can't find in your local ISKCON temple. In fact there are so many negative things here that make your local ISKCON temple a much better choice. Those of you who visit Vrindavan for short periods of time will think I am crazy. But those who have lived there longer will know exactly what I am speaking about. India is not a mystical land of spirituality. Today India is rotting with corruption, 90% of the people eat meat, most of the Hindus now eat beef which is sold publicly everywhere, 99% of the people have never touched a Bhagavad Gita or any Hindu scripture, women will be harassed and molested anywhere they go in the street, people are uneducated and have no respect for others rights, and at any moment a mob can form to beat you because you looked at the wrong person. Welcome to U.P., where the shake down is considered a legitimate business profession. Please do not send your children here.
