Mr. GBC, Tear Down this Wall of Silence!
BY: ROCANA DASA
June 26, CANADA (SUN) — Following Chaitanya Bhagavat das's Déjà vu article and Harivlasa's article on Dhanurdhara, and my previous article, Sacrificial Lambs, I'm moved to a make further comment. In 'Sacrificial Lambs', I attempted to present what I see as the broader issue behind the fact that Dhanurdhara was the proverbial 'sacrificial village' that went down to save the country (the GBC).
After reading "Déjà vu" and the article by Harivilasa, many of us are scratching our heads, wondering where all the information is that they seem to be privy to. Why hasn't it been made readily available to the wider community of devotees? Chaitanya Bhagavat dasa chastises us for not reading Dhanurdhara's complete Case History, but he didn't provide a link to that repository of documents. Surely the truncated version of the Case History which was recently published online is but a fraction of the whole story. Where can the full Case History be seen, and when was it first made available? I'm sure many of us would read and consider it carefully, if we had access.
In the case of Harivilasa's article, he refers to the special status given to Dhanurdhara by Ravindra Svarupa and others on the GBC. We have heard few details about the beginning, middle or end of Dhanurdhara's atonement period, and presume that adjudication of the matter by the GBC happened primarily behind closed doors.
ISKCON's Child Protection Office (the CPO) appears to handle its cases in a similar manner, behind a dark veil. Even when publicly challenged with unassailable proof that GBC members themselves have broken the edicts laid down by the CPO, that agency will not disclose the details of their deliberations, how they came to decisions on cases of abuse, and how or if they confronted the repeated breeches of the punitive edicts they laid down against offenders.
Who is being protected by all this secrecy? In the Western courts, even in the case of abuse of a minor, information is made available to the public about the charges against the offender. While the victim's identity is kept hidden to protect the innocent, the workings of the justice system that adjudicates and punishes the offender are disclosed and a great deal of information about the process is made public. Why then do the GBC and CPO find it necessary to keep so much hidden about their activities and conclusions.
Their secrecy certainly doesn't protect the general devotee population, who remains ignorant of many important facts that could one day serve to keep them and their families safe. While they may hope to protect the offenders to some degree, as we see in the case of Dhanurdhara, that is also not the case. If the community at large knew the details of Dhanurdhara's case, as Chaitanya Bhagavat das apparently does, the offender might get a far greater level of compassion from his peers than he could possibly receive when we are all kept in the dark. Unfortunately, all indications are that the GBC and the CPO employ secrecy that in large part is designed to protect them, at the expense of the many.
It has been said many times that ISKCON would greatly benefit if they would adopt a policy of disclosure rather than secrecy. They continuously cover the facts in an attempt at damage control, but it seldom works. ISKCON has become like the Catholic Church, who hid their abuse scandal because they feared the impact on the local preaching level and the cash flow 'bottom line'. Catholicism is depicted as being the epitome of religiosity and in their big abuse scandal, very few of the actual decision makers were demoted. The same thing applies to ISKCON, which appears to be on the fast track to becoming a full-blown religion.
Especially in the case of abuses of children, the truth will come out, sooner or later, if for no other reason than the victims eventually need full disclosure in order to heal themselves. Likewise, the leaders who looked aside while crimes were committed will pay the price sooner or later, whether justice is meted out by their peers or by the hand of the Supreme Controller.
Considering how many adult victims of abuse there are in ISKCON, it is quite astounding how few have had the willineness to stand up and be publicly heard. So many members of our Vaishnava community are suppressing or denying the past they experienced. Some do this as a way of "moving on". Others actually believe that by telling their story they'd be committing aparadha, or damaging Srila Prabhupada's movement by telling what happened to them under the auspices of "protecting the Sankirtana movement". But this is never, ever a wise decision.
Our sastra are composed of stories about great personalities and the mistakes they've made, which have been corrected by Sri Krsna. These personalities humbly submitted themselves before the Lord in an apologetic mood, from Lord Brahma to Lord Shiva, and many others. Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu was uncompromising when dealing with people who just slightly deviated, like Junior Haridasa. Even though these were Vaisnavas of the highest order, their stories are committed to sastra to make the points crystal clear. Yet somehow, those in the seats of GBC power don't seem to register just how important it is to deal with problems openly and honestly, for the benefit of the many. Why is it that in ISKCON, we get the great wall of silence?
Dhanurdhara has never told the story of what really happened to him. He has never publicly explained how it is that over the last 20 years, he has appeared to be a sincere, gentle, dedicated Vaisnava, yet somehow or other he was pushed by circumstances and his own nature to do the things he did to the gurukula children. While ISKCON tries to hide the history, we all know that there were numerous diabolical personalities in ISKCON who were notoriously heartless, and treated their people very inhumanely. In the case of Dhanurdhara, however, the story just doesn't seem to fit so easily. Neither does it fit with Bhurijana dasa. Unlike some of the outwardly demoniac leaders like Hansadutta, Dhanurdhara and Bhurijana were both projecting fairly brahminical profiles. Yet somehow, they were at the epicenter of a terrible affair.
As I tried to point out in my last article, when we look at the big picture we can ultimately blame the Zonal Acarya system for so many of ISKCON's serious problems. Today we find that with the exception of one or two, most of the Zonal Acaryas have been eliminated from the scene by Krsna's arrangement, some of them meeting dastardly ends. Others, like Bhavananada, have staged successful comebacks. Bhavananada was a homosexual and a full-blown child abuser, yet amazingly the GBC have allowed him to again participate in ISKCON. Of course, Bhavananada also has some hard-hitting friends at the top, one of whom is a survivor of the Zonal Acarya system (no need to name names).
I sit as one of thousands of examples of devotees who are being excluded from ISKCON for so-called 'offenses' that are insignificant compared to those perpetrated by the likes of Bhavananda. When I talk to other rank and file devotees who have been excluded, they inevitably bring up the names of devotees like Bhavananda, Dhanurdhara, Vakeshwara and Nitaichand, and can't understand why they're "in", while so many are out simply for challenging ISKCON leaders.
I think that ultimately, one of our biggest problems is that we never hear a peep from the many devotees who have been disenfranchised. Srila Prabhupada was a writer. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati was a writer. Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur was a writer. Many of Srila Prabhupada's Godbrothers were writers, and our Srila Prabhupada encouraged all his disciples to write their realizations for the benefit of others. Who amongst all the big sanyasis, gurus and scholars in ISKCON are giving us the benefit of telling us what's on their minds regarding the serious problems we have faced? What are scholars like Dr. Ravindra Svarupa thinking about these issues? Why do they focus their scholarship on editing Srila Prabhupada's books instead of writing and publishing their own realizations.
I think this is one of our biggest losses - we're just not learning from our mistakes. We're told by the leadership that they are "just mistakes", just part of the transition following the departure of a great Acarya. Instead of hearing the serious philosophical realizations of our leaders, we get biographies and diaries, which are often a form of self-glorification. What we don't hear are the humble admissions of mistakes and the heartfelt apologies, what to speak of the realizations they've gotten as a result of the mistakes that were made. This should have been happening all along, and particularly since the advent of the Zonal Acarya system. Nowhere has the wall of silence been more obvious than with the absence of a philosophical explanation from the GBC as to exactly what deviations occurred that allowed the Zonal Acarya system to take root.
Harivilasa prabhu was obviously carrying his charge with him for a long time, years perhaps, before he just couldn't stand it anymore and it came pouring out. Now he may become just another of the many devotees who pay the price of having 'offended' the leaders of ISKCON. In fact, the day after asking Chakra to remove his article on Dhanurdhara, Harivilasa phoned me to commiserate. Given my personal circumstances with him, which I just wrote about in Harivilasa 'Names Names', I was astounded that of all people, he would phone me in the wake of his own difficulties with ISKCON. (Of course, he only talked about his own problems, and never even mentioned the fact that I've been waiting two months for him to keep his commitment and deal with my issue.)
When he phoned, he asked me to tell him the details of my story on what happened to the Seattle temple while I was Temple President there. After instituting the Zonal Acarya system, the GBC not only protected Hansadutta, but installed him in the Seattle temple. The consequences were devastating to the Seattle yatra, in which Harivilasa now resides. To his credit, he's successfully building it back up again. At the time the GBC parachuted Hansadutta into Seattle, the temple was running very nicely. The GBC already knew in great detail what a madman Hansadutta was, yet they totally displaced the established Seattle program and caused untold pain and havoc for the devotees there. At the time, I was told personally by Bhagavan that we were the 'village being sacrificed' because they needed to save the country - meaning they did not want the rest of the movement to find out that one of the Zonal Acaryas had fallen down in such a despicable way so quickly after they had been enthroned. The details of this sad story can be found in the Vada archives of HareKrsna.com, in the articles Oh! I Remember You, and Srila Prabhupada's Perfect Plan.
From his current defensive position, Harivilasa is apparently interested in establishing the truth of Seattle's history, perhaps in an effort to point out the great cost of the GBC's past mistakes. Harivilasa also encouraged me to invite all the devotees who have a story to tell about what has happened to them in ISKCON, to tell it. (Of course, we can't be sure if he wants them to name names, or not….)
The Sampradaya Sun welcomes submissions from all the devotees, and we support individuals to tell the real story, the whole story, of their experiences in ISKCON. If you wish to publish anonymously, write to discuss it with us confidentially. If there are any good writers or editors out there who want to lend their service to polishing up some of these stories, that's also welcomed.
The first story we would like to receive is that of Dhanurdhara, who should do us all the service of sitting down to write his own detailed story. We all know that Bhurijana is a good writer. Perhaps Dhanurdhara should get on a plane to wherever Bhurijana is, and the two should work together on writing the complete story. Please explain to us exactly what went on, naming names, giving details, and sharing your philosophical realizations.
We now have the Internet, which allows the devotees to speak and everyone to hear from them, at no cost. Nothing will be a greater catalyst for change than if the community of devotees, en masse, picks up pen or sits down at keyboard and hammers out the true stories of their ISKCON experience, and how they understand philosophically what has happened along the way. The leadership won't like it, of course, but that's a price many of us can afford to pay.
The GBC have expressed their own desire to communicate with the public through their recently launched website, Dandavats.com. We welcome them to the Vaisnava news scene, and we'll enjoy 'counterpointing' their editorials in the Sun. As Chairman Mao said, in a revolution the first thing to do is kill the media. In our revolution to purify Srila Prabhupada's transcendental movement, we must do just the opposite. Embrace the media, and use it to disclose, discuss, and distribute the truth, as each one of us has experienced it.
