BY: ROCANA DASA
May 06, CANADA (SUN) — A weekly response to Dandavats editorials.
Like the Sun, Dandavats has posted this year's GBC Resolutions and the new Zonal Assignments. Along with the periodic reports given by Ananda Tirtha dasa reporting live from the Mayapur Festival, the Resolutions and Assignments are the extent of what the grassroots devotees will be permitted to know about the dealings of the GBC at their 2008 Annual Meeting.
I've previously stated my position as to what Srila Prabhupada wanted the GBC to do and to be, which differs from what we're observing as the years go by -- a steady evolution towards a society within a society. As stated at the top of the Annual Report, the GBC is a society registered under the West Bengal Societies Registration Act. Of course, this is not something Srila Prabhupada established, nor did he instructed his GBC men that this was how he wanted his society to be managed. In fact, this is a complete deviation from Srila Prabhupada's desire.
Many of the readers, many members of ISKCON, and dare I say even members of the GBC have little or no idea of how Srila Prabhupada wanted his society to be managed on this level. If it wasn't for the fact that Srila Prabhupada put some major stumbling blocks in the path of those who have conceived of and slowly implemented the changes we see today, they surely would have gone much further astray from Srila Prabhupada's clear instructions on not having a centralized society, and not having the GBC completely run ISKCON from above, down to the micro level.
Of the many programs the GBC have been implemented over the years some have been scrapped, such as the Zonal Acaryas taking over and essentially disbanding the GBC. They later re-instated the GBC, in the late 1980's, and it has now morphed into the concept we find today wherein the GBC is to be seen as the Collective Acarya. The architects of today's system were, of course, the contaminated Zonal Acaryas of days past. And the surviving Zonal Acarya who has been actively involved along the whole timeline of these deviation, is Jayapataka Swami. From my perspective, he is the primary architect of what we see today.
The ISKCON GBC of today is described in the Annual Meeting report. It is comprised of multi-layers of bureaucracy, starting with the GBC, the Executive Committee of the GBC, then the Acting GBC, the Assistant GBC, the Candidates for GBC, the now-departing GBC Emeritus, along with all the committees and ministries that have been established. Then we have all the Regional Governing Bodies, the European, North American, Latin American, Indian, etc., each having different designations. The more you study the Annual Meeting report and the accompanying document on GBC Assignments, the clearer it becomes that there is no constitutional structure in ISKCON. The making of leaders is all a matter of backroom political arrangements. There are no votes amongst the grassroots, no canvassing of opinion from the grassroots devotees who actually do the preaching and keep the temples running. Rather, the elite few hold power that is unchecked, and they work out deals amongst themselves as to who's going to be the GBC for which part of the country or which part of the planet, who their co-GBC will be, who's going to be on what committee, and which of their friends will be given plum titles a bit lower in the hierarchy of power -- a strata at which we find various personalities who have proven to be essentially useless as managers. Still, the GBC doles out institutional designations to empower them, such as "Special Duty Officer" and "Minister of Padayatras".
We also find a group of powerful and important people who really aren't accepted as "real" members of the GBC by their peers. They hold titles nonetheless, because once a GBC, always a GBC. Ultimately, of course, GBC power is not designated by how many countries are listed after your name in the Zonal Assignments report. Many GBC members are put in-charge of countries where there's no temple and few (if any) devotees. For example, look at the list of countries assigned to Hari Vilasa dasa, who has been given GBC responsibility for Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Somalia, and Iran. Interestingly, Hari Vilasa's mother country, Armenia, he's been made to share with co-GBC, Bhakti Vijnana Goswami. Given the level of preaching activity going on in Armenia, it hardly requires the assignment of two GBC men. And given Hari Vilasa's dedicated focus on his Armenian cultural roots, we can assume that he's being made to split the Armenian territory as a means of punishment for his recent 'bad behaviour' in publicly slagging other members of the GBC.
Of course, these long lists of so-called "Zones" are just a big mirage intended to expand the illusion of global preaching. It's a big nonsense to have someone like Hari Vilasa be named the GBC of all these place. He likes it because it makes him look important, and it helps him to insulate himself from any oversight by the GBC itself. Meanwhile, the local residents of those far-flung places do without a dedicated preacher of Krsna consciousness. Never mind that any one of today's maha-gurus like Jayapataka or Radhanatha could depute one of their thousands of disciples to take up these remote preaching fields.
For now, we'll hold further commentary on the GBC Assignments for a future edition of Obeisances. The point is, there's no blueprint or structural map that determines how GBC Zonal Assignments are to be made. Consequently, there's no way for the average devotee to ever understand how ISKCON is actually managed. Even if you study the GBC Annual Meeting report and Zonal Assignments, most of it makes very little sense because scant information has been provided. We are not made privy to the reports from all these committees, nor do we find reports from all these GBC members as to what they've accomplished in the previous year. Needless to day, no financials are provided for GBC members and we are not given specifics on the disbursements made from budget appropriations. In other words, what is disclosed by the GBC is only the most skeletal information.
The Report goes on to list all the sannyasis candidates on the waiting list. Why one candidate is one the one-year list while others are on the two-year list, isn't stated. Why certain candidates are disapproved for sannyasa is also not disclosed. Keep in mind that this process for sannyasa approval wasn't in place when Srila Prabhupada was present. He personally approved individuals to take sannyasa, but he did not assign that duty to the GBC. During the Zonal Acarya period, the individual Zonal Acaryas would approve of their godbrothers taking sannyasa or not, and this was obviously nothing more than a political game. The sastric principle is that a sannyasi can approve of another qualified devotee taking sannyasa, as an individual consideration, and then award that sannyasa initiation and become their sannyasa guru. So this whole idea that the GBC should now accept or reject "candidates" for sannyasa based on a Ministry's approval, is a contrived system not handed down by Srila Prabhupada, and not found in sastra.
By now, everyone should be well aware of the fact that being a sannyasi is a way to be fast-tracked in the ISKCON administration. The Executive Committee has two sannyasis and most of the Ministries have sannyasis -- those that have actual power, that is.
Then there's the whole bureaucratic layer of the Guru Program. In the minds of some, the Guru Program is on a level beneath the GBC, but in the minds of others, it is equal to or greater than the GBC level. Of course, during the formal GBC meetings they don't discuss these issues, and no mention of it is found in the Annual Meeting reports. Throughout the year, however, outside of these meetings, the issue continues to be a huge unresolved problem. It is, in fact, the great big elephant in the living room.
The Annual Meeting report goes on to talk about assignments to Ministries and Standing Committees. We find that one Ministry can be extremely powerful while another Ministry is simply window dressing. It's interesting to note here that the Vaisnavi Ministry, the women's Ministry, is the only Ministry designated as an "Interim Committee". No explanation is given for that designation, but one can imagine. In the budget, the Vaisnavi Ministry gets the smallest appropriation amongst all the Ministry budget assignments.
It's also interesting to note that the Youth Ministry, the Book Distribution Ministry and the Justice Ministry only have one person assigned to each, whereas the BBT Construction Grant Committee has half a dozen sannyasis on it, obviously because they have a lot of money. If you carefully look at where the sannyasis and the budget assignments are, you can easily read between the lines and see where the priorities in ISKCON rest.
It's obvious that the Mayapur project has essentially been set-up as ISKCON's equivalent of the Vatican. Many new GBC are assigned to Mayapur, and that includes the rich and powerful ones such as Radhanath Swami, Gopal Krishna Swami, and Bhakti Caru Swami what to speak of Jayapataka Swami who's the reigning Zonal Acarya in Mayapur. All of these men are essentially 'millionaire Swamis'. Of course, they won't give their money to a project unless they're given some power as part of the deal.
Jayapataka Swami, who Srila Prabhupada assigned or empowered to develop Mayapur, has been over-extended for many years. This has been the case since Srila Prabhupada departed. In reviewing his GBC and committee assignments in this year's report, one can only wonder why he feels it necessary to serve as the co-GBC of Chili or Nepal, or any such far-flung places that have nothing to do with Mayapur.
When it comes to Jayapataka Swami's GBC assignment to Mayapur, we find the Zonal Assignments report to be rather confusing. For example, it states that:
Jayapataka Swami is the co-Zonal Secretary for "West Bengal: Calcutta" along with Bhakti Purusottama Swami and Bhakti Charu Swami.
Later it says that he and Bhakti Purusottama Swami are Co-Zonal Secretaries for West Bengal, except Mayapur and Calcutta.
Later still, it states that Jayapataka is co-Zonal Secretary for Mayapur, along with Gopal Krishna Goswami, Bhakti Charu Swami, Bhakti Purusottama Swami, Praghosa Das and Radhanatha Swami.
It's also interesting to note that the entire budget for the GBC is only $65,000 USD. Compare that to Jayapataka Swami's individual travel budget of approximately $1 Million per year. And when you look at the Zonal Assignments, consider that if each GBC were to visit his own zones once a year, many would need a Lear jet just to get around to all those places.
We all have to remember one important principle - once you become GBC, once you become sannyasi, it's extremely difficult if not impossible for that circumstance to be changed, i.e., to have that position taken away. GBC, guru and sannyasi are essentially lifetime positions in ISKCON, unless the individuals chooses to step down or has a very public falldown (and departure even under that circumstance can be long delayed, as we've seen in the case of Satsvarupa).
The institutionalized positions of GBC, guru and sannyasis often give the recipient an aura of royalty in ISKCON. If you study all the committees listed in the Annual Report, you'll see that the GBC can control these individuals. There's no committee oversight outside of the GBC structure, and no way to know, at the local temple level, for example, whether or not someone is actually fulfilling their function as GBC, sannyasi or guru. Local managers are left to await news through the grapevine - and if it's traveling through the grapevine, it's probably bad news. Even so, there are long lists of those who are hankering to have these positions, which today are seen to be like an insurance policy or retirement package.
In next week's Obeisances we'll offer some commentary on the GBC Resolutions dealing with the Long Island temple lawsuit and the Balabhadra situation. In the meantime, we encourage you to careful read the 2008 GBC Resolutions and Zonal Assignments, and to give close attention to how they do (or don't) impact your local Yatra.
Obeisances to Dandavats and to the ISKCON Governing Body Commission.
