Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
BY: ROCANA DASA
Jul 24, VANCOUVER, CANADA (SUN) — Laksmi Nrsimha dasa recently published a detailed account of his own understanding of the circumstances surrounding the investigation of abuse perpetrated by Dhanurdhara. In his article, "Impartial We Stand, Biased We Fall" Laksmi Nrsimha makes reference to a 200-plus page case file, which he urges all GBC members to read.
My initial questions are the obvious ones. First, what is Laksmi Nrsimha prabhu's status in this case? Is he acting as a friend or personal advocate for Dhanurdhara? Is he serving as a trusted advisor to the GBC or the Child Protection Office? Is he a completely neutral party? Secondly, on what basis did he come to have access to the full 200 page report?
Perhaps he was given a copy by Dhanurdhara, who may have asked for his assistance. If he got a copy of the report by any other means, he should provide the details. We should understand who was in control of the report, what the regulations are for control and use of the report, and who else has been made privy to it. Laksmi Nrsimha's entire article will be much better understood once he has provided answers to these questions.
We should also question the policy that has prevented this report from being disclosed to the public. Surely the names of the victims, and even the witnesses, could be blacked-out to protect their identify. What other good reason is there for not making this report public?
The reality is that this case is now being tried in the Court of Public Opinion, not exclusively in ISKCON’s “Star Chamber”. If it weren't for the hue and cry from ex-gurukula students, the media spotlight wouldn’t be highlighting this particular “one amongst many” story of the human rights abuses occurring within ISKCON’s short history.
Dhanurdhara has come to symbolize all that was wrong about the way in which devotees in general, and primarily the celibate and 'absolute' authorities, viewed our hope-for-the-future offspring. I can speak with some personal experience, as I joined in British Columbia, Canada in 1970 with a 6-month baby girl. She was one of the early Dallas recruits at the tender age of 5 yrs old. Shortly after her arrival, I visited Dallas to find a highly stressed out little girl. Her anxiety was primarily on account of being separated from her family, particularly her mother. I can recall a brief episode when I was 6 yrs old, and my parents left us kids with a trusted family friend for just a few days. Throughout their absence I was internally devastated, and so glad to have them return.
We can project that level of stress over many months, thousand of miles, very few letters or phone calls, and we have the reality many ex-gurukula students experienced. Long distance phone calls were very expensive at the time, and frequent air travel was almost an impossibility. After many hours of discussing this phenomenon with my daughter, I have concluded that whatever undue physical encounters she experienced were of far less impact than the ear shatteringly amplified experience she had as a result of parental absence.
The children naturally wanted and needed protection and loving affection. Add to this mixture an intensely “brahminical regimen” for both teachers and students, 24-7, and the stress increases. They were up and showered by 4 a.m. and attended a full morning program, without eating. Little active bodies and minds were made to sit still chanting japa, listening to class, and being supervised constantly. This gave them plenty of time to observe all the hypocrisy in the adults. Dhanurdhara had to experience this mood in spades because the Vrindavan students were so much further removed from all their loving family members.
Shortly after checking into my daughter's circumstances at Dallas, I asked my wife to go to the school and assume the position of cook there, so she could watch over our daughter. This was a compromise I felt I had to make rather than simply bringing her home. I was a Temple President at the time, and had to set some standard of “obedience” to higher authorities, since I was asking the same from those within the temple. The lifestyle at that time was 100% communal and conciliatory. There was a chain of command for the sake of expediency, but I can’t recall having to exert my authority very often. It is very difficult for those who didn’t experience the lifestyle back then to appreciate the mood. Let us not forget that during Srila Prabhupada's ISKCON lila period there existed a distinct sense of urgency. It was not unlike a major wartime period, like WWII. Sacrifice on all levels was called for by both the Sampradaya Acarya and Paramatma, the Supreme knower of past, present and future. In hindsight, we can and should reflect that they were absolutely correct. As part of this mood, children were also denied their rightful claim to a normal “western style” family unit.
Our last three Sampradaya Acaryas manifested during the historical era when the British boarding school system was at its height. It was common knowledge in those days that the backbone of the Brit's elitist world domination program was their private boarding school system. Schools such Eton had become famous the world over. From there, the privileged were guaranteed entrance into Oxford or Cambridge, then on to high positions in Government service or Big Business. Many were obliged to do foreign service, especially in the Armed forces or the East India Company. The friendships that were cemented during those years in school served the Englishmen well. We can assume that the Acaryas wished to take advantage of the best of that system.
In ISKCON we find a very different dynamic. The line of guru and disciples trumped the seminal line. In other words, there was no fast track inclusion into the elite of ISKCON management by virtue of having been an alumni of some Gurukula. In fact, it was quite the opposite.
From a societal point of view, what benefit did the Gurukula children get from all the austerity of being sent away to boarding schools? Of course, some were inclined to the austerity and thrived on it, getting great spiritual benefit. Others, however, experienced exactly the opposite. The point is that a “society” run by celibates, some of whom were more accurately just unmarried bachelors, is unnatural and breeds the sort of horrendous outcomes we saw in the Gurukula system.
There was only one Zonal Acarya who attempted to remain a householder, Jayatirtha, and we all know what happened to him after he was forced to take sannyasa. The GBC literally kicked his wife and children out of their house and home without any warning or financial assistance. My daughter was living with his family at the time, and I was overseeing the sankirtan at the Manor. But that's another story, for another time.
A church is traditionally managed by such renunciates, and we are now witnessing the many struggles as ISKCON transforms from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness into the International Church of Krishna Consciousness.
There is a rasabhasa between the eastern and western concepts of the structure of a religion, and this is making things difficult for ISKCON. The western model is institutional while the eastern is based on diksa lineages. Some authorities within ISKCON lean towards one in lieu of the other whenever there is a conflict. We can use as a recent example the situation of HH Radhanatha and HH Bhakti Tirtha Swami’s flaunting of GBC resolutions when it came to associating with Kirtanananda and Vakesvara Pandit. Rather than leaning towards their own GBC institutional model when the disputes arose, they simply leaned the other way towards their many disciples, whose loud voices of support in the matter drowned out any pesky GBC regulations that might have gotten in their way. This hypocrisy of leadership causes the entire society to suffer, and further degenerates the rank and file's trust in the GBC.
A similar example is the re-admission of Bhavananda into Mayapura, where he previously sexually abused many children. Many of Bhavananda's sexual victims were local village children. Bhavananda was one of the most extravagant, wasteful and useless Zonal Acaryas of the lot. He callously closed down the Lake Huntington School for lack of money. All the while, he was living like royalty in New York City, doing all manner of complete nonsense right under the noses of everybody. I'm sure Laksmi Nrsimha dasa remembers that situation well. If memory serves me, he was serving in New York at the time. He didn't mention Bhavananda's re-inclusion in ISKCON in his article, but that was certainly another of the great injustices supported by ISKCON leaders.
What it comes down to is that the Zonal Acaryas have now been replaced by the "big gurus" who have lots of disciples and thus lots of power. In actuality, they are just running diksa lineage mini-ISKCON mathas under the umbrella of ISKCON. They feel they can do anything and everything they want without concerning themselves with GBC resolutions. On the other hand we have the remaining gurus/GBC's who don't collectively have enough power to do anything about problematic situations like the ones described above. In lieu of the power enjoyed by those with many disciples who operate an eastern model, many other leaders want to run an institutional church along western lines, where power is developed by virtue of successfully running programs aimed at building a strong local constituency. Like western churches, this includes running schools under the ISKCON banner, distributing prasadam to the homeless programs, holding regular festivals at the temple, etc.
In this particular snapshot scenario of Dhanurdhara's circumstances, we can see that during the 1980's, when he instituted all the heavy physical punishment programs, he was really representing the Zonal Acaryas. These Zonals had sent their disciples to the school, and were also targeting the students as their future disciples. Dhanurdhara was their proxy. Later on when he rejoined the Gurukula system, he was directly under the umbrella of the institutional GBC mandates. As we understand HG Badrinarayana dasa's recent comments, Dhanurdhara maintained his belief in the need for using physical punishment as an alternate disciplinary technique. Of course, this belief is really a personal philosophy, and he has never explained this philosophy to us. We know that today he asks for forgiveness, but why did he adopt this position in the first place? Why did he maintain it even after the reactions he was getting from the children, parents and institution? Does he still hold onto those ideas now?
We don't hear from Dhanurdhara on these questions, nor do we hear answers from the case report, as so far disclosed. Laksmi Nrsimha's article doesn't provide the answers. We also don't hear any mention whatsoever of the fact that there were authorities above and beyond Dhanurdhara who knew and approved of his management style.
If just one of the Zonal Acaryas had found fault with what Dhanurdhara was doing, they could have stopped him instantly, without question. Dhanurdhara didn't have enough power in the society to hold off such an action. Yet no one ever mentions these leaders, what to speak of Jagadisa dasa, who had been included as one of the few initiating gurus during that time, as will as being a sanyasis, GBC and Minister in charge of Education. There were all sorts of authorities over and above Dhanurdhara. If for some reason Jagadisa had felt that he couldn't do anything about Dhanurdhara, he could have gone to any number of Zonal Acaryas at the time and convinced them to help.
Other than Ravindra Svarupa, I don't know of any GBC whose kids were involved in the Vrindavan Gurukula. Does Badrinarayana dasa have any kids who attended Gurukula? There were few householders in the upper echelons at the time. Bhagavan, Hansadutta and Jagadisa all became sanyasis shortly after they became Zonal Acaryas, or just before. None of them had a householder mentality at all, except Jayatirtha.
Laksmi Nrsimha is now pointing out how the system is flawed and justice is biased, but I say it's biased by excluding the chain of command. The buck stops where? At Dhanurdhara? That's a total copout. While it may disturb his position, I encourage Laksmi Nrsimha prabhu not to support the high-level cover up by just 'hinting' at who he's talking about. In most cases - and especially important cases like this one -- not naming names is a pointless exercise. We would prefer that he share with us all the information at his disposal, including the 200 page report. Black out names as necessary to protect the innocent, and publish the report here on the Sun, so everyone can read and make an intelligent determination. That would be a useful exercise. We can judge for ourselves whether the investigation was flawed, how the GBC and CPO performed, and whether or not Dhanurdhara got a bad shake.
One of the principle ingredients of a fair judicial system is that it's open to the public. We know that when minors are involved, their identity must be protected. But why isn't the case report being disclosed to the greatest degree possible? The brief summaries posted on Dhanurdhara's website are of little real value. Dhanurdhara obviously hasn't been willing to publicly point the finger at any of his own authorities. Did he also spare them in the investigation? That answer is presumably found in the case report.
All in all, this whole situation feels very similar to what we see in third world countries. Take Chile, for example. It took many decades before they could bring General Pinochet to justice, but the people prevailed upon the system to act. Even though Pinochet didn't personally torture people, he was the authority who condoned it, and he is now paying the price to society. Likewise, those in power who enabled Dhanurdhara will eventually become known, and will get the reaction, accordingly.
This brings us back to the whole rasabhasa of the eastern vs. western system. Several of the 'big' diksa gurus who hold power in ISKCON today were either Zonal Acaryas or they picked up large groups of disciples from other fallen Zonal Acaryas. HH Radhanatha Swami and HH Bhakti Tirtha Swami, for example, acquired large numbers of followers when they picked up Kirtanananda's disciples after his departure. Others, like Jagadish and Gopal Krishna Goswami, were given power and position at the end of the Zonal Acarya era, when the Zonal's magnanimously opened the door and empowered them. ISKCON today is still more or less comprised of big Zonals, they just go by different names.
During the Zonal Acarya system there was essentially no GBC because the Zonal's controlled it, keeping the number of GBC's down to a level where they always had majority vote. At that point in time, the GBC body existed in name only. Between approximately 1977 and 1986, the GBC didn't deal with any big issues. All they did was make sure the positions of individual leaders were secure.
Afterwards they came up with another so-called plan that put all the power into the GBC's hands, but they still controlled the GBC. As far as I can see today, there continues to be a big tug of war between what I call the eastern religion supporters (diksa acarya institution) and those who see ISKCON according to the western institutional model. Either way, it's all religion, and nothing to do with an international "society".
As this all relates to the issue du jour, Dhanurdhara, he is just like one of the many underlings of the Zonal Acaryas. Up until very recently, they've been the ones keeping him in power. Of course, we're all left to guess exactly which leaders led the charge because it's being kept a secret. Only special people get to know what's actually going on. The rest of us are left to scratch our heads, wondering what everyone's talking about.
Laksmi Nrsimha dasa has written about how the system was not fair to Dhanurdhara, but one of the reasons we have any fairness at all in society is that there's openness and freedom of the press. Leaders are careful not to abuse their authority because their names and reputations are out there for the public to judge through the media. Unfortunately, this is not the case in ISKCON, where the society carefully protects it's own. Devotees have this strange illusion that they belong to a 'society', when they actually belong to something much more like a church. Within democratic society, even in third world countries, there is a system of checks and balances to make sure that justice is served. Judges are supposed to be unbiased and detached from the political system. People are assumed innocent until proven guilty. None of these protections are offered by ISKCON.
Of course, the whole scenario with Dhanurdhara transpired in India, so he wasn’t tried in the American court system. His only justice has come as a result of whatever fairness is inherent in the GBC/CPO process. The fact is that ISKCON, in general, has to abide by the laws of whatever country they're in, in terms of justice being gained in a given situation. Likewise, it seems that the only children who got any real justice in the Turley case were the Americans or Canadians. As for the Indian children who were sexually or physically abused, little mention has been made. Laksmi Nrsimha prabhu doesn't address them in his paper, and ISKCON certainly hasn't made an effort to identify them and secure justice on their behalf.
Sexual predators like Bhavananda, Satyadana, and Nitai Chand have never been brought to justice by ISKCON. The institution has not disclosed anything about the abuses they perpetrated. The children they harmed have essentially no legal rights. They weren't represented in the Turley Case, and no big law firm is working on contingency in order to get them some justice. Any justice they get will come only as a result of individuals like you, the reader, putting pressure on ISKCON leaders to right these very serious wrongs.
If someone wants to look for a flawed justice system, I suggest they start with these children rather than worrying about whether or not Dhanurdhara got a fair shake.
