IRM Dissolves Amongst Inflated Egos
BY: NAVADVIPCHANDRA DASA
Architects of the IRM Rtvik Movement,
(left to right) Yadubar dasa, Kamsahanta dasa,
and Krishnakant, on their first North American preaching tour, c. 1996.
Dec 20, USA (SUN) — One very simple way to judge the honesty and integrity of an organization is by seeing the amount of transparency that exists within that organization. Everyone knows from past experience ISKCON fails miserably in the categories of transparency, honesty and freedom to question. Full time members who are dedicated preachers within ISKCON are completely forbidden from asking any questions whatsoever about higher up leadership, for fear of ending up alone on the street. At every step, devotees are encouraged to remain blind and to avoid digging up the past, present or future. This inability to question leadership is one of the main reasons why so much corruption exists within ISKCON. Part of the problem is that in most cases ISKCON leaders are invariably the Gurus of those working under them. Thus it becomes "offensive" to even think something wrong may be occurring up there.
In response to this, some devotees look to the IRM (ISKCON Revival Movement), to cleanse ISKCON and bring about a transformation in ISKCON where honesty, transparency and freedom are key defining aspects of the society. The IRM presents itself as a grass roots movement comprised of all those devotees who want to follow Srila Prabhupada's pure instructions. From a distance this sounds good, but as you get closer you see there are some very peculiar symptoms which are reminiscent of the corrupt ISKCON they claim to be cleansing.
Over the last few months there have been many rumors coming out about the IRM from highly reliable internal sources, which indicate things are not all smiles. For example, IRM world headquarters (the gigantic ISKCON Bangalore temple ran by Madhu Pandit Das) removed themselves from the IRM and demanded Krishnakant remove their address from both the IRM website and the IRM magazines (Back to Prabhupada). The Bangalore temple, as Prabhupadanugas, still remain friendly with the IRM, but do not want to be officially associated with them.
A second rumor that had been going around was that the Singapore ISKCON temple, ran by Sundar Gopal Das, walked out of the IRM as well, due to disagreements with Krishnakant over initiations. Krishnakant told him that no one can be given ritvik initiation because only the corrupt GBC had the right to appoint ritviks. Without being first appointed by the GBC, you do not have authority to initiate on Srila Prabhupada's behalf.
All the while that these rumors were going around, the official IRM "leaders" Krishnakant and Yaduraj, both from England, carefully avoided these topics. When the questions came up on other forums, Yaduraj would even post under fake usernames saying "Those all sound like a bunch of rumors to me, I'm sure there is no truth to them."
This month a third rumor came out, again from highly reliable sources in Bangalore, that Madhu Pandit had planned to give ritvik initiation to 200 devotees. The devotees had already been informed that they would be initiated and the date of the initiation was fixed. In the past many devotees had already been initiated in Bangalore by the same system. But Krishnakant ran to Bangalore and forced Madhu Pandit to cancel the initiations citing the same argument: only the GBC can appoint ritviks, so without first reforming the GBC no one can be initiated.
Having heard all these rumors from highly reliable sources, I thought I would give the IRM the chance to explain their position themselves. I had gone through their website, noted their FAQs and saw how they claimed to be a grass roots organization made up of virtually every Prabhupadanuga follower in the world. I also saw they had projected two of their members, Krishnakant and Yaduraj, as the worldwide "leaders" of IRM. In their forums they even had a separate section "for leaders of IRM to post" (who really only referred toYaduraj and Krishnakant). Also in the Bangalore and Singapore temple stories, it was clear some leader was trying to exert their power over the temples to conform to their opinion. This brought up some serious questions about these two characters, primarily who appointed them as the worldwide "leaders" of the Prabhupadanugas? I decided to ask them politely to see if the rumors could be put to rest with their direct explanation. I went to their forum and posted the following four questions, requesting them to help remove the rumors:
1) I have heard rumors that Bangalore temple was going to initiate many people as disciples of Srila Prabhupada, but that IRM leaders have stepped in to block it. Could someone from IRM explain the real story behind this, and if its true, what was the reason for stopping the initiations?
2) Already Bangalore temple has initiated hundreds of people as disciples of Srila Prabhupada. What is the IRM's opinion on these past initiations? If they are still considered valid, then why stop new initiations?
3) Who exactly are the leaders of the IRM, who has appointed them and when? On the website there is no clear indication about a leadership hierarchy. It seems to describe IRM more as a grass roots movement, with anyone who follows Srila Prabhupada being a member. But then we see there is a seperate forum "for leaders of IRM to post" (who seem to be only Yaduraj and Krishnakanth) and we see that there are obviously some leaders acting, for example in the Bangalore initiation case.
4) There have been rumors that the Singapore temple has left the IRM and has already started giving ritvik initiations to people independently. Could someone from the IRM make a clear statement on what has happened and what is the disagreement?
Rather than getting an honest answer from the IRM leaders (Krishnakant and Yaduraj), I was surprised that they immediately banned me from the forums and deleted all past messages I had ever posted. The forums are personally administered by Yaduraj, so it became obvious that he had something to hide and didn't want these questions being seen by anyone.
Seeing that I wouldn't be able to get an answer from them directly, I posted the same questions on a neutral forum, bhaktiforums.com, and emailed the link to both Yaduraj and Krishnakant. In an attempt to hide the truth, Yaduraj began posting under the fake name of VISNU (which was latter proven to be himself, saying it was all just rumors, and that he had just spoken with "Yaduraj" who told him there was some technical problem with their forums resulting in their forums being disabled. He further went on to glorify Krishnakant concluding that "Krishnakant is leader of the IRM worldwide." He also said: "The IRM Forum Admin [Yaduraj] told me the forums are down, and some posts were deleted, but they are working to get it back up - perhaps in a new Q&A style for those interested in the philosophy."
I went to their websites front page and saw they had removed all links to their forums. I thought, "This is amazing. They are so scared of these four simple and honest questions, that they have removed their entire forums from their website instantly." They tried to cover this up by saying it was a "technical problem" and the forums weren't working any more. But I remembered the direct URL to the forums, and went there to see. It turned out they had only removed the link to the forums from their website, but they had forgotten to actually disable the forums. I again pointed out in the above thread that the forums are fine, and anyone can visit them using the direct link.
When Yaduraj saw this, he went and deleted every single message from the IRM forums, literally thousands of messages. All that he left was the "IRM Leaders Forum" where only himself and Krishnakant could post. I began to wonder what were they trying so hard to cover up. At this point I didn't know the complete answer to my four questions, but I realized it must be very bad or they wouldn't be making this frantic attempt to hide it.
Around this time it was revealed that the poster VISNU who was glorifying Yaduraj and Krishnakant in the thread above was none other than Yaduraj himself. I posted evidence of this, and in response Yaduraj completely removed even his "IRM Leaders Forum" as well and hid all signs of past communication – which is still the present status as of now.
It seems I had accidentally stumbled upon information that they didn't want the world to know at any cost. After contacting other devotees I was able to piece together the answers to my four questions.
The first thing Krishnakant and Yaduraj don't want anyone to know is that they are self appointed world leaders of IRM. No one has authorized them or appointed them to be the leaders of the Prabhupadanugas worldwide, nor even of the IRM. When you speak to the actual Prabhupadanugas, people who sacrificed their lives preaching and pushing forward Prabhupada's movement, they want nothing to do with these characters. What did Krishnakant sacrifice for Prabhupada? Has he ever been a member of an ISKCON temple? Has he ever been initiated, either by Prabhupada, a ritvik or an ISKCON guru? The answer to all of these questions is no. Actually he hasn't had any real connection to ISKCON or Prabhupada through service. Then what makes him the worldwide leader of IRM, and what gives him the right to prevent devotees like Sundar Gopal in Singapore from carrying out ritvik initiations on behalf of Srila Prabhupada?
The real leaders of the Prabhupadanugas are those devotees who have sacrificed their lives to spread Prabhupada's movement. Those are people like Sundar Gopal in Singapore, Madhu Pandit in Bangalore, and so many other devotees in America who have been sincerely serving Prabhupada's movement independently. But along comes Mr. Krishnakant Desai, who thinks he is the automatic worldwide leader simply because he sat at a computer and wrote an article called "The Final Order". Why should devotees like Sundar Gopal tolerate the interference from such self appointed pretenders?
Krishnakant borrowed what was already developed by devotees like Yasodanandana. They had researched and debated this topic from 1980 while Krishnakant was still a nobody worshipping his father's Ganesha statues. After Srila Prabhupada's disciples struggled and fought the corrupt GBC and gurus for years and years, suddenly Krishnakant shows up to claim himself as the leader of the Prabhupadanugas. Singapore temple, which has struggled preaching, for many more years than Krishnakant has been around, was interested in bringing devotees to Prabhupada. But Krishnakant wanted that stopped. So Sundar Gopal just gave a boot to Krishnakant and told the small boy to get out.
The "worldwide IRM" are temples where real devotees have struggled and preached. It has nothing to do with Krishnakant. Did Krishnakant preach and develop Bangalore temple? Did he preach and develop Singapore temple? Did he preach and develop Calcutta temple? No. He simply came and took the credit for making a "worldwide" IRM, and then appointed himself the leader. There were thousands of Prabhupadanugas throughout the world, due to the hard work and preaching of many hundreds of Prabhupada disciples. But somehow Krishnakant and Yaduraj think they are the self appointed leaders of everyone. They tried to stop Sundar Gopal from giving ritvik initiations in Singapore, but he wasn't interested in listening to them. He had been preaching Prabhupada's system from before Krishnakant had touched a bead bag.
IRM takes claim for all the Prabhupadanugas throughout the world. How much of that preaching they actually did is zero. I can appreciate that they have preached against corruption and self appointed gurus. But then they turn around and self appoint themselves! And if anyone just asks for an explanation, they panic and start deleting all signs of evidence. When people are scared to answer simple questions and want everything to be secret, it is a sign of corruption. Any organization that thinks it is above question, and any organization that tries to silence honest sincere doubts by force is corrupt. Whether they call themselves as ISKCON or IRM makes no difference.
So in summary, after thoroughly researching the answers to my questions myself (because IRM leaders Yaduraj and Krishnakant wouldn't answer, and tried to cover the truth), this is what I have found:
There are absolutely no ISKCON temples left in the IRM. All ISKCON temples that had been members have removed themselves from this organization and have forced Yaduraj to remove their addresses from IRM websites and magazines. Singapore temple, after leaving the IRM, has completely ignored Krishnakant's orders and has started initiating people as disciples of Srila Prabhupada. They no longer even hint that they have had any past connection at all to the IRM.
The break up was due to the fact that all of these senior preachers and servants of Srila Prabhupada were being forced to fall in line with Krishnakant's whims, the same Krishnakant who has never been a full-time devotee and who has never sacrificed anything for Srila Prabhupada's movement. Rather than listen to the assembly of Vaishnavas, Krishnakant insisted that only he was intelligent enough to instruct the temples how to act.
If we look at the founding resolutions of the IRM, under the resolution titled "Leadership" we see it stated:
"The IRM will be guided in its strategy and provided leadership and authority by the temple presidents body, which will be composed of temple presidents."
Somewhere along the way Krishnakant decided he didn't need to listen to the temple presidents, who were the actual leaders of the IRM, but instead all temple presidents should conform to his personal whims. As a result, all temple presidents have removed themselves from the IRM and now there is not a single temple left in the IRM. This is what the IRM (now just the self-appointed Yaduraj and Krishnakant) are trying so hard to hide: the fact that they have no official temples left, only a monthly magazine and a
P.O. Box in England.
There are still plenty of Prabhupadanuga temples throughout the world, just no IRM temples, because devotees have seen that the self-appointed leaders (Krishnakant and Yaduraj) are no more honest or transparent than the ISKCON GBC. Next time you ask an honest question and you see a huge frantic effort to hide all traces of it, you should know it is a sign of corruption. As I said before, any organization that thinks it is above question, and any organization that tries to silence honest sincere doubts by force is corrupt. Whether they call themselves as ISKCON or IRM makes no difference.
