BANGALORE: Recently Madhu Pandit Dasa said that the APF is ready to stop providing mid-day meals if the government is unhappy with it.
Q: Is your resolve to serve children so weak that you thought about stopping it as soon as someone accuses you of something?
A: We were pained by the allegations. The APF is run by a Board of Trustees and Board of Advisors and patrons. The Board of Trustees comprises three temple devotees and five others holding responsible positions in the corporate world. The Board of Advisors and patrons include Rajendra Babu, former chief justice of India, BBMP Commissioner, Secretary Primary Education, Commissioner of Public Instruction and others. Any body can scrutinise our accounts on our website.
Our work force including our monks serve poor children that they struggle right from 3 am every day to keep the APF running. We are determined to continue our service.
Q: Can’t you run APF without government’s aid?
A: Our aim is development and that can happen only when there is public and private participation. We are able to feed so many only because of government aid. We will continue working with the government.
Q: There is an allegation that some students in Uttarahalli did not want to eat Akshaya Patra’s food. What do you say about that?
A: Our aim is to provide tasty and nutritious food to the students. We have sent people to check the quality of the food we supply. If found not good, we will rectify it.
Q: Madhu Pandit Dasa had stated that ISKCON Mumbai is behind the false allegations levelled against ISKCON Bangalore. Are you saying that ISKCON Mumbai has paid DK Shivkumar to level these charges?
A: We meant that they are misleading people by levelling false allegations against us. Mumbai ISKCON has been baselessly accusing us of these things for some time now.
Q: There is ill-will between the ISKCONs and you are fighting legal battles against each other. Why so? We do not have any illwill against anybody. A: We are against the guru system that is being practised in ISKCON and they do not like it.
What is wrong with the guru system that is being practised in ISKCON? Before 1999 you did not have any differences with ISKCON Mumbai and you had accepted Jayapataka Swami as your guru. Why did these differences crop up all of a sudden? It is not easy to become a guru. A guru is considered a manifestation of god on earth. According to Vedic Scriptures and the teachings of Prabhupada, the ISKCON founder, one has to be qualified and he has to be authorised by the preceeding acharya to become a guru.
The basic qualifications to become a guru are: one should be a ‘Tathva darshinaha’ that means one should be able to see Krishna every where and one should be a ‘Brahmanista’ which means one should be fixed spiritual conciousness.
Even if one is qualified one cannot become a guru unless one is authorised by the preceeding acharya. Prabhupada did not authorise any one to become a guru because none of his disciples were qualified.
Instead Prabhupad had appointed 11 of his senior disciples as ‘ritviks’ to initiate disciples on his behalf and these disciples proclaimed themselves as gurus after Prabhupada left this planet.
Before 1999 we were under the impression that Prabhupada had authorised them to beome gurus and we were so devoted to them that Jayapataka Swami had referred me and Madhu Pandit Dasa as his left and right hands.
In 1999 Madhu Pandit Dasa came accross the letter in which Prabhupada had authorised these people to act as ritviks and not as gurus. Prabhupada had advised some of his senior disciples not to aspire to become gurus on many occasions.
Since then we started opposing the guru system and they wanted to throw us out of ISKCON because of which we approached our lawyers. Our lawyers advised us to file a case requesting the court to restrain Mumbai ISKCON from interfering in ISKCON Bangalore’s affairs. The lower court has allowed our plea and they have appealed against it in the High court.
Q: How can you say that the people appointed by Prabhupada as ritviks were not qualified to become gurus?
A: A bonafide guru never falls from his position. Whereas most of these self-proclaimed gurus fell down from their position as gurus. For example, there was a guru called Jayathirtha, he started womanising and indulging in drugs.
There was a guru called Kithananada, he got one of the devotees by name Sulochana Dasa killed. John Hubner and Lindsay Grason have written in depth about these things in their book titled Monkey on a Stick. ISKCON’s governing body council has also acknowledged it.
Q: Will you reconcile with Mumbai ISKCON if the guru issue is sorted out?
A: We are ready to do that. In fact we have told them that we will subject ourselves to their control if they discontinue the guru system and administer ISKCON according to Prabhupada’s instructions.