Is the GBC Representative of Srila Prabhupada?
August 23, 2016 in Articles, Krsnachandra Prabhu by Yasoda nandana dasa
Is the GBC Representative of Srila Prabhupada?
BY: KRSNACANDRA DASA
May 08, 2010 — SRI VRNDAVAN DHAM– When we consider what ISKCON has become under the direction of the GBC over the last 33 years many of us do not like what we find. Historically ISKCON has been fraught with schisms, controversies, GBC, guru and Sannyasi ‘falldowns’ brought about by sexual, criminal, moral, ethical and philosophical deviance. We have also been faced with a GBC that has stalwartly pushed ahead with its plans to fully corporatize and centralize the ISKCON Institution with modern business stratagem and secular academicians against the best advice of many of the senior devotees of the devotional community.
Many senior and scholarly devotees have challenged the GBC on the validity of their management structure, methodology and their lack of consultation with devotional community members. The obstinacy of the ISKCON management to heed their advice/admonitions/needs has led to suspicion and eventually confrontation by many of the senior ISKCON members who feel alienated and disenfranchised from what they know is their spiritual father’s mission. Many are also beginning to doubt the ingenuousness of the ISKCON leadership’s true intention and subsequently their loyalty to His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada and his mission.
This contravention has inevitably led to polarity within the ISKCON Society which has resulted in the ISKCON leadership expending an extraordinary amount of time, effort and money on designing new laws, policies and programs whose main aim it is to; control the devotee resource base, prosecute them under the new ISKCON laws if necessary and ultimately to protect themselves and their interests.
Many feel that the GBC no longer feels obligated to the older devotional community members and has instead implemented a strategy that is primarily focused on the development of a volunteer workforce that has no knowledge of ISKCON’s fallacious past, and is loyal to the GBC and ISKCON gurus before Srila Prabhupada.
The failure of the GBC to respond appropriately to the needs of the older devotional community has also played a large role in the estrangement of many thousands of senior men and women of our community and has resulted in the mass exodus to other camps such as the Narayana Maharaja Camp and even to the point of filling the ranks and coffers of the Sahajiya Babas of Radhakunda, Varsana and Govardhana etc.
In order to properly understand and address the issues that face modern day ISKCON we must defer to the words and instructions of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada. It is only then that we can construct an unbiased comparison between the present management of ISKCON’s aims and objectives and that of Srila Prabhupada and fully address the issues being brought to light by disenfranchised members of the devotional community.
As per the Bhaktivedanta VedaBase Introduction: “There are other documents entitled to similar authority, in a different sort of way. These are legal documents in which Srila Prabhupada gives explicit directions. Examples are trust deeds, incorporation papers, and his last will. Such documents were deliberate, purposeful, and clearly intended to be upheld by the full force of law.”
Here the ISKCON leadership refers us to the levels of importance that we should place on the various literatures that we have available to us in ISKCON. Books are the highest instruction and they deal primarily in the philosophy of Krsna Consciousness. Legal documents are considered ‘similar’ in authority to Srila Prabhupada’s books. It is when we review these legal documents that we can easily differentiate if there are any differences between the GBC based management structure of ISKCON and the one that Srila Prabhupada established.
