Sankirtana Revolution

 by Dayananda dasa

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada and his guru, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura, were two of the greatest spiritual revolutionaries of modern times. Srila Sarasvati’s movement thrived after World War I in an environment of British political dominance. Just before the war, the British had transferred their capitol from Calcutta to Delhi, nearer to the old Mogul seat of power, and in the process, they constructed new and grand government buildings from the red sandstone used by the Moguls for their palaces and mosques. After tolerating more than a century of British domination many Indians had become deeply concerned with the growing effect of Western materialistic culture on their spiritual culture.  Both Hindus and Moslems wanted to push out the British.  In spite of the fact that the Moguls had occasionally persecuted Hindus and destroyed large temples, India’s spiritual leaders were increasingly concerned about the destructive influence of Western materialistic culture as a greater threat than the previous two hundred year rule of the Moguls. By 1922, Gandhi had become a hero among disaffected Indian youth.  In Bengal (Eastern India), many had become aroused by the British massacre of one thousand unarmed Indians in the Punjab three years earlier. In this climate of unrest, Prabhupada met his guru, Srila Sarasvati Thakura. In their first meeting, Prabhupada respectfully argued with his future spiritual master about the best way to overcome the destructive Western culture.  Prabhupada’s guru was a brilliant scholar and had the title, Saraswati, which is the name of the goddess of knowledge.  Srila Saraswati convinced Prabhupada that India needed to spread its indigenous spirituality in revolt of materialistic culture.  For the next fourteen years, Prabhupada learned from Srila Sarasvati how to counteract corrupt and apathetic Indian religious leaders who had compromised ancient spirituality in the face of Western culture.  Prabhupada gained the wisdom required to infiltrate and defeat Western materialistic culture as well as reestablish the spiritual culture of India.

Srila Saraswati, desiring to penetrate the heart of demonic Western culture, had sent some of his senior swamis to England in the mid-1930s.  Their success was limited, and the swamis could not sustain local interest and financial support.  Still, this was a bold move in the midst of the worldwide economic depression. During this time, Prabhupada continued to struggle in India, enduring the departure of his beloved Srila Saraswati Thakura and the resulting impotence of his once grand India-wide mission.  As India achieved independence from the British and their allies, the old Indian aristocracy, it also gradually abandoned its spiritual culture.  An independent India was reluctantly on the road to foreign-influenced materialistic culture.  Meanwhile, Srila Saraswati’s once revolutionary organization, now fractured into smaller groups, blended into the new socio-religious society, loosing most traces of Srila Sarasvati’s bold revolution.

In the 1950s, Prabhupada had retired and was living a deeply spiritual life in India’s most important place of pilgrimage, Krishna’s birthplace.  Concerned about the ineffectiveness of his guru’s movement, he strongly desired to reenergize the mission.  Thus, he decided to do so by entering the heart of the materialistic culture.  In 1965, after laboriously writing, editing, typing, and publishing three volumes of the Bhagavat Purana, he moved from Krishna’s birthplace to New York City, and brought two or three large trunks of the books with him. The Bhagvat, even loftier and more important than the popular Bhagavad Gita, was rare, if not impossible to find in English.  In his preface, Prabhupada wrote that the Bhagavat Purana is meant to bring about a spiritual revolution in a misdirected civilization and that one is sure to become a God-realized soul by going through its first nine parts.

In the short year that followed, Prabhupada met many disaffected young people in New York who were eager to become spiritual revolutionaries.  Some were angry, some frustrated, some irresponsible.  Yet many of these followers, disgusted with the status quo of materialistic American society and its bigoted and watered-down religions, were intelligent and resourceful. In this environment, Prabhupada began his Hare Krishna explosion.  He wrote, “The temple is a place not for eating and sleeping, but as a base from which we send out our soldiers to fight with maya.  Fight with maya means to drop thousand and millions of books into the lap of the conditioned souls. Just like during war time the bombs are raining from the sky like anything.”[1] Thus, he wisely orchestrated a war whose weapon of mass destruction was the powerful sword of knowledge.  At the same time, his movement was non-violent. He required his followers to be vegetarian, and when he learned that two men, not his followers, had blown up a slaughterhouse, he said that his purpose was not to bomb, but educate.  He commented that the same mentality is involved in blowing up a slaughterhouse as in meat eating itself.

Nevertheless, he boldly trained his disciples to become gurus who do not compromise on basic principles.  He explained that a guru must not fail to enforce the spiritual principles for the sake of gain or even false compassion.  He described the process of bhakti yoga, or devotional service, as so valuable and powerful that it transforms a person from a demon into a god.  Without principles, without standards, such a transformation cannot occur. In this way, Prabhupada’s revolution takes individual demons from the greater demonic society, transforms them into gods, demigods, and sends them back into society to provide a positive, yet provocative, influence. One of his great book distributors writes: “During Srila Prabhupada’s college days, he was actually a student with Subhas Chandra Bose, India’s mysterious but famous freedom fighter, who was to become the leader of the Indian National Army (Resistance Force who fought the British).  I could not help but think of Prabhupada as a greater revolutionary than Bose.  Although Bose was a freedom fighter who performed great works of liberation, Srila Prabhupada was destined to lead a spiritual revolution, giving real freedom from the cruel grip of birth and death.”[2]

One might wonder at the message that provoked such impassioned youthful participation. Indeed, Prabhupada often spoke in strong terms.  He told his disciples, “As soon as you have some attachment for anything material, it will kick you upon the face, deteriorate, and disappoint you.”[3] His lectures were often graphic.  He compared socially responsible people (karmis) to asses, that is, hard-working, yet stupid donkeys.  He explained that like the donkey, the materially responsible person is often satisfied with a hurried meal and troublesome sex life.  In spite of such a situation, the person is blissfully ignorant. He emphasized that people maintain their gilded cages, entrapped in them by maya, illusion.  He said, “Maya kicks on my face and forces me to do something.  Such is the power of maya.” In spite of his advanced age, he was so spirited that he encouraged his young, inexperienced disciples to oppose the materialistic leaders:   He instructed, “Write vigorous articles to kick on the face of these rascals; all of you. You all write very strongly, vehemently.  Even [if] it is a little offensive, still these rascals should be taught a good lesson.  Yes.  They're misleading.”[4]

In this manner, Prabhupada conducted his assertive revolution that involved speaking, writing, advertising, and educating.  In the face of criticism, he was never defensive. He pushed his loyal, dedicated disciples to accomplish definitive goals.  He taught that his was a revolution of consciousness, yet he asked his followers to be accountable for their service to Krishna.  He required them to count the number of Hare Krishna mantras they recited daily.  He instructed them to be responsible for the hours they spent in active service, study, sleep, and consumption.  He asked disciples to offer a percentage of their income:  for single devotees this was 100%, and for married 50%. With such a dedicated, austere army of followers, he proceeded to influence the world.  During the first few years of his movement, he sent young followers in their twenties and with scant training to Europe, Australia, and Asia. Not all were immediately successful. Most endured hardships, poverty, opposition, and apathy. Soon Prabhupada orchestrated a new wave of centers in Central and South America, Africa and India.  His ardent followers sometimes got malaria, typhoid, hepatitis, and cholera.  Occasionally they were beaten and harassed.

By the mid-1970s, he asked his followers to go to the Middle East, East Europe, Russia, and China.  Those places had authoritarian governments and closed societies.  However, he pushed his Western disciples not merely to adopt a new behavior, mentality, or consciousness.  He pushed them to action, sacrifice, and austerity. For a decade, the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna sent hundreds of followers to Prabhupada, who simultaneously established a break-neck pace for himself.  Although approaching eighty, he traveled without stop, lecturing, marshalling, and writing.  His daily schedule was highly regulated and grueling.  He enjoyed that austerity, yet Dr. Srivastava, a Krishna devotee who had once met Prabhupada, observed, “I think he worked himself to death.” In an affluent society, people are easily lulled into apathy about spiritual life.  Prabhupada provoked, prodded, pushed, and sometimes tricked his followers into action. As soon as he managed to get a disciple to take responsibility, he would not let him or her stop; he continually raised his expectations, increasing accountability. At the same time, he inspired his followers by his own dedication and austerity.

He trained the gurus and leaders of his worldwide movement to provoke their followers and dependants to take great action.  He was confident that Krishna would supply each sincere follower with intelligence so that he or she might serve with his or her own personal genius. In that way, Prabhupada’s legacy was the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), an organization of cooperating, selfless geniuses. Those who look carefully can find problems with ISKCON; however, no other Indian spiritual organization is as widespread and effective. Moreover, the leadership and structural basis of ISKCON promise to keep it strong for a very long time. At the same time, the lessons of early ISKCON taught that by using a dedicated force of cooperating geniuses a small number could enlighten the world, lifting the burden of ignorance.  In order to direct such strike forces, tactics and plans of attack were essential.  In addition to operational tactics, Prabhupada’s overall strategies in his war on maya underwrote the effectiveness and inspiration of his broadly disbursed forces. His strategies were dharmic, based on the principles and duties established by his predecessor gurus. Thus, he established ISKCON based on spiritual dharma (parodharma). Aside from ISKCON, his most important strategy was widespread book distribution. Book distribution formed the core of his revolutionary activity. Without book distribution, ISKCON blends into the socio-religious environment, and becomes old and toothless. With renewed and bold book distribution, ISKCON retains its status as the seed of the spiritual revolution that Srila Sarasvati designed and Srila Prabhupada implemented.