Throughout this New Vrindaban episode, we as followers of Srila Prabhupada have had to open our eyes concerning the circumstances behind the New Vrindaban murders. The issue is obviously polarizing an already fractured community. Many devotees would prefer to maintain the sanitized version of ISKCON history. But whether it's ISKCON or the Gaudiya Matha after Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati left, we hear of murders and there's plenty of drama in other quarters.

As individuals, it is trying for our own faith to have to come to grips with the fact that even in our local communities, with all this incredible philosophy and knowledge and the wonderful process of becoming God conscious, still the material world is so hellish and Kali Yuga is so intense. It's frightening to think that the kind of mentality required to engage in the sorts of activities that were going on at New Vrindaban found a place in the minds and hearts of those posing themselves as Vaisnavas.

If one listens carefully to Srila Prabhupada, however, this should come as no surprise. Srila Prabhupada gave us a head's up in terms of not maintaining the myth that the other Gaudiya Matha leaders have spun around their history regarding the period of great disturbance, where most of the atrocities in their past took place. Srila Prabhupada was willing to talk about these things. In fact, I recently heard a morning walk conversation where he said that he had a Godbrother who had committed suicide because his wife, who had a lover, killed their son because the son found out about the affair. Today in ISKCON, I believe by Krsna's arrangement, we are having to come to grips with the reality of what took place at New Vrindaban. Because a part of that history involves actually murdering people, it's come down to this - a public review of the sordid history and the degree to which the justice system actually brought all the truth to light. Should the right combination of evidence manifest - most likely in the form of corroborating personal testimonies - persons involved in these crimes could still face criminal action. The emerging allegations are that those who were senior management at New Vrindaban at the time the murders took place were complicit in the crimes.

Now ISKCON is supposedly being protected and managed by the GBC. Of course, the GBC has given us its "official letter" stating what their position is on the matter, but only in regards to Radhanatha Swami. As we see by verifiable evidence, Kuladri is alleged to be just as guilty as Radhanatha, if we're simply looking at the Sulocana murder mystery. My concern all along has been that the GBC are making a big mistake by putting Radhanatha on such a high pedestal, as we daily see. In fact, a recent BTG offers a feature article that is primarily a glorification of Radhanatha and his Chowpatty temple, all around the story of one of his disciples. Now we have Kuladri, who was recently vaulted into a very prominent position in ISKCON, continuing to take charge of financial and legal issues for New Vrindaban, while also heading up the new GBC North American office. The announcement of his new position was made by Anuttama dasa in November of last year.

In yesterday's news, we saw that Kuladri is now sending letters out to ISKCON temples in North America, telling them that they should essentially sign away the control of their temples, out of the hands of the local community, and into the hands of the GBC. Aside from the incongruity of Kuladri, with his chequered past at New Vrindaban, being the person in charge of facilitating such a proposed change, it's not as though the GBC itself were a very trustworthy component of ISKCON. When we talk about ISKCON's difficult history, we're really talking about the GBC's history. Simultaneous to the events taking place at New Vrindaban, many other disturbing and illegal events were taking place throughout ISKCON. On the West Coast we had Hansadutta, whom the GBC supported throughout his years of gun-slinging craziness. In England we had Jayatirtha. Interestingly, there are murder mysteries involved with both of these individuals, as well. In the case of Hansadutta this shouldn't be a surprise, considering how many guns were involved in his pastimes. The 'West Coast' murder victim was Jiva dasa, who was a personal friend of Dharmatma, and was renowned for being a leader of the women's parties. In the case of Jayatirtha, a devotee was mysteriously murdered in India after he left ISKCON. There's a whole story about how Jayatirtha walked away with many innocent disciples and followers on account of the GBC's inaction in dealing with that situation. One of his followers eventually murdered him, but prior to that one of their group suspiciously died in Northern India during a group excursion.

Personally, my life was threatened by Hansadutta. And on the East Coast, a gun was pulled on me in an attempt to keep me from exposing Jayatirtha to the GBC. When I came to New York from London, where Jayatirtha was falling off the vyasasana, I was prepared to inform the GBC about what was going on there. But before I could present my report, I had a gun pulled on me on the orders of Adikesava, who was a GBC at the time. This event took place just after Adikesava had returned from the big GBC meeting in Los Angeles, where they discussed Jayatirtha. At that meeting, the GBC concluded that he should take sannyasa, and they would cover-up his drug taking. They wouldn't hear a word I had to say, and Adikesava ordered one of his thugs (he had a little militia of punks at his disposal, too) pulled a 45 revolver on me and forcibly took me to the airport. They forced me to get on a flight back to London so I wouldn't press the issue of Jayatirtha, which they had just neatly swept under the rug. Shortly after I arrived, Jayapataka and Ramesvara gathered everyone together and fed them a whole cock and bull story about Jayatirtha getting contaminated by some babaji in Radha Kunda. They all knew this was absolute nonsense. As a result of the GBC's outright lies, Jayatirtha carried on as a drug-taking sannyasi for a number of years before he finally hit the wall. So this whole phenomenon that we see in an exaggerated way in New Vrindaban is really just the tip of the iceberg.

The mood throughout ISKCON was totally out of control on account of weak-willed fanatics who were being exploited. Because of what happened with Kirtanananda, New Vrindaban is a bigger than life story. But at the same time, readers have to understand that the New Vrindaban drama wasn't an isolated incident, by a long shot. From my point of view, allowing people like Radhanatha and Kuladri back into ISKCON, what to speak of Bhavananda, is just rubbing salt in the wounds for all the Srila Prabhupada disciples who were sacrificed on account of these GBC men wanting to maintain their Zonal Acarya system for as long as they did.

Not only was the Zonal Acarya system not eliminated, as evidenced by Jayapataka's ongoing control of the Mayapur realm, and now Radhanatha's control of Chowpatty, ISKCON also didn't purge the second tier management of the Zonal Acarya influence. Members of the reform movement were also trying to rid ISKCON of this contaminated second tier influence. Instead, Ravindra Svarupa sold out the reformers, and the GBC dealt with the second tier leaders by simply promoting them. In this way, they hoped to make it look like the Zonal Acarya system was dismantled, when in fact, they just moved the walnut shells around on the board. All the same old alliances were still in place, we just had new faces on the front lines. Radhanatha is a prime example of this dynamic. Indrayumna Swami also falls into this category. Indrayumna Swami was a Bhagavan supporter during the Zonal Acarya period. In fact, right up until the time that Bhagavan did his duck dive and left a rich man, Indrayumna fully supported him. From my perspective, by his actions today, he is still maintaining a Zonal Acarya mentality insofar as he depicts himself like a maha-Acarya, taking so many disciples and accepting so much adoration. This is very dangerous. Here in America, we have the same dynamic with Badrinarayana, who was Ramesvar's right hand man. Today we see that he holds a very prominent role in ISKCON.

It's fine to bury the past, once the past has been accurately told and dealt with. But when the only way to bury the past is to cover it up, it is a recipe for sure disaster. Cover-up's never work. Sooner or later, the truth comes out. In the meantime, everyone has to worry about history repeating itself. And the way it's repeating itself in ISKCON today is by the promotion of Radhanatha, a modern day Zonal Acarya, and by putting people like Kuladri and others who were contaminated by Kirtanananda into very high profile positions in the movement.

In the case of Kuladri, the dynamics of his relationship with Kirtanananda were very well know, even by outsiders. Many devotees will testify to the fact that Kuladri was Kirtanananda's number one manager at New Vrindaban, and that meant money. He knew where every penny went and why it was spent. His acumen as a money manager was known far and wide. In the case of how blood money was managed with respect to Tirtha's murder of Sulocana, it wasn't simply a question of his payoff or getaway money, there was also the matter of day-to-day expense money related to the murder conspiracy. It costs a lot of money to have men running around the country in surveillance mode. Someone had to have approved these expenditures and known what the money was being used for. And obviously, that person appears to have been Kuladri. Kirtanananda never handed out money. He sent people to Kuladri to get the money, and Kuladri would ask them twenty questions about what the money was to be used for.

The dynamics of how things were run at New Vrindaban is best told by the inmates who lived there. We have been hearing from some of them, but certainly many more individuals know what was going on there. Some are coming forward anonymously because they still fear for their lives, even today, while others are talking openly.

As in any big organization, there was a structured management hierarchy at New Vrindaban. If you drew a picture of the Bhaktipada tree, coming off at the top you'd have Radhanatha on one main branch, where he served as the top spiritual man underneath Kirtanananda. Branching off in the other direction we have Kuladri, who was Kirtanananda's top managerial man. So these are the two top men directly under Kirtanananda -- both of whom are now being implicated in the murder of Sulocana - and ISKCON has got both of them in very important positions to this very day. Undoubtedly, ISKCON hoped that this old New Vrindaban murder history had been put to rest. But obviously, it wasn't settled. If it was, we wouldn't have all these people coming forward, and the controversy exploding in the way that it is. As we've reminded our readers in the past, it's not that the Sampradaya Sun staff went out looking for this story. I simply wrote an Obeisances to Dandavats column questioning Radhanatha's self-glorification in a Dandavats article. In response, the dam burst, and we were flooded with detailed accounts of how the New Vrindaban murders went down. Obviously, Radhanatha was the match, and although we're not sure just what kind of fire has been lit, we can see that many people in high places are worried - and those who aren't, should be.

As with anything in the material world, when it comes to situations like this, the old saying is "follow the money". In ISKCON's case, Radhanatha is in a power position that involves a tremendous amount of money. Not only does he now have some 5,000 disciples, but many of them are multi-millionaires. Some of the biggest money people in India, what to speak of Bombay, are now giving money to various ISKCON projects. Naturally, news of Radhanatha's complicity will be seen by ISKCON leaders as seriously bad news. In North America, we now have Kuladri being "engaged" by ISKCON, not only to manage New Vrindaban's money, but now organizing their affairs and consolidating their power throughout the whole of North America. This involves a tremendous amount of assets. In fact, the only thing ISKCON has as assets is the temple properties. The rest of the money is in the hands of individual gurus and sannyasis, and a few wealthy grihastas.

From the point of view of those concerned about Srila Prabhupada's movement, which has been constantly trying to recover from one scandal after another for the last 30 years, for the GBC to set themselves up so foolishly as to again be scandalized is just incredible. The only hope I can see for the movement is a grassroots protest, which may or may not result in forcing the GBC to undergo a major overhaul. Either that, or the frustrated followers of Srila Prabhupada will resort to litigation in order to effect change. In fact, as I'm sure the GBC are well aware, the atmosphere today is ripe for such litigation. We wouldn't be surprised to see major lawsuits launched against the GBC in the year ahead.

GBC Initiative to Gain Corporate Control of Temples

As we saw in yesterday's Sun article, "Changes in ISKCON Incorporation Laws", there is a serious effort underway by the GBC to take control of all the North American temples, by implementing bylaws that take control out of the hands of local leaders and Temple Presidents, and place it into the hands of the GBC. We call on the GBC to give us the actual philosophical and managerial rationale for this action.

We can understand that this strategy is simply their way of ensuring that temple property assets don't move further away from GBC control. As we understand it, this is party in response to ISKCON's loss of a relatively small North American temple in Long Island, New York, which was taken over by the Rtviks. Another temple in Florida was also taken down from the ISKCON roster, but we were told by GBC member Malati devi that this temple did not go Rtvik; the Temple President simply "went off". Whatever that means.

Let's keep in perspective the fact that the GBC have caused far, far more damage than a few small temples going to the Rtviks, or a few Temple Presidents running off with money. The GBC have run off with many times more money than all the errant Temple Presidents and individual devotees put together. The GBC have caused far more damage to ISKCON than everyone else who's ever screwed up, put together. So what is this whole idea, that now the only people we can trust are GBC's?

We haven't investigated yet, but it appears that here in Canada, there are several temples that are listed as ISKCON temples, namely Calgary, Edmonton and Regina, that are not even incorporated as ISKCON temples. These temples are exclusively under the GBC control of Gopala Krishna Maharaja, and I would be very surprised if they adopted these new bylaws, and gave up their local control. It will be very interesting to see how the GBC body deals with those individual GBC's who are unable to get the local temples in their zones to hand over control.

In addition to the obvious strategy of preventing temple property assets from going sideways, further out of GBC control, the reason behind this new incorporation strategy might also be that the GBC wants to consolidate their assets so they can easily liquidate them to cover the gurukula lawsuit settlement. Otherwise, they'll be under pressure individually to put money into the hat. We have heard recent reports that the temple in Puerto Rico was mortgaged, without the consent of the local temple community. The money was taken out of the community, and the GBC are refusing to advise local members of what the money was used for. The money is gone, and the congregation is left with a big mortgage.

We encourage temple community members to let us know of similar situations, where the GBC have been moving to control assets. Telltale signs of such a strategy will include changes to local Boards that might not have seemed to make sense. In other words, local Board members may have been suspiciously pushed out over the last year or two, being replaced with those unquestionably loyal to the GBC. We'd like to hear details of such circumstances, so the patterns will become clear.