In yesterday's segment of Obeisances to Dandavats, we began to offer comments on Tattvavit dasa's eleven-part report on the daily GBC meetings recently taking place in Mayapur. Today, we begin with a look at his Day Two report.

The Day Two report includes a list of eight proposals, but these do not appear to have captured the group's attention. Instead, the main agenda over the next few days was Gopal Bhatta's program of strategic planning. He sat as Chair of the GBC meetings over the course of his presentation. Gopal Bhatta's agenda took up a significant portion of the overall time the GBC had available for its worldwide meetings. This new strategic planning approach is being led by the seemingly successful businessmen, Gopal Bhatta and Ambarish prabhu, who are described as being the ones who "help the GBC members open their hearts and focus on issues." So the vaisyas are now inspiring the so-called brahmans.

In the first part of his report, Gopal Bhatta concluded that the GBC are failures at strategic thinking. He points to the two successful past programs that the GBC were involved in - the Srila Prabhupada Centennial and a Kshetra Committee - noting that even these programs were not maintained, which in itself means there was not a brahminical approach being employed. As he said, they "ran out of steam".

Gopal Bhatta also noted that one of the big goals of the Centennial was to make the ISKCON body healthy, and that's basically been a failure. He even goes so far as to tell us the reasons -- the key players got sidetracked. What has really caused the failure, of course, is the fact that the gurus don't maintain their spiritual standards. In other words, they keep falling down, and therefore faith in the leadership is eroding. A great deal of energy has to be dispensed to deal with the resulting crisis each time a guru falls. The GBC allude primarily to Harikesa, who for many years was considered to be the most important GBC, guru and BBT personality. His fall created tremendous havoc for Srila Prabhupada's mission.

Gopal Bhatta goes on to emphasize his solution, which is all about management. Such management requires that the GBC Executive Committee meet more regularly, have a budget, and serve for three consecutive years. As I stated earlier, Gopal Bhatta discovered that most devotees are unconcerned about what goes on at the GBC level, but are mainly concerned about what goes on at the local level. And on a local level, it's completely up to the local GBC to decide what he brings back from these meetings, what he and adopts and emphasizes, and what he chooses to ignore. In our local case, our primary GBC didn't even go to the meetings. In fact, he doesn't even come to the temple unless he absolutely has to even though he's both the GBC and the Temple President, partly because he lives many hours away. But regardless of how displeased the local congregants are about this situation, the GBC do absolutely nothing to correct this huge deviation from Srila Prabhupada's strategic plan.

Gopal Bhatta, on the other hand, is complaining that the GBC are too absorbed in local and regional issues, and/or have health problems and don't do their jobs, or are considered "too brahminically minded" to do the required work. I suppose he's referring to Hridayananda and Ravindra Svarupa. Gopal Bhatta's suggestion is that they start a whole new tier of GBCs, which he calls the "international only" managers. Of course, he wants to transform the Executive Committee into such a body of "international onlies". Any reader who has any idea of what goes on throughout the world in ISKCON can easily see that those who want to take a position as "executives" on this Executive Committee are the ones who don't have much going on in their local areas, or who have so many problems they just want an excuse not to have to deal with them because they're engaged in "more important issues".

Naturally, the Executive Committee will need more offices and permanent staff, so Radhanatha Swami stepped forward to offer such facility for them at his Chowpatty temple. While on the surface this seems a gracious gesture, Radhanatha's offer actually exemplifies the Zonal Acarya mentality. He refuses to personally follow the GBC resolutions and insists that he be the only initiating guru. For all these years his temple has not been incorporated as an ISKCON temple. Now he wants to become further entwined with the seat of GBC power. We should also consider the fact that if they share space at Chowpatty, the Executive Committee members will be coming into very close and regular association with Radhanath and his managers, and this will inevitably influence their way of administrating. Considering the fact that Radhanatha Swami operates as a Zonal Acarya and doesn't himself comply with the GBC's mandates, we can assume that the GBC members will have an even more difficult time trying to enforce their own mandates if they're keeping this company.

Gopal Bhatta next points out a very serious problem that ISKCON is now having to face as their members become ill, while others have already departed. That is, they haven't enlisted or trained anyone from the next generation to take their place. In the candid photographs taken at the meetings, I see many of my previous friends and associates. I can only wonder why it is that after all these years, they're still holding on to these GBC positions. For what were ostensibly spiritual reasons, they have taken positions like sannyasa and guru, in addition to accepting the highest institutional position of GBC.

If one is really making spiritual advancement, we have to wonder why they aren't doing as Srila Prabhupada did, trying to remove themselves as quickly as possible from administrative duties so they can focus strictly on their own personal spiritual advancement and the advancement of their disciples and followers. You would assume they'd be disinclined to get embroiled on this kind of management level. In fact, you'd assume the spiritual demands on them would be such that they'd want to find someone to replace them. But as admitted here and as evident in the photos, they haven't groomed or trained anyone to replace them, even though they're admittedly failures at what they've been doing all these years. So if you've taken on the renounced order, and you have a serious spiritual responsibility for many disciples, and you're a managerial failure, and/or too sick, or too brahminically minded, or whatever excuse you may have for not executing your GBC duties, then why not resign and allow someone else to take over your duties?

There's no shortage of persons who would be willing to accept such responsibility. It's hard to imagine them thinking that regardless of the fact that they're failing, if somebody else replaced them they'd do an even worse job. It seems that they just want to hold on to the power, and they're not looking at the results, even though Srila Prabhupada said "judge by the results".

Keep in mind that in modern ISKCON, it's harder to become a GBC member than it is to take sannyasa or be recognized as a diksa guru. Those who are in power and have that title are obviously so attached that they won't give it up, regardless of how sick they are, or how much of a failure they are.

There's a degree of honesty in the statement by Gopal Bhatta, pointing out that younger devotees are not enthusiastic to accept this responsibility. But how many members of that GBC body are younger devotees that could consider peers? And how can we expect the younger generation to be enthusiastic for a job like GBC member, when the position is weighted down by a history of maha-problems, mired in current problems, has a proven record of corruption, and apparently has little to recommend it as being a positive or fulfilling role?

Later on in the meetings, it was even suggested that the sannyasa ministry make available to the Executive Committee its sannyasa candidates for a certain part of the year. In other words, to be a sannyasi you would have to serve the Executive Committee. This tells us that they're now training sannyasis how to become administrators and bureaucrats. According to the philosophy, this is the antithesis of what it means to be in the mood of a sannyasi.

Committee Reports

The heads of the committees that were established in Italy made their presentations. One committee, headed by the lawyer Sesa dasa, was deputed to create an ISKCON constitution. Sesa dasa reports that he's finding it virtually impossible because of unstated reasons, but he does admit that Srila Prabhupada wanted there to be a constitution. Regardless, in three separate attempts, going back to the early 1990's, he hasn't been able to come up with something that he feels he can get a universal or majority by-in on. We're left wondering what the essence of the problem is that prevents them from drafting a constitution. Of course, we can easily guess that it's because of the newly coined "parallel structure" problem.

I've already mentioned Ravindra Svarupa's presentation, or lack of it, on Srila Prabhupada's position. It appears that there's little or no consensus on that level either, other than the conclusion that Srila Prabhupada is the "soul of ISKCON". I've also mentioned he feels Sivarama Swami's "parallel structures" problem has to be resolved before there is a constitution. Annutama prabhu offered the typical platitude, that we all have to "cooperate on the spiritual level and focus on the pleasure of Srila Prabhupada".

At the conclusion of Gopal Bhatta's strategic planning summary, control of the meeting was returned to the Chairman. Gopal Bhatta apparently didn't stay for the rest of the meeting. He just thanked them for their attention and approval and jumped on a plane, back to his own business. It's fascinating, if not disturbing, that Gopal Bhatta isn't even a member of the GBC, yet he chaired the meeting and consumed a large portion of the members' time.

This takes us up to day four of the meetings, which will be dealt with in a subsequent article. I invite any of the readers who feel inclined to study these meeting reports to give us their own feedback. Of course, we've had the benefit of only one "official" reporter, although in a free society there would be a whole cadre of reporters representing all sorts of distinct members of the society. However, Tattvavit dasa is the only person we can rely on to give us the kind of information we're looking for. And of course, he reported just a fraction of what was actually discussed. This leaves us with many questions and concerns, and the absence of detailed information will only encourage speculation amongst the membership.

So, the mood of secrecy still prevails in the GBC. We will have to wait weeks or months until the official Minutes and Resolutions are presented. But of course, these won't give us much detail about the discussions, either.