Article by Sitalatma Das…on Kaunteya’s book

In a comment on Kaunteya’s book elsewhere, I mentioned “distance” but I think it deserves a little more attention. The book is almost 700 pages long and the title is not settled yet. Originally it was “Racism Sexism & Homophobia in Srila Prabhupada’s Teachings?” but now he changed it to something less provocative. Perhaps someone else will eventually produce a comprehensive review, but for now let’s look at this “distance” thing. “Distance” in this book is a verb and it’s used in the meaning of “distance ourselves from Srila Prabhupada”. Here are all the nine times it comes up, which I think is enough to qualify as “again and again”:

“Some statements by the Founder-Acarya are misinterpreted or misrepresented because of being taken out of context or filtered through questionable ideologies. Other affirmations are indeed inaccurate and ISKCON should distance itself from them.” p 31

“As a simple step in the way forward (one, I believe, that would please Srila Prabhupada), ISKCON should distance itself from inaccurate or unnecessarily inflammatory statements.” p44

“ISKCON should recognize the danger of such assertions and negative generalizations – which are technically antisemitic in nature – and firmly distance itself from them.” p 153

“the International Society for Krishna Consciousness would still do well to distance itself from some of the things Srila Prabhupada said” p 359

“Because many of our devotees do not have the same mental and cultural development, we should be careful to distance ourselves from those remarks by Srila Prabhupada that appear stereotyping or condescending toward women…” pp 434-435

“Yes, I do strongly encourage ISKCON to distance itself from some of the expressions Srila Prabhupada used..” p 468

“… I believe the International Society for Krishna Consciousness should firmly distance itself from certain things he said.” p 620

“which I paraphrase as “ISKCON, distance yourself from certain statements!” p 651

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Doesn’t it look like this is the main thrust of his book – “we should distance ourselves from Srila Prabhupada”? All the words in between these quotes simply explain which statements exactly we should distance ourselves from and why. Explanations look mostly convincing, too – if one searches deep enough in the recorded conversations one can find plenty of Srila Prabhupada’s statements that are simply repetition of what he had heard in popular culture or news or books and so should not be taken as absolute. Kaunteya does a good job of researching them and of finding counterexamples for them, too. In that sense his book is like an encyclopedia of controversial statements, and they undeniably have been made. Okay, but “distance”?

Why do we have to distance ourselves from Prabhupada? Why not use the same statements to bring ourselves closer to him? “Close” in this case would be “if I was in the same situation and had the same information I would have said the same”. “Close” would mean “we think alike”, and there was nothing wrong with Srila Prabhupada’s thinking, was there? The data might have been erroneous but his thinking was always perfect. Why can’t we learn to think like him? Why do we have to “distance” ourselves?

Another danger, and a very real one, is that we dismiss some of Srila Prabhupada’s statements which we shouldn’t. On what basis do we reject them in the first place? On the basis that we believe we have the correct data but he didn’t. How do we know our data is correct, though? If it’s a measurement of something, like female brains, we can easily check by using the same measurement method, but what if it’s a judgement on moral values? What gives us the right to claim we have correct morals and Prabhupada had the wrong ones? Claims about racism, sexism, and homophobia are mostly moral ones, aren’t they? Okay, we can contest claims about existence of homosexual behavior in animals but not whether homosexuality is repulsive or demoniac, and that’s what really triggers people nowadays. That’s what we are told to distance ourselves from Srila Prabhupada *for* – not to offend or provoke other people into attacking us. We want to be safe from their reactions, and Kaunteya thinks that to stay safe we need to disassociate from Srila Prabhupada.

“Let them think he was a toxic racist women-hating homophobe, we are not at all like him.” That’s Kaunteya’s solution, isn’t it?

There are plenty of devotees who would take great offense simply at associating these words with Srila Prabhupada. Never mind the original title had a question mark at the end – we should never ever put these words and Srila Prabhupada’s name in the same sentence. I just did and I feel dirty already, but I think it’s necessary to illustrate Kaunteya’s thinking. I might be wrong but that’s what it looks like to me.

His other solution is not to publish these statements at all so that no one would ever have grounds to think of Srila Prabhupada this way. Too late for that, however, and censoring Srila Prabhupada is a dangerous idea in itself which I don’t want to discuss right now.

Anyway, introducing “distancing ourselves from Srila Prabhupada” is stepping on a slippery slope. First – who will get to decide which statements need to be rejected? How to make sure their decisions are free from mistakes? What would be the ultimate authority on this? After Srila Prabhupada has been put aside as an object of our study, can we even have any ultimate authority other than ourselves? Sastra as the ulimate authority has been rejected by Kaunteya as “neo-smartism” already. What else is left?

And then one can have a field day with practical applications of this “distancing”. We can have killer arguments like “You haven’t sufficiently distanced yourself from Srila Prabhupada yet, Prabhu”. Will there be a distancometer? Will there be “distance certificate”? Will it become part of our sadhana – “ten minute prayers for creating sufficiently safe distance from Prabhupada”? Will devotees ask “have you done your distancing today”? “Do you do your distancing before sunrise or do you leave it until bed time?” Because everyone knows the farthest distance from Prabhupada is created during brahma-muhurta.

Of course Kaunteya can say that he is concerned for ISKCON’s reputation, for Prabhupada’s reputation, and for success of our preaching mission. Okay, this is kinda obvious, but why does he think that “distancing from Prabhupada” would actually help? Why not put the same amount of energy into explaining how Srila Prabhupada’s thinking was perfect on all these subjects and into formulating easy to remember responses if they ever come up? If people do not accept our explanations our preachers should simply move on. Because endlessly arguing with skeptics is one of the first mistakes of a rookie preacher. They can’t convince the skeptics and they can’t accept their inability to do so either, so they keep on arguing about Christ or Siva or racism in our books. So now there’s another rookie solution – distance yourself from what you are trying to present, that way you can avoid the argument in the first place.

The only solution that WILL work is coming closer to Prabhupada and learning how to deal with critics from that elevated platform. Every other solution will necessarily fail, no matter how inventive we become.