Image: ISKCON Bangalore Reality / YouTube
A devotee who spent nearly ten years raising money for the Hare Krishna Hill temple says that none of its builders had heard of the Karnataka society that now owns it. ISKCON Bangalore, which won the temple in the Supreme Court in 2025, says it has always been an independent society; it has not responded to the interview.
BENGALURU, India — Varada Krsna Dasa, who served at ISKCON’s Bangalore temple for close to a decade as one of its main fundraisers, accuses Madhu Pandit Dasa, president of ISKCON Bangalore, of a “betrayal of trust” towards the devotees and donors who built the Hare Krishna Hill temple. In a 52-minute interview published on 21 October on a new YouTube channel, ISKCON Bangalore Reality, he says the temple was built as a branch of ISKCON Bombay and that the claim of a separate Karnataka society to own it was “an afterthought”.[1] ISKCON Bangalore maintains that it is a distinct society registered in Karnataka that owns the temple, a position the Supreme Court upheld in May 2025 and which ISKCON Mumbai is now asking the court to review.[2][3]
The interviewer introduces him as a devotee of about four decades who served almost a decade at ISKCON Bangalore and now heads the Sri Narasimha Giridhari temple in HBR Layout, Bengaluru, as temple president. Varada Krsna Dasa says his grandfather was a disciple of Srila Prabhupada, that he joined in Mayapur and was accepted in Bangalore by Madhu Pandit Dasa and Chanchalapati Dasa, and that his main service there for nine and a half years was fundraising for the temple project. He left, he says, around the end of the 1990s.[1]
He begins with praise. Madhu Pandit Dasa, he says, was “a phenomenally talented person, very competent”, “a visionary” and “a great leader” who held the team together, and he recalls him flying to Bhubaneswar at personal risk to keep a temple there united within ISKCON. “I owe them a lot,” he says of Madhu Pandit Dasa and Chanchalapati Dasa.[1]
Varada Krsna Dasa says that after the temple was completed, Madhu Pandit Dasa changed. These are his claims, made in the interview:[1]
“None of us would have worked for him even for half a day, even for half an hour, if he had known that he and his wife and his wife’s sister and the co-brother and another person, that they are the trustees of the temple. I wouldn’t have gone out on the streets of Bangalore and rest of South India begging for money, asking for money. None of us would have done that to support a family business enterprise.”
Varada Krsna Dasa, ISKCON Bangalore Reality, 21 October 2026[1]
“He collected money to install the deities on behalf of one society. Now another society comes and claims ownership of the whole thing. What kind of morality is this?”
Varada Krsna Dasa, ISKCON Bangalore Reality, 21 October 2026[1]
He also says that Madhu Pandit Dasa used to criticise relief work such as free food distribution in his classes, and now uses the Akshaya Patra mid-day meal programme as a front for the dispute. Asked whether the guru question is a “smoke screen” for the property question, he says it is, and challenges Madhu Pandit Dasa to an open debate. He ends on reconciliation: “Even now the old Madhu Pandit, if he were to return, nobody will be happier than me.”[1]
His claims about the society’s origins echo the case ISKCON Mumbai is making in the Supreme Court and in the January 2026 affidavit of ISKCON Bangalore’s former auditor, V.L. Varadarajan, who on 6 October asked the court to let him withdraw it.[3]
ISKCON Bangalore says it is an independent society, registered in Karnataka in 1978, that the temple land was allotted to it by the Bangalore Development Authority in 1988, and that the temple’s property and funds were raised in Bangalore.[2][3] On 16 May 2025 the Supreme Court held that ISKCON Bangalore is a distinct society under the Karnataka Societies Registration Act, 1960, not a branch of ISKCON Mumbai, and that it owns the temple.[3] After the verdict Madhu Pandit Dasa said:
“They can no longer expel the thousands of devotees who accept only Srila Prabhupada as the sole Acharya of ISKCON.”
Madhu Pandit Dasa, ISKCON Bangalore, 16 May 2025[2]
As of the evening of 21 October, ISKCON Bangalore’s website carried no statement on the interview, and Madhu Pandit Dasa had not answered Varada Krsna Dasa’s claims publicly. The allegations of backdated records and of a family-controlled society are disputed and have not been ruled on in the review.
ISKCON Mumbai’s review petitions against the May 2025 judgment are pending. On 5 October Justice Manoj Misra recused himself from the bench hearing them, and the papers went back to the Chief Justice of India for a new bench to be formed.[3][4] In the interview the host says the review “will commence” on 22 January; the recording date is not given, and that date probably refers to an earlier listing. The court has not yet heard the review on its merits.[1][3]
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