Image: Hare Krishna Mandir / YouTube
A 34-minute Hindi video on the Hare Krishna Mandir channel calls Varada Krsna Dasa’s “Why I Left ISKCON Bangalore” interview “just stories”, waves asset declarations by Madhu Pandit Dasa and Chanchalapathi Dasa showing nil holdings, and challenges ISKCON’s gurus to do the same; a second channel has posted a 52-minute defence against the ₹15,000 crore fraud allegation.
BENGALURU, India — The Bengaluru camp of the long-running dispute over the Hare Krishna temple has answered the interview in which its former fundraiser Varada Krsna Dasa accused Madhu Pandit Dasa of a “betrayal of trust”. On 23 October 2026 the YouTube channel “Hare Krishna Mandir”, run by a temple of the Hare Krishna Movement group that follows Madhu Pandit Dasa, published “One-Sided Story? | Why I Left ISKCON Bangalore | Reply to HG Varada Krsna Prabhu”, in which two devotees go through the interview point by point.[1] A day later a second channel, “Struggle for Truth”, which describes itself as “a voice for thousands of sincere devotees” and promotes the ritvik position, posted “The Truth Behind the ₹15,000 Crore Allegation Against ISKCON Bangalore”.[2] Akincana Gocara published Varada Krsna Dasa’s interview on 22 October (see Read Also).
The two speakers, who are not named in the video, open by thanking Varada Krsna Dasa for calling Madhu Pandit Dasa “a great leader” under whom he grew spiritually, then say that the rest of the interview consists of allegations without a single legal document: “stories are just stories”.[1] They reject his claim that he was indoctrinated, “quarantined” and subjected to a “systematic cultish doctrine”, arguing that an engineer who came to the temple as an adult, served happily for years and accepted its philosophy cannot say he was forced.[1]
They also play a clip which, they say, shows Varada Krsna Dasa before 1999 defending the ritvik system established by Srila Prabhupada’s letter of 9 July 1977, saying it “does not violate any sastric injunction”, and accuse him of “changing colours”.[1]
To the charge that the temple serves a “family enterprise”, the speakers hold up what they describe as asset declarations by Madhu Pandit Dasa, Chanchalapathi Dasa and two senior women devotees of the temple, in which cash, buildings, land, vehicles and jewellery are all declared nil, with only gifts and allowances listed.[1] Every rupee that Varada Krsna Dasa raised, they say, went into temple construction, and the receipts are still at the temple: “bring any CA firm you like”.[1]
“For the last one and a half to two years, since we won the case, we have been openly challenging: if even 50 per cent of your more than 80 gurus declare their assets in such an affidavit, we will delete this video and follow whatever you say. Not one of their gurus has declared his assets to this day.”
Speaker in the Hare Krishna Mandir video, 23 October 2026, translated from Hindi by Akincana Gocara[1]
Initiation money, they allege, goes into gurus’ bank accounts while “ISKCON’s temples get poorer and the gurus richer”.[1]
The video turns the phrase “breach of trust” back on the GBC. The real breach, the speakers argue, was in 1978, when eleven disciples “made themselves gurus”, divided the 108 temples among themselves and introduced the zonal-acharya system against the 9 July 1977 letter, which they say was kept from devotees and was not even included in the Vedabase until 2003.[1] When Madhu Pandit Dasa learned of the letter in 1999 and presented it at Mayapur, they say, he was suspended and told to stay away from GBC and temple presidents’ meetings.[1]
They recount the mediation held during the Supreme Court case, in which, they say, Madhu Pandit Dasa first proposed that Srila Prabhupada be accepted as guru in all ISKCON temples and then offered to hand over the group’s 52 centres and more than 80 Akshaya Patra kitchens, and to resign with Chanchalapathi Dasa from all management posts, if Prabhupada were accepted as sole diksa-guru in the Bengaluru-affiliated temples alone.[1] A clip is played of Madhu Pandit Dasa repeating an “open invitation” to ISKCON Mumbai and the GBC after the Supreme Court verdict: “We will surrender… you and Chanchalapathi should not be president, vice-president of Bengaluru. That too we have accepted, in writing.”[1]
Varada Krsna Dasa had compared the dispute to Sakuni and Duryodhana’s dice game; the speakers reverse the analogy, casting Bengaluru as the Pandavas who asked only for “five villages” and were refused.[1]
On the allegation that a defunct Karnataka society was revived to capture the property, the speakers cite a statement by a late devotee who, they say, registered the society in the 1970s with Hansadutta on Srila Prabhupada’s instruction, because the Bangalore Development Authority would allot land only to a society registered in Karnataka; they add that Prabhupada wanted every temple registered and managed independently.[1]
They also raise what they call the “yellow bus case”: a complaint, filed while the dispute moved from the High Court to the Supreme Court, alleging that Madhu Pandit Dasa and Chanchalapathi Dasa had driven a bus loaded with gold, silver and cash from Kolkata to Bengaluru. The Supreme Court, they say, dismissed it and fined the complainants ₹1 lakh for wasting the court’s time, a fact they say ISKCON never mentions.[1]
They display what they describe as a 2013 letter in which the GBC invited the Bengaluru group’s temple presidents to become initiating gurus and join ISKCON, promising the case would then be withdrawn; the presidents, they say, wrote back refusing. They further allege that Jayapataka Swami once offered Madhu Pandit Dasa the whole of South India as his initiating zone. “Divide and rule”, the speakers call it.[1]
The second half of the video lists the familiar ritvik charges: the GBC’s 1999 Mayapur apology to disciples for the zonal-acharya system while the guru system continued; gurus who “run away with their disciples”; child-abuse cases in gurukulas; more than 5,000 changes to the Bhagavad-gita and 21,000 to the Srimad-Bhagavatam after the BBTI was formed in 1988; the 1986 murder of Sulocana Dasa; and a beating of the artist Jadurani Devi Dasi. “Who is the hijacker?” they ask: the eleven who took 108 temples in 1978 and built 800, or a temple that offers to give everything back on one condition.[1]
They close by asking ISKCON to “let us live in peace” in temples the Supreme Court has confirmed as theirs, say a review petition “will achieve nothing”, promise the documents shown in the description, invite viewers to comment “hypocrisy level 1000”, and point them to the Struggle for Truth channel.[1]
“The Truth Behind the ₹15,000 Crore Allegation Against ISKCON Bangalore”, published on 24 October by Struggle for Truth (about 5,300 subscribers), opens with the statement that “a ₹15,000 crore fraud allegation has reportedly been made against devotees of ISKCON Bangalore, including His Grace Madhu Pandit Dasa and His Grace Chanchalapathi Dasa”, and runs 52 minutes.[2] Both videos were shared in the ISKCON Open Forum Facebook group on 25 and 26 October, where one commenter replied that “rtvik initiation is a bogus one. No need for further discussion.”[3]
Varada Krsna Dasa, ISKCON Mumbai and the GBC had not responded to the two videos on their public channels as of 27 October, and Akincana Gocara has not verified the documents shown on screen. The ₹15,000 crore figure comes from the press release issued on ISKCON Mumbai’s behalf after a Calcutta court ordered the registration of an FIR against Madhu Pandit Dasa and twelve others, reported here on 15 and 18 October (see Read Also).
Note on the source: this article summarises a partisan video that argues the Bengaluru temple’s case; the claims about asset declarations, court fines, the 2013 GBC letter and the offer by Jayapataka Swami are the speakers’ and rest on documents shown on screen that we could not inspect.
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