Interview: ISKCON India’s Legal Head Says Madhu Pandit Das Uses Ritvik Philosophy as a Cover
In an hour-long Hindi podcast, now available with English subtitles, Dayaram Das, ISKCON India’s legal head since 2002, sets out the 1971 Mumbai society’s case against Madhu Pandit Das, from the dormant 1978 society to the Supreme Court and Akshaya Patra. ISKCON Bangalore says the Supreme Court has already decided in its favour.
BENGALURU, India — Dayaram Das, who has handled ISKCON India’s legal affairs since 2002, has given his most detailed public account yet of the Bengaluru temple dispute in a 62-minute Hindi interview on the Siksharthakam YouTube channel, published on 11 November 2026.[1] “The battle going on is ISKCON versus Madhu Pandit Das. Everyone misunderstands this,” he says.[1] He accuses Madhu Pandit Das and members of his family of using a society registered in Bangalore in 1978, which he says lay defunct for 23 years, to take control of the temple on Hare Krishna Hill, and he calls the Supreme Court’s May 2025 ruling for ISKCON Bangalore “a self-contradictory judgment”.[1] ISKCON Bangalore rejects this account: it says it is an independent society that has run the temple for decades, and that the Supreme Court agreed with it.[3]
Akincana Gocara has added English subtitles to the interview. The subtitled version is below; the original is on the Siksharthakam channel.[1]
The interviewer introduces Dayaram Das as a computer-science graduate of IIT Bombay who joined ISKCON in Mayapur in 1985, a director of the Mayapur Foundation and president of ISKCON Kolkata.[1]
One society, many branches
Dayaram Das begins with 1971, when, he says, Srila Prabhupada registered ISKCON in Bombay under the Societies Registration Act of 1860 and the Bombay Public Trust Act of 1950 and chaired its governing council, the Bureau, until 1977. Every temple Prabhupada opened in India, Vrindavan, Delhi, Kolkata, Mayapur, Hyderabad and Bhubaneswar among them, was a branch of that society, and he says Prabhupada wrote to Jayapataka Swami that the American model of one registration per state did not apply in India.[1]
In 1978, about six months after Prabhupada’s departure, some disciples registered a society of the same name in Bangalore. According to Dayaram Das, Prabhupada’s secretary told them it went against Prabhupada’s wishes; the society was left on paper but never cancelled, and until 2001 it held no meetings, filed no income-tax return and sent nothing to the Registrar of Societies.[1] “There is no society called ISKCON Bangalore,” he says; there is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness registered in Bangalore.[1]
“That’s the first fraud”
Dayaram Das says Madhu Pandit Das, who was designated president of the Bangalore temple in July 1984, described it as a branch of the Mumbai society in his own filings at least five times: in testimony in November 1986, before a consumer court in 1994, in a civil suit in Bengaluru in 1999, in a plaint in 2000 and in another in February 2001. He sent the temple’s accounts to Mumbai every year from 1984 to 2000, Dayaram Das says, and the sale deed was in ISKCON’s name.[1]
From August 2001, he says, Madhu Pandit Das took the opposite position. He put his wife, his wife’s sister and her husband on the governing body of the 1978 society and claimed that this society, not Mumbai, owned the temple. “That’s the first fraud,” Dayaram Das says. He alleges that the chartered accountant V.L. Varadarajan issued backdated certificates saying that the accounts sent to Mumbai each year belonged to the 1978 society, and that its first income-tax return was filed in 2002, 23 years after registration, showing a corpus of 39 crore.[1]
From the High Court to the Supreme Court
Dayaram Das says the Karnataka High Court’s 2011 judgment found that Bangalore Development Authority documents had been manipulated, with a stamp inserted, and named Madhu Pandit Das, his wife, his sister-in-law, her husband and Varadarajan as having tried to take the temple by fraud.[1]
The Supreme Court reversed that judgment in May 2025. Dayaram Das says the hearing was far shorter than the High Court’s 10 to 12 days, that the two-judge bench relied on one document, the land application to the BDA marked Exhibit P51, and that the judgment records the Mumbai society’s submission that P51 was fabricated while elsewhere treating it as accepted. “The Supreme Court didn’t even touch it,” he says of the fraud findings. “They said it’s irrelevant to the title.”[1]
The Mumbai society’s review petition argues that fraud “vitiates everything”. Dayaram Das says a three-judge bench heard it in open court and issued notice on 3 December 2025, with maintainability to be decided together with the merits.[1] He also says that when Varadarajan appeared in court on 5 October 2026, Justice Manoj Misra recused himself and there was no hearing. The interviewer says the review is still pending.[1]
The auditor’s affidavit
Dayaram Das devotes much of the interview to Varadarajan. According to him, Varadarajan filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court on 21 January 2026 saying that, under Madhu Pandit Das’s pressure, he had prepared and certified backdated accounts and audit reports, and that Madhu Pandit Das had paid officials at the BDA and the Registrar of Societies in his presence. “He kept saying it had to be done to save it from corrupt gurus,” Dayaram Das says, quoting the affidavit.[1]
He then describes Varadarajan’s police complaint of 3 October 2026, which, he says, alleges a threat through a driver and an offer in Mysuru, made with the phones put aside, of ₹1 crore at once and ₹50 crore as a “professional fee” to withdraw the affidavit. Two days later Varadarajan came to court with Madhu Pandit Das, and on 6 October he applied to withdraw the affidavit, saying the Mumbai side had pressured him. “They think the court is a children’s game: file one thing today, another tomorrow,” Dayaram Das says; if Varadarajan lied in January, that is perjury.[1] Dayaram Das also says he filed a First Information Report in Kolkata naming Varadarajan among the accused, which the police registered only after a court ordered them to.[1]
Varadarajan’s own later account is different. In October the New Delhi Post reported him saying he had been given jewellery worth ₹72 lakh before signing the January affidavit, which he claims he never properly read.[4] None of these allegations has been tested in court.
The GBC, Kolkata and the 2001 split
Dayaram Das says the GBC was registered as a body in West Bengal only in 1993 and “had no legal authority — not then, not now.” In 1999 the GBC expelled Madhu Pandit Das, Adridharan Das of Kolkata and several others over the guru issue. Adridharan Das went to the High Court seeking ritvik initiation, while Madhu Pandit Das sued in Bengaluru only to remain temple president, he says. At a Bureau meeting in Mumbai on 2 March 2001, Madhu Pandit Das apologised and was not suspended, while Adridharan Das was suspended and removed after a High Court order in June 2001. Madhu Pandit Das later added Adridharan Das to the governing body of the 1978 society, he says.[1]
Akshaya Patra
Asked who owns the Akshaya Patra Foundation, Dayaram Das says Madhu Pandit Das’s own February 2001 affidavit states that he started the midday-meal programme as president of the Bangalore branch of the Mumbai society. In October 2001, he says, Madhu Pandit Das registered the Akshaya Patra Foundation as a trust in which he is chairman for life and Chanchalapati Das vice-chairman for life, with the power to appoint or remove any trustee. “Chairman for life. No one can ever remove him,” he says. He adds, “from what I’ve heard”, that Mohandas Pai and other trustees resigned after raising questions about money, and says he does not know what passed between them.[1] Akincana Gocara did not seek comment from the Akshaya Patra Foundation.
“Where does it say ritvik?”
The interviewer notes that Madhu Pandit Das’s side presented the May 2025 judgment as a victory for the ritvik philosophy. Dayaram Das says ritvik was never in the relief sought, never argued and never raised by Madhu Pandit Das’s lawyer, and that the Mumbai society took no position on it in court:[1]
“Read the judgment: where does it say ritvik? Where does it say ritvik is allowed? … The Bangalore society is a cover, the ritvik philosophy is a cover. It’s really about control and ownership.”
Dayaram Das, Siksharthakam podcast, 11 November 2026 (Akincana Gocara translation)
He says he went public, against the advice of a senior sannyasi who wanted the matter kept quiet, because silence after the judgment would only spread confusion, and he warns that other temples could be taken over by their presidents’ families in the same way: “If he could do it, why can’t we? That’s very dangerous.”[1]
ISKCON Bangalore’s position
The interview presents one side of a case still before the Supreme Court. ISKCON Bangalore, led by Madhu Pandit Das, holds that it is an independent society that has run the Hare Krishna Hill temple for decades, and the Supreme Court’s May 2025 judgment declared it the owner; that judgment stands while the review is pending.[3] Madhu Pandit Das did not take part in the podcast, and Akincana Gocara found no response from ISKCON Bangalore to it as of 12 November.
About the subtitles: the English subtitles and the quotations in this article were translated by Akincana Gocara, with AI assistance, from YouTube’s automatic Hindi captions, which garble some names and numbers. Uncertain passages include the length of the Supreme Court hearing and the currency of the “39 crore” figure. Check the original Hindi before quoting further.
Read Also:
Sources
- Siksharthakam, “Truth of ISKCON Bangalore case || Madhu Pandit Das Exposed || HG Dayaram prabhuji Podcast”, YouTube, 11 November 2026 (Hindi). youtube.com/watch?v=c5YtrmWWa2M
- The same interview with English subtitles by Akincana Gocara, Akincana Gocara / YouTube. youtube.com/watch?v=6NYn5mkMBNA
- “Two Societies, One Name: Briefing Note Accuses Madhu Pandit Dasa of ‘Double Fraud’ Over Bengaluru Temple”, Akincana Gocara, 18 October 2026. akincana.net/2026/10/18/two-societies-one-name…
- “Former auditor of ritvik temple says he was given ₹72 lakh in jewellery before signing affidavit against Madhu Pandit Dasa, New Delhi Post reports”, Akincana Gocara, 15 October 2026. akincana.net/2026/10/15/former-auditor-of-ritvik-temple…
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