Basu Ghosh: I joined ISKCON in Chicago when the temple was in Evanston. Evanston is where Northwestern University is located and is a suburb north of Chicago. I was seventeen years old when I moved into the temple in February 1973. Prior to my moving in, a devotee said, “Why don’t you come and stay for three days?” Three days turned into a week and a week turned into a month. Forty-five years have gone by and I’m still part of Prabhupada’s movement. It wasn’t until a year later after first moving in, however, that I got my first chance to actually see Srila Prabhupada. I received notice that I could go to India, and the day after I arrived, I went with all the other devotees to greet Prabhupada at the airport. I remember hearing his voice, and it was just like listening to Prabhupada’s classes on the audiocassettes. We were mesmerised by Srila Prabhupada’s teachings, but we were not blind followers of a cult. Prabhupada was teaching the Bhagavatam, the traditional Vedic knowledge, which is different from blindly following somebody who concocted his own philosophy.
When I came to Bombay, Satsvarupa Maharaj had taken over as Prabhupada’s personal secretary and servant, and he asked me if I would come and clean the pots after he cooked for Prabhupada. It was a simple service and they were very tiny pots. One day I was in the kitchen again cleaning the pots and the door flew open and there was Prabhupada with just a kurta on, no dhoti, just a long kurta, and he said, “Can’t you hear someone is at the door?” Of course, I bowed down and I said, “No, Srila Prabhupada.” “Well, go and get the door.” Sure enough, somebody had been ringing the bell, but I couldn’t hear it in the kitchen while I was washing the pots. Due to my service I was able to attend some of Prabhupada’s darshans. I remember during one of those times, Srila Prabhupada was meeting some very respectable people, and he showed them the late Bhakti Swarupa Damodar Maharaj’s book, Scientific Basis of Krishna Consciousness. He was very proud of that book to the point of being effusive. It struck me that when Prabhupada was praising to the high heavens this book of his disciple, Bhakti Swarupa Damodar Maharaj, how much Prabhupada wanted his disciples to write. Of course, we are distributing Prabhupada’s books, but he also wanted us to write books if they are based on the Vedic conclusion. Bhakti Swarupa Damodar Maharaj was highly inspired by Prabhupada to preach.
On January 1, 1976, Prabhupada came to Madras, which is now called Chennai, in South India. There was a two-day program there, and the plan was to travel next to Nellore, which is 160 km north of Chennai. I was sent a day early to Nellore to check on the arrangements. On January 3rd, Prabhupada and about twenty devotees came by train, which is a three-hour train ride. When the train arrived at the station, there were hundreds of townspeople waiting to greet us, including the mayor. As per Vedic tradition, young girls dressed in traditional South Indian attire came up to welcome us. Each girl was carrying a basket on her head with a coconut, and according to the local custom, the girls handed us the coconuts. There were also musicians playing the traditional horn instrument called the nadeswara and big drums called the tabil. There were also brahmanas chanting Vedic mantras. The brahmanas gave Prabhupada a pot called a kumbha, which was filled with gifts, and they chanted mantras to show respect and to welcome him. Prabhupada took in the entire scene, and as the nadeswaramas played their instruments, he turned to the group of his disciples and said, “Vedic culture is more in tact in South India.” Prabhupada’s comment showed the significance of Vedic culture in his movement. Through his detailed instructions on every aspect of life, such as dress, diet, cleanliness and daily activities, Prabhupada promoted the importance of Vedic culture in order to advance in spiritual life. He propagated this message consistently in his books, conversations, lectures and letters.
Prabhupada came to Nellore because two wealthy sisters made a proposal by letter to Mahamsa Swami, who was the head of the Hyderabad temple, to donate three acres of land. Prabhupada told Mahamsa Swami to accept the donation, but when Prabhupada went there, there was a stipulation that if a temple wasn’t built on that land within three years, the land would be given to the Ramakrishna Mission. Ultimately Prabhupada did not accept the donation. However, he did agree to stay in the house of these women, as it was very spacious. He didn’t stay alone. He had an entourage that included Tamal Krishna Maharaj, who was the secretary at the time, Hari Sauri and sannyasis like Achyutananda and Yasodanandana. On one morning walk when Prabhupada came out of that big house, he saw a chicken coop, a residence for huge chickens called Chinese hens. Seeing that, Prabhupada said, “In Bengal people take the eggs of these chickens, boil them and eat them with rice.” He said that because they were keeping these chickens, it meant they were not vegetarian. The farming community that those women were from was mostly non-vegetarian, so Prabhupada instructed us that from that day we would not eat what they cooked. He said, “You have to cook for me separately, in separate pots.” Prabhupada was quite strict in India about differentiating between the vegetarians and the non-vegetarians, and he had told other devotees, “Don’t eat in the homes of non-vegetarians. You can have fruit and milk.” In Tehran, however, he said we could eat in anyone’s house in order to preach. So, time and circumstance.
In December of 1976 Prabhupada traveled from Hyderabad to Warda, which is two hours southwest of Nagpur in central India where Mahatma Gandhi had his ashram called Seva Ashram. Giriraj Maharaj, who at the time was a brahmacari, had made friends with Ramakrishna Bajaj whose father, Jamnalal Bajaj, was a big supporter of Gandhi and donated his house to Prabhupada. At this time there was an Acharya’s Conference called by Vinoba Bhave, a surviving associate of Gandhi who was very famous all over India. During that two-day program, Prabhupada went on a morning walk with his disciples, and as we started walking, I said, “Srila Prabhupada, Mahatma Gandhi…,” and before I could say anything else he cut me off. “Do not criticize Gandhi here. This is his place. They won’t understand.” And then he changed the subject. The lesson was that one should be careful what you say depending on where you are. We do have the quotations of Gandhi in our Bhagavad-gita stating that Gandhi did read the Gita every day, but it is more accurate to say he was a Mayavadi who didn’t believe that Rama and Krishna were incarnations of God. But he believed in a higher power. So Prabhupada did criticize him occasionally by calling him a duratma, [laughs] but at that particular time, he could not criticize and we were not to criticize. It was the wrong venue for criticism.
Prior to the opening of the Krishna-Balaram temple in Vrindavan in April 1975, Prabhupada had Yasomatinandana prabhu go and invite prominent Mayavadi sannyasis to the opening. One of the big Mayavadis refused saying, “Your guru is giving brahman threads to foreigners. I can’t come.” But another one of those big Mayavadis, Akandanan Saraswati, who was very famous for having translated the Bhagavatam into Hindi for the Gita Press, did come. But the point is that people might ask, “Why did Prabhupada invite these Mayavadis to the opening of the temple?” Devotees have told me recently that we should hate Mayavadis, but it’s not like that. The Advaitins follow the same shastras; they revere the Bhagavatam, the Puranas and all the Vedic literature. When it comes to the Vedas, there is no difference. The difference is in the interpretation of Vedanta where Adi-Sankaracarya says that the impersonal is the real absolute truth, and the Vaishnava acharyas say Vishnu or Krishna is the absolute truth. Caitanya Mahaprabhu said there is no difference between the name of Krishna and Vishnu. But, otherwise, we share the same culture, the Vedic culture. Only the Mayavadis worship demigods and Vaishnavas don’t worship demigods. Some Vaishnavas won’t go in demigod temples, but Caitanya Mahaprabhu did and bowed down to the demigods. So, we follow Caitanya Mahaprabhu, but there is no difference in the culture, although we may disagree ideologically on what the ultimate absolute truth is. We are from one culture.
Prabhupada gave a lecture in Warda to a group of college students numbering a couple of hundred as well as his thirty disciples. The emcee announced ten times, “Prabhupada will speak in Hindi. Prabhupada will speak in Hindi.” When Prabhupada got the mic, he said. “I have been asked to speak in Hindi, but because of my disciples I will speak in English.” From that we can understand Prabhupada gave special importance to his disciples and to their training in the philosophy and the ideology of Krishna consciousness. Otherwise, he would have lectured to the public in Hindi and the foreign devotees wouldn’t have understood a thing.
During the Gaura-Purnima Festival in 1976, I was at Mayapur during a darshan when someone was challenging Srila Prabhupada with some questions. I cut in, even though I wasn’t a big leader, and said, “If you want to learn from Prabhupada, you have to hear submissively.” Prabhupada didn’t say anything, so I took it that he approved of what I said. That was an experience I had directly with Prabhupada, and if I had done something wrong, I imagine he would have said, “Wait a minute...” or he would have chastised me verbally. But there is maunam sammati laksanam. Maunam means “silence.” Laksanam means “a sign.” Sammati means “approval.” So, “Silence is a form of approval.” I took it to mean that he approved of what I said, and that I hadn’t said anything wrong. And the conversation went on.
