My comment on the recent GBC EC statement

Here's the comment that I submitted to Dandavats.com about the recent GBC EC statement, along with further commentary exclusive to Atmayogi.com:

I wrote to the author of this blog (who is an ISKCON member - a new devotee and a young American male) and his ISKCON spiritual master about this some months ago. His spiritual master has been in contact with me keeping me informed of his personal engagement with this devotee and his guidance to bring him around to a more socially harmonious way of expressing himself as he matures personally and in devotional service.

I would have characterized the writing as "immature" and the mood as "arrogant", which is not unexpected for a new devotee of the physical characteristics of the author. However, "misogynistic" and "sexist" are dangerous labels to use, because the risk is there of characterizing Srila Prabhupada's social position according to contemporary social values.

It was the presentation and perhaps the personal qualification of the presenter that were lacking, not the subject material, which was principally quoting Srila Prabhupada.

This statement hasn't drawn a clear distinction between the two. The danger here is that the author cannot separate his own agenda from Srila Prabhupada's. They may speak the same words, but their intention is subtly different. Now the author may feel Srila Prabhupada is being condemned, rather than understanding that he himself is not a pure devotee, and he is injecting his own conditioning into his monologue.

At the same time, readers may be confused about what is being condemned here. Does the GBC EC say that it disagrees with the quoted statements of Srila Prabhupada, and that these are "misogynistic" and "sexist"? These are both very loaded terms with underlying assumptions and value structures that are in some cases incompatible with our Vaisnava social sankhya.

I'm all for respecting persons as persons and valuing the unique and significant contribution of everyone, but we don't need to buy lock, stock, and barrel into contemporary analyses to do that.

It seems that the GBC has too easily and fully accepted the characterization of the shrill public voices decrying the blog and using these terms.

"Immature", "inexpert", "easily misunderstood", "with a different intent from that of Srila Prabhupada" are characterizations that I would have used.

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I dropped this blog from Planet ISKCON and changed the policy with respect to blogs from brahmacaris. (Hey go hardcore as much as you like, but keep it inside your own ashram).

Here are some more posts related to this blog:

I sent a letter to the GALVA (Gay and Lesbian Vaisnava Association [web site]) mailing list about this blog and my interaction with the author and his spiritual master, and I also forwarded that letter to Chakra.org, where like Pandu's it was not published.

Reading the coverage on Chakra I could see that it was very slanted, and not very "inclusive" at all.

In fact, I got a similar feeling from interacting with both the author of the blog and the editor of Chakra - "I am right. You are wrong". Exactly the type of dogmatic mentality that Dawkins descries so effectively as being the "fruits of religion".

Anyway, my point is not to run anyone down. Both Chakra and the other websites that give voice to the members of ISKCON serve an important role in helping the society to become aware of itself. It's diverse. Not everyone is the same. Not everyone has to live in the same room of the house that Srila Prabhupada built in exactly the same way.

Let there be mutual respect, boundaries, and coexistence within the meta-framework of the society.

In this sense, I feel that the GBC response could have been a little more along the lines of creating that metaframework and focusing more on process - how people interact - rather than content - what they are "allowed" to say.

When we dropped Bhakta Corey's feed we focused on the appropriateness of the way and where he expressed himself, rather than what he was saying and his right to say it.

As an example, I'm happy for gays to be Vaisnavas. Overjoyed in fact. Let every gay in the world become Krishna Conscious. But they don't have to inhabit the same space as sannyasis. Some space is shared, and when we are in shared space we should emphasize common things, like harinam and Krishna-katha. Otherwise in our own spaces we have to give support to our peers in terms of their social and psychological needs.

So we need a dynamic that can keep everyone together without making it exclusive. Respect for difference, allowing others to be themselves in their space, and being totally ourselves in our space, and on good behaviour in shared and others' space is the process to do this.