A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Institutionalization

As ISKCON evolved towards being a worldwide organization, it suffered from the inevitable travails of institutionalization. Young disciples, mostly from an anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian background, became members of the GBC and found themselves running a worldwide institution. Preaching sometimes started giving way to revenue production; gender issues arose; leaders sometimes fell, and scandals broke out. Bureaucracy intruded on spontaneity, and many members left. As much as Prabhupada tried to leave management to the GBC, much of this he too had to deal with personally.

Child abuse

Prabhupada directed his disciples to train children in boarding schools called gurukulas, where they would receive education from spiritual teachers. However, as reported by sociologist of religion E. Burke Rochford, through mismanagement, these schools became like orphanages. After Prabhupada's departure, it came to light that physical and sexual abuse occurred within these schools due to lack of oversight.

Obstacles in India

In India, Prabhupada faced a special set of challenges. He had much to accomplish there, but his American and European disciples were inexperienced in how to get things done in India and even how to live there.

When Prabhupada's young American followers came to India in the early 1970s and began holding festivals, including public sankirtana, many Indians were surprised to see Westerners adopting Indian modes of worship and devotion. Some local people, including even some Indian officials, suspected that the American devotees must be undercover operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Outspoken and uncompromising as he was in the way he presented Krishna's teachings in India, as elsewhere, Prabhupada found himself battling with opposing views of all sorts. Therefore, another challenge came from Prabhupada's consistent rejection of the common Hindu notion of caste by birth. Since Prabhupada, like his predecessors, insisted that anyone, from any race or nation, could become spiritually purified and fit to perform the duties of priests, he faced opposition from Hindu brahmins who held that performing such duties was an exclusive birthright of their caste.

When Prabhupada resolved to build a temple on land in Juhu, Bombay (now Mumbai), the man who had sold ISKCON the land tried to swindle the devotees and take it back. The man had deep political connections in the Bombay municipality and employed lawyers and even thugs to drive the devotees off, but Prabhupada persisted and eventually won.

Deviations

While working to establish his movement, Prabhupada had to deal with problems caused even by leading disciples, who, monks or not, could still hold on to intellectual baggage, disdain for authority, and ambitions for power. In 1968 Prabhupada's first sannyasi disciple openly disregarded Prabhupada's instructions to him and twisted core tenets of Prabhupada's teachings. This foreshadowed succession problems and issues of authority that Prabhupada's movement would face both during Prabhupada's presence and after.

Unlike Indian gurus who declared themselves avatars, divine appearances of God, Prabhupada, from the very beginning of his preaching, called himself only a servant or representative of God. But in 1970 four of Prabhupada's early sannyasis announced at a large ISKCON gathering that Prabhupada's followers had failed to recognize that Prabhupada was Krishna: God Himself. Prabhupada expelled those sannyasis from his Society (he eventually readmitted them after they recanted their claim).

In 1972, without consulting Prabhupada, eight of the twelve members of the GBC held a meeting in New York aimed at centralizing control of ISKCON's activities and finances. Their plans would have lessened Prabhupada's own oversight and set aside his emphasis on the autonomy of each ISKCON center. This prompted Prabhupada to suspend the entire GBC "until further notice", establish direct lines of communication with each temple's leaders, and re-emphasize spiritual purity, the selfless and voluntary nature of devotional life, and the exemplary conduct befitting ISKCON leaders. He said he wanted this, not corporate bureaucracy and excessive centralization. (He later unsuspended the GBC).

In 1975, a clash broke out when a team of ten parties of itinerant sannyasis, assisted by two hundred brahmacharis, crisscrossed America, visiting ISKCON temples to extoll renunciation and a missionary spirit — and urge brahmacharis to abandon the temples and join the sannyasi parties. The temples, the team argued, were led by presidents who were grihasthas (married men), and grihasthas had a propensity for enjoyment that undermined what should be an austere temple atmosphere.

The conflict reached its peak in 1976 in Mayapur at ISKCON's annual global gathering when a sannyasi-dominated GBC passed resolutions severely restricting the role of women and families in ISKCON. After hearing from both sides, Prabhupada came down against this type of discrimination, calling it "fanaticism", and had the GBC undo the resolutions. Prabhupada said, "I cannot discriminate — man, woman, child, rich, poor, educated, or foolish. Let them all come, and let them take Krishna consciousness".

Controversial views and statements

In the course of his preaching work in the West, Prabhupada made controversial statements that criticized various ideals of modern society or spoke offensively of certain groups.

"In a traditional Hindu vein", Prabhupada spoke favorably of the myth of Aryan bloodlines and compared darker races to shudras [people of low caste], thus implying them being inferior to the lighter-complexioned humans. In a recorded room conversation with disciples in 1977, he calls African Americans "uncultured and drunkards", further stating that after being given freedom and equal rights, they caused a disturbance in the society.

Prabhupada called democracy "the government of the asses", "nonsense", and "farce", at the same time praising the monarchial form of government and speaking favorably of dictatorship. While comparing Napoleon and Hitler to great demons of Hindu mythology Hiranyakashipu and Kamsa, he called their activities "very great". On other occasions, he made "generally approving remarks about Hitler" and said that Hitler and his regime carried out the Holocaust because Jews "were financing against Germany". He also expressed some misogynistic views, asserting that "women cannot properly utilize freedom and it is better for them to be dependent", stating that they are "generally not very intelligent", and "in general should not be trusted".

Scholars have commented, however, on the contrast between such controversial pronouncements and the full picture of what Prabhupada actually taught and did. Kim Knott, a religious studies scholar, extensively discusses Prabhupada's statements about women. Describing her perspective about ISKCON as that of an "outsider" and a "western feminist", she highlights Prabhupada's firm belief that "bhakti-yoga", the path of Krishna Consciousness, allows transcendence beyond gender distinctions. Knott emphasizes that, according to Prabhupada, women devotees, regardless of their gender, possess equal potential for spiritual advancement and service to Krishna. She further commends Prabhupada for opening up the Hare Krishna movement to women despite cultural norms and traditional prescriptions. In this way, she writes, Prabhupada took time, place, and circumstance into account and acted in the spirit of Krishna consciousness, "in the manner of Chaitanya".

Commenting on the role and degree of responsibility that Prabhupada's statements about women played in their abuse in ISKCON, E. Burke Rochford notes that Prabhupada's personal example in dealings with his earliest women disciples was "far more important". Their collective personal experiences, Rochford observes, portray Prabhupada's "respectful attitude and behavior toward his women disciples" and his empowerment for the same rights and duties as his male disciples. Prabhupada encouraged and engaged women in conducting public scriptural discourses, kirtans and temple worship, writing for ISKCON magazines and publications, personally accompanying and assisting him, and assuming "significant institutional positions in ISKCON".

Similarly, scholar of religion Akshay Gupta observes that Prabhupada did not regard his black disciples as lower or "untouchables", displaying to some of them the same or even greater degree of affection than to his followers of other ethnicities. Another scholar of religion Mans Broo adds that when Prabhupada speaks about castes, he referred to an envisioned "ideal society" in which people would be divided into different occupational groups "based not on hereditary but on individual qualifications".

Broo also notes that scholarly analyses attribute some of such statements to Prabhupada's "flair for drama and overstatement" — particularly noting his penchant for making politically incorrect remarks to reporters and adding, "It is difficult to decide how seriously any single remark is meant to be taken from a transcript". However, Broo concludes that this behavior does not clear Prabhupada from responsibility for his more radical, politically incorrect statements.

Another scholar of religion, Fred Smith, suggests that some of Prabhupada's statements (such as those concerning Hitler) "must be understood in the context of the intellectual and political culture in which he matured" — specifically that of mid-twentieth-century Bengal, brewing with anti-colonialist Indian nationalism championed by such figures as Subhash Chandra Bose, and therefore more favorably disposed to Nazi Germany than to Britain.

Broo notes that Prabhupada's followers continue to grapple with his controversial statements — which paint "a picture of a not very pleasant man, one far removed from the Gaudiya Vaishnava ideals described in the classical texts of the tradition" — and respond to them in different ways: Some remain silent, while others invoke context or argue that Prabhupada is being unfairly quoted due to negative biases. Still, others are willing to differentiate between his statements they deem "absolute" and those they consider "relative", acknowledging that some teachings may be contingent on the circumstances of Prabhupada's life before coming to the US. However, some followers view this approach as "exceedingly risky", questioning who has the authority to determine which teachings are relative and which are not. Therefore, Broo concludes, this issue is "not likely to be resolved soon".

Commenting on the underlying causes for such controversies, scholar of religion Larry Shinn attributes the conflict between Prabhupada's teachings and Western cultural values to "[Prabhupada]'s insistence on the infallibility of the Krishna scriptures and (...) the authenticity of Prabhupada's Krishna faith and practice".