When Rāmeśvara pointed out that beginning a farm community required a great deal of capital, Prabhupāda simply replied that the devotees should show the example and that others would automatically follow the successful pattern. Rāmeśvara mentioned that in America, although the ISKCON temple presidents were eager to get as many people to join as possible, they found that most people were unable to come up to the required standard.

“Therefore farm,” Prabhupāda said.

“They have to be encouraged to have a little bit of Kṛṣṇa consciousness in their own home,” Rāmeśvara suggested, “ – make their home a temple.”

Prabhupāda disagreed. “No. Let them go to the farm, New Vrindaban.” If the people were disinclined to austerity, he said, then let them come to the farm with their wife and children and live comfortably in their own house. And on the farms they would find plenty of employment. More and more, Prabhupāda said, people would become jobless and would be obliged to take shelter of a Kṛṣṇa conscious farm community.

“So we can expect,” said Hari-śauri, “that material conditions are going to become very much worse than at present?”

“They may come or not,” said Prabhupāda. “We don’t care. Let us establish an ideal society.”

Although Prabhupāda had left Bombay without taking breakfast, he continued speaking for four hours and then asked Hari-śauri to serve lunch. The other devotees left the compartment.

Hari-śauri carried all Prabhupāda’s personal effects in two small shoulder bags, one with three changes of clothing, the other with Prabhupāda’s plate, bowl, spoon, tiffin, tilaka, and mirror. With just these two bags, Prabhupāda was traveling all over the world. Although he was the head of a wealthy, international movement, he kept nothing for himself and traveled light. Whatever donations he collected, whatever profits came from the sale of his books, whatever properties he owned – everything was in the name of ISKCON. And yet when it came time to eat in the middle of that dusty train ride, his servant was able to produce silver bowls and a tray and an elegant vegetarian feast. Although Prabhupāda kept nothing for himself, by Kṛṣṇa’s arrangement he was well provided for.

Śrīla Prabhupāda sat cross-legged on the train seat and pointed to what he wanted from the stainless steel tiffin compartments his servant placed before him. There were sabjīs, purīs, fruits, and sweets. After Śrīla Prabhupāda chose what he wanted and began to eat, he insisted that Hari-śauri also take prasādam. When they finished, Hari-śauri distributed the remnants of Prabhupāda’s meal to the other devotees, and Prabhupāda lay down to rest.

In the afternoon, more devotees gathered in Prabhupāda’s small compartment, and he continued preaching, mostly in reply to points Rāmeśvara Swami raised.

“In regard to brainwashing,” said Rāmeśvara, “they claim that our lifestyle tends to take the devotee and isolate him from the world.”

“Yes,” said Prabhupāda, “we hate to mix with you. No gentleman tries to mix with loafers. Crows will not like to live with the ducks and white swans, and white swans will not like to live with the crows. That is natural division. Birds of the same feather flock together.”

Rāmeśvara: “They have a list of five or six conditions, and they say if all these conditions are present, then it is a suitable atmosphere for brainwashing. They say we are imposing those conditions on our members.”

Prabhupāda: “Yes. We are brainwashing from bad to good. That is our business. We are washing the brain from all rascaldom. Your brain is filled up with all rubbish things – meat-eating, illicit sex, gambling. So we are washing them. Ceto-darpaṇa-mārjanam. Śṛṇvatāṁ sva-kathāḥ kṛṣṇaḥ puṇya-śravaṇa kīrtanaḥ hṛdy antaḥ-stho hy abhadrāṇi. Abhadrāṇi means ‘bad things.’ So the bad things should be washed. Don’t you cleanse your home? Don’t you cleanse your room? Is that brainwashing? So if you wash your room very clean, who blames you? But you are so rascal that you charge us, ‘Why are you washing away this garbage?’ We are washing out the garbage, and you are protesting. This is your intelligence. But intelligent men wash away the garbage. That is the law of civilization, to cleanse. That we are doing.

“According to Vedic civilization you are actually untouchable. Now we have come to touch you. Therefore wash – first you must wash. According to Indian civilization the dog is untouchable, but he is your best friend. So you are untouchable. Therefore, we have to wash your brain. Unless your brain is washed, you cannot understand Kṛṣṇa. Man is known by his company. You sleep with dog, you eat with dog, your best friend is dog, so what you are? You must be washed, scrubbed.”

Rāmeśvara: “But this is their argument, that the standard in America is that you become learned in different fields – science, music, art, and literature. This standard of culture and education is coming from the idea of the Renaissance in Europe. But in our Hare Kṛṣṇa movement we are isolating ourselves from these things and simply reading one set of literature – Kṛṣṇa.”

Prabhupāda: “This other is not culture. As soon as you change, that means it is not culture. It is mano-dharma, mental concoction. Yes, we want to stop your nonsense. That is our mission. Those who are intelligent, they have taken. And you also take.”

Rāmeśvara raised the objection that Kṛṣṇa conscious children are not prepared to go to public schools and universities, and Śrīla Prabhupāda replied that they were being saved.

“But what if they want to change later in their life?” asked Rāmeśvara.

“They have become Kṛṣṇa conscious from the very beginning,” Prabhupāda replied. “That is the perfection of life. They are perfect from the very beginning of their life. And you are going to school in the college, but you are becoming most uncivilized – like cats and dogs, becoming naked and having sex on the street. So what is the value of that education? Stop all these colleges and universities. As soon as they are stopped, it is better for human beings.”

Rāmeśvara: “They say that if we claim our members are gentlemen, they why is it that they go to the airport and bother so many people?”

Prabhupāda: “They are not bothering. They are educating. When a thief is advised, ‘Kindly do not become a thief,’ he takes it as botheration. But it is good advice.”

Rāmeśvara: “They say it is invasion of privacy. Every man has the right to think the way he wants.”

Prabhupāda: “Yes. Therefore I have got the right to think like this and sell books.”

Rāmeśvara: “So if I do not want to hear your philosophy, why do you impose it?”

Prabhupāda: “It is not imposing. It is good philosophy. We are canvassing: ‘Take it. You will be benefited.’ And they are being benefited. Those who are reading, they are being benefited. And why are you advertising – big, big signboards: ‘Please come and purchase’? Hmm? Why are you imposing your so-called goodness on us? Why you are doing?”

Back and forth the battle went, hour after hour, Rāmeśvara unleashing all the arguments against the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, and Śrīla Prabhupāda defeating them. Prabhupāda called the arguments “childish” and “foolish,” and he strongly criticized the materialistic demeanor from which they sprang. By śāstra and logic he proved that the nondevotee has no good qualities and is less than an animal because of his lack of God consciousness. Such a person, he said, was in no position to criticize, and such criticisms only showed ignorance of the real purpose of human life.

The train stopped in Manmad, Jalgaon, and Khandwa, as well as other small towns and junctions, and for Prabhupāda and his disciples the day passed quickly in discussion. Prabhupāda was absorbed in defending the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. He relished fighting on behalf of Lord Caitanya. He was speaking, of course, mainly for the benefit of his disciples, but beyond that, he was expressing his compassion for all beings and his dedication to the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement.

“They are spending so much for military strength,” Prabhupāda continued. “They are not performing yajña, so how will there be rainfall? There will be warfare, devastation. It is a most rubbish civilization. They are misleading everyone – soul killing. It is the blind leading the blind. Even when there is difficulty, we have to do this as Kṛṣṇa’s business. Let the dogs bark on. We don’t care. If we remain sincere to Kṛṣṇa, that is our victory. The external result is not so important. We have to act according to the direction of Kṛṣṇa.

“Of course, we want to see good results, but even if there is no good result, we don’t mind. We must be sincere to Kṛṣṇa, that we have done our best without cheating. That is our duty. As servants, we shall not cheat the master – result or no result. The devotee is not sorry if there is no result: ‘Never mind.’ Caitanya Mahāprabhu says, ‘I have brought to Benares the hari-nāma, but here they are all Māyāvādīs. So if it is not accepted, all right. I shall take it back.’ But we must do our best canvassing work: ‘Please take it.’ That is our mission. Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare … . ” Śrīla Prabhupāda’s speaking trailed off into chanting japa. He would chant for a while and then bring up another point.

Rāmeśvara Swami continued to stir the controversies, anxious to fortify his own convictions and preaching ability by hearing directly from Śrīla Prabhupāda.

“Very often,” Rāmeśvara said, “they will say, ‘It is not religion that we are concerned with, but it is brainwashing and mind control. You are chanting so many hours a day… ’ ”

“What is it to you!” Prabhupāda interrupted sharply. “That is my business. Why do you bother yourself?”

Rāmeśvara: “But you are not giving these young people a chance to think when they chant for so many hours.”

Prabhupāda: “You are thieves. You are coming to kidnap. Why shall I give you a chance? They are chanting, but you are charging brainwash. You ask them don’t chant – that is your business. But that you cannot do.”

Rāmeśvara: “But they say that takes away freedom to think.”

Prabhupāda: “That is controversy. But you want to take his freedom, and still you are accusing us.”

Prabhupāda said that first there should be a test of what is genuine religion. “We say,” said Prabhupāda, “that the law given by God is religion. And it does not matter what name is given to God. If we say ‘Kṛṣṇa,’ that does not mean that He is not God. So before there is a challenge to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, there should be an assembly discussion and decision as to what is genuine religion. We say that God is one, and whatever He has given as law, that is religion.”

Rāmeśvara: “But the Christians say that according to the Bible, if God wanted us to believe in Kṛṣṇa, He would have told us on Mount Sinai, and He would have told us through Jesus Christ. Jesus said, ‘I am the only way.’ ”

Prabhupāda: “That’s all right. But Jesus Christ did not explain more to you because you are rascals. You cannot follow even his one instruction, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ It is not the foolishness of Jesus Christ. But because you are so rascal, you cannot understand him. Therefore he avoided you rascals. Because whatever he said, you cannot follow. So what you will understand? Therefore he stopped speaking.”

Rāmeśvara: “They also say that you are ruining family life.”

Prabhupāda: “That’s all right. We are entering Kṛṣṇa’s family.”

Hari-śauri: “But if you are actually followers of God, why are you breaking up the families? Shouldn’t you have love for everyone?”

Rāmeśvara: “One of the commandments is that one shall honor thy father and mother.”

Prabhupāda replied that a devotee loves his mother and father by teaching them Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Hari-śauri: “My mother testified to that. When I was at home she said I was impossible to live with. When she saw me afterwards, I was very nice.”

Prabhupāda: “Many. Hayagrīva’s father and mother also.”

Rāmeśvara: “My parents think like that too. I could have no relationship with them before, but now that I am a devotee, I actually want to help them.”

Prabhupāda: “There are so many fathers and mothers who appreciate. None of our disciples are disrespectful to mother and father. Why? I never said you become disrespectful to your father and mother. At Brahmānanda’s initiation, his mother was standing there and I instructed Brahmānanda, ‘Take the dust of your mother’s feet first, then you offer me obeisances.’ So first of all he offered his obeisances to his mother. I told him, ‘You have got good mother. Otherwise, how she has got a son like you?’ I always say like that. I never say disrespect. In a particular case, if the father and mother are demons, he must give up their association. But we never said break up the family.”

Rāmeśvara: “I think we’ve used up all our arguments.”

Prabhupāda (still eager to argue): “First of all you said that we are depriving of food. Where is this?”

Rāmeśvara: “Yes, this is their argument, that we only let devotees eat twice a day. And there is no meat and very little protein.”

Prabhupāda: “That depends on him. If he likes to eat that kind of food, you have no right to force. Then you are turning to force. There are different persons, and they like different types of food. If he likes twice a day, why do you insist thrice? That is his choice.”

Rāmeśvara: “And sleeping only four or five hours – very little.”

Prabhupāda: “Yes, because it is a waste of time.”

Rāmeśvara: “But this makes his mind very weak.”

Prabhupāda: “You rascal! You have nothing to do – you sleep! Napoleon used to sleep for one hour, two hours – he was such a busy man. So they are so busy in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Every great man does not sleep very much. Sleeping is simply a waste of time. If he does not sleep more, it is a sign of greatness.”

When Rāmeśvara Swami argued that the opposition has psychologists to testify against us, Prabhupāda replied, “We have got our psychologists.”

After talking all afternoon and into the night, Prabhupāda told the devotees to rest. At ten P.M. he lay down, and Hari-śauri massaged his legs. “Actually,” Śrīla Prabhupāda concluded, “their arguments are not very sound. Therefore it is simply a plan of Kṛṣṇa’s to help give us some prominence. It will make us more well known.” Opposition, he said, was just an opportunity to preach. But to deal properly with the legal cases and other serious opposition, the devotees would have to know how to preach. And they would have to be spiritually strong. He was readying his men, speaking to them day and night on the twenty-four-hour train ride to Allahabad.

Allahabad
January 12
They arrived at nine A.M., and half a dozen of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s sannyāsī disciples, along with a kīrtana party of about fifty devotees, were there to greet him. They had brought Prabhupāda’s car down from Delhi, and he rode the short distance from the station to the Melā site. Thousands of pilgrims, on foot and in rickshas, crowded the streets, making Prabhupāda’s progress by car slow. Finally the road ended, but the traffic continued onto the sandy flats surrounding the Triveṇī (confluence of the rivers Sarasvatī, Gaṅgā, and Yamunā). Here, within a few days, a city of tents had sprung up. Two million had camped already, with millions more arriving daily. Every spiritual group in India had its bamboo-fenced compound of tents.

As the car inched along, Prabhupāda smiled to see a group of his disciples strolling among the camps and performing hari-nāma kīrtana. But not until he passed through the congested main area of camps to the far end of the Triveṇī did he reach the ISKCON camp. The ISKCON tents, most of which had been erected about half an hour before Śrīla Prabhupāda’s arrival, were located near a railway bridge on an island called Gaṅgādvīpa; and the Triveṇī bathing area was a twenty-minute walk away. The festival organizers had provided simple outdoor toilets, water taps, and a “kitchen,” consisting of a cloth partition, a hole in the ground, and some bricks.

It was, as Śrīla Prabhupāda had expected, the usual Kumbha-melā austerity, but he was displeased with the camp’s remote location. And when he heard that the electric lines did not reach their area, he became even more displeased. How could people come to the program in the evening if there were no lights? He called for Bhāgavata and Gurudāsa, who were in charge of organizing the ISKCON camp.

“Who got this land?” he yelled.

“When I got here,” said Bhāgavata, “it was an empty field. They told me, ‘We are putting you on this island. The governor is there, Kalapatri Mahārāja is there, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is there.’ I thought you were there with all the leading personalities.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda laughed. “You are inexperienced, so they cheated you. All right, you did not know.”

But later, when he heard that Bhāgavata and Gurudāsa had not obtained enough food for mass distribution, he became angry. Again he called for Bhāgavata.

“Why is there no prasādam distribution tonight?” he demanded.

“Well, Prabhupāda,” Bhāgavata stuttered, “I don’t know. They didn’t buy any food.”

“Why have they not bought?” Prabhupāda was angry. “What is the matter with you? You Americans are big spenders – simply wasting money. You have no stock of food. Why you did not stock rice, dāl, and wheat? Why you have no stock? What is the matter with you? You have no brain. You spend five rupees’ cab fare going, five rupees’ cab fare coming back, and you buy one rupee of rice. This is your mentality. You are nonsense! Every time you need something you go to the store and buy it. You don’t know how to buy sufficiently one time and then use it. You cannot think like that. And why have you made this location under the elevated train? Why have you done this wrong? The train is making noise. This paṇḍāl is a failure. Food is not being distributed.” After twenty minutes of reprimanding, Prabhupāda dismissed Bhāgavata.

A little later Prabhupāda called for Bhāgavata again. “Bhāgavata Mahārāja,” he began, although Bhāgavata was not a sannyāsī, “if you can just get the lights on, then you will be doing good. Can you do that?” Bhāgavata said he could, and by that night the ISKCON camp had lights, although, as at all the other camps, the power was frequently shut off.

Only a few people visited the ISKCON paṇḍāl the first night; the weather was cold, damp, and windy. Śrīla Prabhupāda chose to sit up all night at his desk rather than lie in the cold bed. Wearing all his clothes – sweaters, a hooded coat, a cādara, and gloves – he sat at his desk in the darkness. A kerosene heater did little to drive the chill from the tent. Rāmeśvara Swami sat up much of the night too, relighting the heater’s pilot light, which blew out every few minutes as the wind swept through the tent.

By morning, Śrīla Prabhupāda had a bad cold with runny nose and eyes. He did not go to the river for bathing but used the icy water from the pump next to his tent. His hands and feet were swollen, something that had happened to him before during illness. When the devotees suggested he not stay at the camp, Prabhupāda insisted; he wanted to preach. People were beginning to discover his location and come to see him, so he wanted to stay and preach. Kumbha-melā, he said, was an opportunity for the devotees to preach, not merely to bathe in the Gaṅgā.

The devotees crowded into Śrīla Prabhupāda’s tent for guru-pūjā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class. They had no garland for him, but he said nothing about it. By the time he had ended his short lecture, the sun had risen. He asked Hari-śauri to put the cot outdoors, where he rested and later took massage in the sunshine.

During his massage, Prabhupāda looked over at the railroad bridge and said that he remembered this bridge from his former days in Allahabad. He said that his father had been cremated under the bridge on the same island of Gaṅgādvīpa in 1930.

That afternoon, a group of devotees arrived from Māyāpur, and some of them immediately complained to Prabhupāda about how poorly managed the ISKCON paṇḍāl seemed to be. Prabhupāda asked them to try to salvage the program by distributing as many books as possible, so the devotees began distributing Hindi editions of Prabhupāda’s books.

The devotees took their chanting and book distributing down the main road, where they came upon the camps of different Śaivites, who sat around their fires wearing only kaupīnas (loincloths). Many of them, their hair matted, their bodies covered with ashes, were puffing heavily on hashish in chilam pipes. Nearby, on the other side of the road, were the camps of Vaiṣṇavas from the Rāmānuja sampradāya. Though they were also tyāgīs (renunciates), and their appearance was similar to the Śaivites’, they were more friendly; they were glad to see the devotees and shouted out, “Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Rāma.”

The devotees were amazed by the piety of the millions of pilgrims. On seeing the kīrtana party approach, many people offered prostrated obeisances. Others rolled on the ground, or picked up dust where the devotees had walked and put it in their mouths. And although many of the pilgrims were poor, they came forward and dropped at least a few paisa into the pot carried by one of the devotees. Anyone who gave a rupee would receive a book, and the books became so popular that people would come and ask for them by name. Some people threw money, and the sannyāsīs would catch it in their topcloths, which they would hold out like aprons. By the end of the day, the devotees had distributed about seven thousand pieces of literature.

On the second night, Śrīla Prabhupāda again sat up, while Rāmeśvara Swami tried futilely to keep the heater going. Hari-śauri had placed Śrīla Prabhupāda’s dictating equipment on the desk, but Prabhupāda did not touch it.