Kayla: On November 14, 1977, RLA Prabhupda, the founder of the International Society for Ka Consciousness, aka the Hare Krishnas, rested in his quarters. He was staying at one of his organizations temples in the city of Vrindavan, India, a holy site for their faith as supreme Lord Krishna had spent his childhood in this city. There are over 5000 temples dedicated to Krishna in Vrindavan. But right at this moment, Prabhupadas might be the most important, because at this moment, ac Bhaktivedanta swami Prabhupada lay dying. Prabhupda was joined by dozens, if not hundreds of his followers who sang and chanted the Maha mantra in Kirtan, playing instruments and praising Krishna. Their leader had been ill for six months, and everyone knew the moment of truth was drawing near. And just like that, it was upon them. At 82 years old, Srila Prabhupda took his last shuddering breath.
Kayla: You and I would say that he died, but his followers instead say that he disappeared, his soul breaking free of this karmic cycle and reuniting with the oneness of Krishna. The kirtan did not stop upon prabhupdas death. The chanting and singing continued on, lasting for the next 24 hours. He was buried two days later, resting eternally now in the temple grounds. The founder, Acharya of ISkcon, was gone, leaving behind a gaping power vacuum. The question now was, who would step in to fill it? Music drop now we're doing the show. Here's my little story.
Chris: All right, so he was a vacuum at this point.
Kayla: You said like a Dyson when Hare Krishna dies.
Chris: Was that funny?
Kayla: They become a vacuum. No, it wasn't, actually.
Chris: That was stupid.
Kayla: Terrible. No, we're talking about a power vacuum, which is a different kind of vacuum.
Chris: We should call our vacuum a power vacuum. That'd be pretty cool.
Kayla: I bet if you googled power vacuum, it would just give you really powerful vacuums.
Chris: Yeah, maybe.
Kayla: This is Kayla. I am a television writer going back to work on Monday. Yay. Woohoo.
Chris: Good job with doing the strike thing.
Kayla: Thanks.
Chris: How you did that.
Kayla: Did it.
Chris: You know what? You did a lot of it. I did a little bit in the grand scheme of things. Yes, it's a little bit, but even a little bit in the grand scheme of things is a lot. That's. You can quote that, I'll put it on a shirt, but you have to pay me. So my name is Chris. I'm a quote master and sometimes also game developer.
Kayla: And this is culture. Just weird. The podcast.
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: And also the vibe.
Chris: The podcast. The vibe. The discord.
Kayla: The discord.
Chris: This is our third time in a row that we've been live broadcasting this absolute hellish mess onto our discord server for our discord friends to hear. So go ahead and join. I know I say this every episode, but call to action. Head to our socials. There's links there. Join us in the discord. It's very weird. It's a fun time.
Kayla: I stream music on Fridays.
Chris: Kayla's very proud of that. Kayla's very proud of her musical tastes.
Kayla: I am.
Chris: People listen to my music, and it's so good.
Kayla: Not music that I make, just music that I pick.
Chris: Yeah, nobody makes music. It's about taste. Okay.
Kayla: I will say with our discord, there is also a special patron corner for our Patreon patrons. And just giving a little shout out to one of our newest Patreon patrons.
Chris: This month, Brian Lancaster. Thank you so much for supporting us on Patreon. We love our patrons, and, I don't know. Thank you. We need to get a standard thank you, because every time I'm just like, thank you and also thank you.
Kayla: Thanks and thanks. See you in the discord. Do you have any other business, other banter, anything you need to get off your chest before we dive into this? The kind of lengthy second half of the story of the Hare Krishnas.
Chris: You want me to rant? Okay, I'm not gonna rant. I don't really have a rant. I will say, though, that we have a whiteboard going in the discord right now, and it's just pictures of poop and stuff.
Kayla: Well, little drawings.
Chris: Little drawings of poop. Little whiteboard drawings. Yeah. You know, if that doesn't entice you, I don't know what will.
Kayla: Let's get into this. This is welcome back to all of our listeners who were here for part one of the hare Krishna story.
Chris: Okay, let's cut to the chase. Who got murdered? Who got murdered? This is a two week cliffhanger. Let's go.
Kayla: We'll get to that. What we often see in new religious movements or other organized groups that might appear on this show is that the death of the leader spells disaster for the life of the group. I'm pausing myself here because you said, who got murdered? I did not get into this in this episode. But there are people who think that Srila Prabhupda was murdered. I don't think. I think so.
Chris: This is off show.
Kayla: No, we can put it in the show. I don't know. We'll see. How it goes. I don't think. I think that, but just know that there are people who believe that he was poisoned.
Chris: Wow. Okay, so it's, like, unsubstantiated, but rumor type thing?
Kayla: Correct. We're not getting into that. Go look it up yourselves. But when you said, who got murdered?
Chris: Well, maybe Prabhupda.
Kayla: Luckily, Sharila Prabhupda planned for this particular issue of, like, what happens when I am no longer here. He started this when he was rather old. He started this when he was, like, 70 or whatever.
Chris: Can I just say what? Because I'm gonna say this on my next episode, too. It is so important to have a good succession plan. It is so important if anyone has.
Kayla: Watched the show succession, if anybody's.
Chris: The next episode is not about succession. I wish it was, but it's about another situation where you really could have used the succession plan.
Kayla: During the ten years before his death, Prabhupda dedicated a lot of time setting up the organizational management structure of ISKCON so that there was more administrative infrastructure to the leadership besides just him.
Chris: See, that's just smart.
Kayla: In 1970, Prabhupda established the governing body Commission, or GBC, as the managerial authority of ISKCON. The group still around still meets annually to improve the standard of temple management, how to spread the faith, the distribution of literature, and more administrative issues. In that vein, and while the GBC is currently made up of 48 senior ISKCON members, when it was first established, Prabhupda handpicked eleven disciples to serve on the board. Those disciples would become sannyasis and renounce the material world as a way to ensure that ISKCON leaders would not use the group to cultivate personal wealth.
Chris: Right? Yeah. You never want your succession leaders to have it be about them and using their power in ways that is improper and untoward.
Kayla: More on that later. Many of these disciples were also so close to Srilu Prabhupada and so learned in his teachings, they were initiated into the ISKCON guru system that Prabhupda set up, which allowed them to initiate disciples into the ISKCON traditions. So up until this point, it was only like, Prabhupada who could initiate you, and now there was, like, an infrastructure for that.
Chris: Got it. So he recruited people who were then supposed to recruit their own people in a sort of like a line, like.
Kayla: A chain, if you will. Essentially, six months before his death, Srila Prabhupda handpicked eleven successors who would oversee eleven worldwide zones and continue the ISKCon traditions as they were. There is, however, some dispute over these eleven were chosen by the founder to have as much authority as they would later assume, or if their rise to power was closer to a quote unquote bloodless coup. Like, again, that kind of gets into the were they taking advantage of the fact that he was getting older? Was there? And again, there's not enough. I didn't come across enough, like, really firm ground for these theories. But just know those theories are out there.
Chris: It's all, even when you have a plan, there's still Game of Thrones, man.
Kayla: Either way, almost immediately after the disappearance of ISKCoN's leader, eleven men stepped into power, filling the massive vacuum now at the top of the organization.
Chris: All Mendez.
Kayla: We'll get to that. And shortly after. The answer is yes. And shortly after, a wave of crimes followed in their wakes.
Chris: Oh, okay, you know what? I was complimenting him for a succession plan. I feel like I have to walk that back a little bit.
Kayla: When I say crimes, I mean crimes.
Chris: Like, were they robbing liquor stores?
Kayla: Okay. Not only did the g b, c. Members and gurus, eventually many went on to adopt lavish lifestyles, like using the organization as their personal piggy banks. They also broke laws increasingly insidious ways. So crimes that ISKCON and its members have been accused range from. So they've always kind of been accused of kidnapping and brainwashing, because again, back in the seventies, many parents, that's standard stuff. Oh, no. My kid joined a cult, and they're being held. Other crimes are amassing illegal firearms, drug smuggling and selling, racketeering, child abuse and murderous dude and murder.
Chris: These are the. Hold on. So the place went to where it was just like people swaying back and forth and singing, they're gun running and murdering.
Kayla: Okay, we're talking about a very kind, we're talking kind of about a specific period of history. The organization is different these days. I will say that again. It's a big organization. Individuals do individual things, but generally, as rule, we are talking about crimes that were committed seventies to nineties kind of thing.
Chris: Okay, so this is really interesting because I double checked myself. So last episode, I talked about how they made an appearance in Grand Theft Auto. And so in GTA one, yeah, that's where they first made their appearance. GTA two, they brought them back. But then they're like, in GTA two, the Krishna are like a gang that can give you quests and whatnot. And when I was reading that, at first, I was like, oh, that's weird. They made him into a gang. That's crazy. Like, I do gang stuff. But now that you're telling me this, I'm kind of going like, oh, wait, no, that actually kind of does sound like they. You could call them like a. Like a culty gang.
Kayla: I wouldn't call them a gang, but you can boil it down to the, like, unnuanced world of GTA in that way, for sure.
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Kayla: It's a lot to cover, but luckily we have some help today. We're obviously not the first people to try and document the crimes related to ISKCON members. During my research for this episode, I came across an investigative author named Henry Dokdorsky, who has written twelve books on the history of ISKCON crimes.
Chris: That's a lot of books.
Kayla: And he agreed to sit down with us to help answer some questions about all of this and provide some much needed context.
Chris: I don't even think I've read twelve books.
Kayla: Mister Doktorsky was also a member of ISKCON himself, a student under one of Srila Prabhupdas most trusted disciples, who rose to power after the leader's passing. Kirtananda, Swami Bhaktipada. Let's talk for a minute about Kirtananda to give some context before we get into our conversation. Born as Keith Ham, he met his guru Prabhupda in New York in June 1966. Ham had recently returned from India after fruitlessly searching for a guru there, and was surprised to find the perfect leader right there in his own city. He began attending classes, accepted Prabhupada as his spiritual master, and was initiated into ISKCoN as Kirtananda Dasa. Over the following years, Kirtananda became one of Prabhupdas most beloved disciples. He was one of the first to shave his head and wear robes in the traditional fashion, as well as move into the temple and become a sannyasi.
Kayla: He traveled the world helping Prabhupda establish temples in places like Montreal. And after a brief period in which Kirtan Ananda was banned from preaching in ISKCON temples, and eventually forgiven and welcomed back, Kirtananda approached his teacher with a new idea.
Chris: Wait, why was he banned?
Kayla: Because he tried to. I might get into it later. He tried to syncretize christian esoterica into ISKCON teachings as an interfaith thing. And some followers were like, this is a coup. And Prabhupada was like, you shouldn't do that, and you can't preacher anymore. And then like, he went back and apologized and always forgiven, especially when Kir.
Chris: I thought they were like, they liked that whole, like, oh, every God is actually Krishna.
Kayla: So I don't know the exact flavor of it, but whatever he was doing was not acceptable at the time. And I think it was more a disciple taking on authority of changing the teachings.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Against what Prabhupada was teaching, right?
Chris: That's a no.
Kayla: But Girjunnanda was welcomed back and he approached his teacher with a new idea. Nu vrindraban kazoontite. Now, Nuvindraban. What's that? Founded in 1968 after the guidance of Prabhupda and under the direct leadership of Kirtananda and another ISKCON student. So the two of them were kind of leading this new Vrindraben project.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Kirtan Ananda proposed the project as basically a big ashram community in West Virginia. So a community by and for ISKCON members to promote, encourage and cultivate the one, cow protection and promoting local agriculture. Two, simple living. Three, holy pilgrimage. Four, spiritual education and five, above all, loving Krishna. So an intentional community based on these.
Chris: Ideals, why West Virginia? It was because of John Denver.
Kayla: It was largely because everybody in ISKCON also worships John Denver. No, there was a, if I remember correctly, there was an ISKCON follower who proposed this idea, kind of like in a letter to the editor in one of the magazines, because they had land in west Virginia. And so Kirito Nanda and others were able to purchase this land very cheaply.
Chris: Damn. That is some powerful letter to the editor there.
Kayla: Yeah. Yeah. Especially because this intentional community is about 1200 acres.
Chris: Whoa.
Kayla: Might have been bigger at one time, but it's currently 1200 acres.
Chris: Wonder how that compares to best friends.
Kayla: Currently has a population of around 352. But we'll get to the. Currently. Let's go back to. Let's go back in time, back to where were. During his life, Prabhupda was hands on with the development and purpose of new Vrindraban. And this was named after the holy city of Vrindavan india, where Prabhupda would eventually die. What started as essentially a rural farm community grew into an ISKCON and hindu destination with homes, apartments, businesses and eventually something that would be called Prabhupdas palace of Gold, which was started in 1972.
Chris: This is like El Dorado cities of Gold. Exactly like that cartoon from the eighties.
Kayla: It was based on that, but it was before it happened.
Chris: That's a deep cut. Sorry.
Kayla: Planned as quarters for the leader. Things obviously changed with his death, and the residents then ballooned into a baroque palace built with marble, gold, and teakwood. Costing $600,000 in materials, with labor donated by ISKCON students, it became a place of pilgrimage and still sees around 50,000 visitors and tourists each year.
Chris: Is it really pretty?
Kayla: Oh, yeah. Do you wanna see some pictures?
Chris: So there's like, there's just this giant hare Krishna temple in the middle of West Virginia.
Kayla: Yeah, that's normal. It's like this.
Chris: Holy shit.
Kayla: Yeah, I wanna go there.
Chris: Yeah, I wanna go there, too. That's large.
Kayla: Yeah, it's large. It's beautiful. It's baroque. It's.
Chris: Wow. I love it. I'm, like, watching. I'm looking at these pictures going, wow. On our audio program, we will post them. We'll post them on Instagram.
Kayla: On our Instagram. The palace was not the only thing that changed after Prabhupdas death. Kirtananda changed, too. Eventually, he established himself as the sole authority of the new Vrindraban community, calling.
Chris: Only authority or the authority over souls.
Kayla: S O l E. He called himself the founder Acharya of the ashram, lifting that singular title from Sreela Prabhupdas own honorific. So Sreela Prabhupada is called the founder Acharya of IskCon, and he's the only one with that title. And then Kirtan Ananda was like, but I'm that of new Vrindraman.
Chris: All right, that's a little power play right there. Nice work.
Kayla: The population grew from a few dozen at its inception to around 500 in the 1980s. But, like, with many schisms, things went south.
Chris: So was this full schism, or was he like, just sort of like a usurper to the existing throne?
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Which one?
Kayla: All of the above. I'm going to go ahead and I'll let Mister Doktorsky dive a little deeper into this part of the conversation. I will give a trigger warning up front as this conversation continues, we do get into sensitive topics such as sexual assault and child abuse. So take care of.
Chris: If you could just introduce yourself and talk a little bit about your background for our listeners.
Henry Doktorsky: Thanks for inviting me. My name is Henry Doktorsky. I'm a former harsh devotee. I lived for close to 16 years as a resident of the new Vrindavan Hare Krishna farm community in West Virginia. I finished, completed my life's work, actually, just a few months ago, finished the 12th volume of history of the new Vrindavan, West Virginia. Hare Krishna community and a biography of my former future masterpiece.
Kayla: Congratulations on finishing your life's work. That's amazing.
Henry Doktorsky: It was over 20 years.
Chris: How do you know that book? Twelve is the last book.
Henry Doktorsky: Well, I've told the story. I think the story's over. I finished the story about Swami pontiff. Of course, the new verdant community is still there, but someone else is going to have to write any more chapters that may follow.
Kayla: You mentioned that you are no longer a student, so can you share with us what brought you to ISKCon in the first place and then maybe a little bit about why you eventually left?
Henry Doktorsky: Well, in college I was a music student in Parkville, Missouri. And during that, during my time there, I became interested in eastern thought. And my sophomore year I saw a flyer up on the comments somewhere about transcendental meditation. And I paid my $35 mantra fee, and I got my mantra, and I'd meditate twice a day for 20 minutes. And I thought it was a good thing. Sometime later, I went to hear a lecture by Baba Ram Dass, and that's the first time I'd heard of reincarnation. Why? The yogis are vegetarians. And I thought, oh, this is pretty cool, too. And I liked it. I liked it a lot. So I told my piano professor one time, I said, you know, after I graduate, I'm going to go find a spiritual commune somewhere and devote my life to the search for the absolute truth.
Henry Doktorsky: It was just something that was very, very fascinating. And there were, of course, some negative experiences I had which made me doubt my capacity to succeed in life. And then I made a stop at the Maharishi University in Fairfield, Iowa, just to check them out. And I just, it wasn't my kind of thing, because the young men who were there, they were, or white shirts and ties, and I had gone to like twelve years of catholic school, had to wear a white shirt and tie. And so it just wasn't for me. I wanted establishments, the way they looked. And then on the way back to New Jersey, I stopped and wheeling to visit a friend, a high school buddy who had a summer job there. We were sitting in his hot and stuffy apartment with nothing to do.
Henry Doktorsky: He said, let's go visit the Hare Krishna people. It's only 10 miles from here. They're building a palace for their foundry. It's pretty cool. So we got in the car and we drove there. And I really liked what I saw. I saw the community of, I don't know, it could have been 100, 150 people, maybe their motto was kind of living high, thinking they were vegetarians. They did temple services in the morning. They chanted on beads, quietly doing their mantra meditation for about 2 hours in the mornings. And the men, the single men, slept in sleeping bags on the floor of the dash room. And the bathrooms were, you know, other people would be disgusted, but I thought it was pretty cool. The toilets were these holes in the floor, like india, you go, it's just a hole in the floor.
Henry Doktorsky: And they got, you got a water tap behind so you can wash your rear end when you're done. And you're very clean, actually, it's very clean. I thought, oh my God, this is so cool. They're like renouncing the unnecessary pleasures of material life, you know. And I decided to try this Bhakti yoga.
Kayla: And so that's kind of how you started. So what caused you to eventually leave? I think you said maybe 16 years later.
Henry Doktorsky: Well, I mean, a number of factors. Beginning to have doubts about the sanctity of my spiritual master. And in time, I basically understood that one of his pleasures in life was to give fellatio to young men and teenagers, of course. I mean, this is all very covered up, you know, all depends. But. But as time goes on, things often become uncovered and things were getting uncovered. And I even did a little investigation myself and talked to some of the boys that I knew who were now in their twenties, and they told me, oh yeah, baci pad used to, you know, give us palatio, you know, I mean, I was there for my spiritual development, you know, and you're supposed to except the guru who is on the very high platform, you know, that they.
Henry Doktorsky: As far as no illicit sex goes, it's one of the four basic rules that a christian devotee, any Krishna devotee, is expected to follow. No meat eating, no incarnation, no illicit sex, no gambling like that. And much less someone, a great sannyasi, basically visited him at his home and presented him with this very long letter with all my doubts. And then he denied everything. He said, I never haven't had sex since I had met Prabhupada somewhere 26, seven years earlier. And I knew he was lying, so I basically rejected him. And not too many months later, I finally meth.
Kayla: Let's pause here for a second and unpack what Mister Dokdorsky just revealed. So remember how we said that Srila Prabhupdas closest disciples became sannyasis or renunciates?
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: This also includes a vow of celibacy.
Chris: Huh.
Kayla: But apparently not only was kirtan Ananda secretly violating this vow by persuading or coercing or manipulating male followers into sex, and particularly oral sex? He was abusing teenage and even underage boys as part of this transgression.
Chris: Yeah, it's interesting that Mister Joktorsky was saying that he was in catholic school at one point, because I'm just like. There's a lot of parallels here.
Kayla: Throwing pan into the fire.
Chris: Yeah. Not to keep ragging on the catholic thing, but that's very similar, just to be clear. So the. The boys were underage in this scenario that I'm just trying to understand, like, whether it was like, is like, was there an illegal component as well as a transgressive against Krishna component?
Henry Doktorsky: You know, most of. He liked teenage boys, and these boys were. I think most of them were above the age of consent in West Virginia. So I don't think there was any crimes committed. There were younger boys. For us, as investigators, trying to uncover all this stuff, it takes years, decades, actually, sometimes. But I did have one mother tell me that when her seven year old boy, when she visited him, he was living at the new Verde ovens courting school, and she hadn't seen him for months. And then when she finally saw him, the boy told her, very proud and quite pleased. He said, you know, I had a great honor when I first became your. He selected me, out of all the boys, to be his personal servant. And I lived with him in his cabin for a week.
Henry Doktorsky: And he tells his mother, and. And you know what he said? Octopod, like, fondled my genitals. And he was quite proud of it. And the mother told me that she was, like, really, like, shocked. He told me, she said, where did he learn that word, Fondle? He never didn't learn it from me, that's for sure. You know, he learned it somewhere, you know, somewhere else. And. And because of her also deranged devotion to the spiritual master, she dismissed her. Her child's statement as a fanciful invention of a child's mind. And she chastised her son. She said, don't you. Don't you ever say things like that about Swami Kirtananda. He's a great devotee, you know, don't make up stuff like that, or I'll punish you. Which later I discovered that quite frequently the parents, you know, just, they dismiss it and they reject it.
Henry Doktorsky: The boys admission of some sexual abuse from an elder or a family member or grandfather or a priest or a teacher. To answer your question, I think most of the boys were of legal age, but there were some that were underage.
Kayla: That's heartbreaking. And, like, you're talking about, it seems like it's heartbreaking that something like that occurred in this organization. And it's also. Yeah, we've seen that in other organizations, spiritual organizations, and otherwise, it's just a widespread problem.
Chris: Parents taking the side of the spiritual leader seems pretty common. Like, that's definitely a feature in catholic abuse as well.
Kayla: Yeah. So to clarify, the age of consent in West Virginia is 16. Okay, so Kirito Nanda was having legal sexual relationships with teenagers. Like teenagers, as well as. As Mister Jashorski pointed out, as well as illegal sexual relationships with minors.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: These were all men and boys. And his relationships, obviously, with underage boys were, by definition, abusive. But I also can't help but think that the other sexual relationships with people of age were also abusive. I mean, he is the leader of this community, and he has been like, oh, I'm like, I'm the sole guy. Eventually, he would say that he is the only legitimate spiritual successor to Srila Prabhupda, not just like, oh, I'm the king of Nuvindraban. I'm the only one who's really the spiritual successor here. That puts him in an extremely powerful position. And in ISKCON traditions, devotees, not just the sannyasis, but devotees, are prohibited from engaging in illicit sexual activity and relationships outside of marriage. But if your spiritual master engages with you in a sexual way, what are you supposed to do?
Chris: Yeah, I imagine that there's a lot of, I don't know, brain fuckery going on there where, like, well, this must be okay, because it's the, you know, it's the master that's doing it. So even though XYZ thing is against the rules, they must not be talking about this. I imagine there's a lot of that kind of stuff. I don't know. This sucks.
Kayla: This sucks.
Chris: I kind of am, like, I'm getting to the point, like, when we first started doing the show and something like this came up, it would be like, what? Crazy. Whoa. And then it's like, gotten to the point now where I'm just like, oh, yeah, yeah. That's expected.
Kayla: Now it's crazy if it doesn't come up. Yeah, that's why we did ethereuse, right? Because were like, what's the crazy twist about this group? They don't have abuse, probably.
Chris: They don't have abuse that we know of.
Kayla: They don't have documented cases. It's very depressing.
Chris: Yeah. And like, I, it's almost to the point where, like, I kind of don't, I don't really blame IskCon, you know, like, I think, like, with a lot of these groups, there's, you know, we're like, oh, well, that's, you know, of course that group is going to be, that's the type of thing that's going to lead to child abuse. And there is definitely some stuff there. Like, I think that vow of celibacy is pretty sus, I mean, at least historically it has been with, you know, with Catholics.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But at this point, like, because it's just such a feature of these, of any organization where there may be a power dynamic and religious ones, that power differential can be pretty significant. It just feels like it's just an environment where this is probably going to happen. Definitely part of me wants to blame ISKCON and be like, well, you shouldn't have made this environment this way. But then part of me is also like, I guess we're just always abusing kids. I don't know.
Kayla: Yeah, I mean, it kind of just goes back to the conversation that we had with Daenery Grace last season of we talk a lot about living in rape culture, living in this kind of culture. And Daenery specifically brought up living in abuse culture, I think, is what we talked about. And it does kind of seem like maybe there is something specific to the way we shape dynamics in our society that, like, abuse runs rampant. Unfortunately, these weren't the only crimes that kirtan, Ananda Nu van Drabin and other disciples were engaged in.
Chris: Yeah. You said gun running. Was that him?
Kayla: We'll get to that.
Henry Doktorsky: Well, I mean, there's a lot there. Yeah, yeah. Fraudulent fundraising for a few years in the early eighties, mid eighties, I was one of the top new v men's collectors. One year I made like $150,000 getting 30,000 people that year to give me $5, including Howard Cosell, who was a famous sportscaster at the time.
Chris: Wow. Yeah.
Henry Doktorsky: Monday Night Football, we had these stickers and they would say, they'd have a picture of Snoopy on it and it would say something like, are we having fun yet? Or something like that. They're little bumper stickers, you know, about four inches, I would say squares. And we hit up, you know, we just approach people and give them a sticker and give them a quick line and ask them for $5. And I used to make 3000 a week doing that. And it's mostly all profit. I mean, we had very spent. We spent very little on ourselves. So Nubrindav and that we did get in trouble with that because were using the Snoopy's image and many other copyrighted images without permission or without paying for the right to copy this, knew that it was illegal, but they were making millions of dollars a year, right.
Henry Doktorsky: Between 1981 and 85. The community gross like twelve to twelve point something million dollars. Another source says it was 17 million.
Chris: That's not for the lawsuit then. So that's, you know, it's fine.
Henry Doktorsky: Well, well, no. Well, most of that money went into construction because we're building a place of pilgrimage. So, you know, lakes were dug and statues, you know, 40 foot tall statues were built and a temple was built and a guest lodge was built in a restaurant behind the palace. So there was an earth moving equipment. And so were like really gung ho to build this transcendental place of pilgrimage where Hindus, in fact, we had tens of thousands of hindu people would come to visit, you know, for their summer vacations when their kids were off. And they. They were cabins they rented. They stayed in the guest lodge and they went to the temple. And it was like a happening place for the north american Hindus. So anyway, so that money, most of it was spent.
Henry Doktorsky: I don't think at that time, in the eighties, that people was, like, stashing it away in private bank accounts. But certainly he was by the time the nineties.
Chris: Okay, so it started off by being put in the right place. It sounds like you were building things for the. For the Krishna community. But then as time went on, more and more of it got siphoned off into his personal right.
Henry Doktorsky: And why that happened was because of all the big court cases. And he was, you know, he was the prime defendant, I think. I mean, he had to spend millions on legal fees. He knew that everybody. He was guilty, you know, the community had done all. But. So he had to hire the most expensive, the greatest lawyers in the United States in order to get off.
Kayla: Okay, pause. Court cases?
Chris: Yeah. What court cases?
Kayla: What court cases?
Chris: First of all, law. Snoopy sticker scam. It was effective, I guess. Yeah. Do you want to start selling some stuff? Let's do mickey Mouse. They're not litigious, right?
Kayla: I know somebody who made an entire comic. They got famous off of using characters they had no copyright over. And it was kind of funny and great. I'm sure we could just put a Mikey mouse and we'll be fine.
Chris: Mikey. Or we could do the. Cause our logo is circular. We could do it in Mickey.
Kayla: Hidden Mickey stuff.
Chris: Hidden Mickey style.
Kayla: Eventually, Kiritan Ananda would be charged with a variety of crimes, some of which we mentioned. So there was, yes, the talk of child abuse, but he was charged with racketeering, fraud, and then even conspiracy to commit murder.
Chris: Oh, here we go. The cool stuff.
Kayla: First, let's talk about the racketeering and fraud. So, over a period of four years, Kiritan Ananda illegally amassed more than $10 million using the infrastructure of ISKCON and its devotees. Like some of the stuff that Henry Doktorsky was talking about, of the way that the students were raising money. And this is supposed to be a renunciate, remember, this is.
Chris: Yeah, you renounce, and then you get your 10 million.
Kayla: Yeah, it's fucked up, but it gets more fucked up again. Kirito Nanda propped himself up as a singular leader of the movement. He had many followers, largely because he was the most devout, the direct disciple of the founder. He had a reputation to uphold, the devoutest. So what happens when followers become disillusioned with their leader? What happens when stories like the ones Mister Doktorsky shared with us, stories of child molestation and abuse? What happens when those start to come out?
Chris: Okay. And just, everyone keep in mind, this is the seventies, so people still had space to become disillusioned.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Right now it's 2023. I'm like, okay, yeah, of course, there was racketeering and child abuse, but at the time, there was still trust institutions. So I just want to put that context out there.
Kayla: Someone like Kirchhen Ananda and his inner circle needed to maintain power somehow. They needed to squash these stories somehow. And one way to keep things quiet is to kill the whistleblowers.
Chris: That is. That's quite the gambit, because if you kill the whistleblowers, then now you have a murder as well. That. That's.
Kayla: You have to cover that up. Yeah, it's kind of like there was an old woman who swallowed a fly, and she swallowed a cat to catch the fly or whatever, and then she's like, it gets very complicated, and you have to cover up multiple times.
Chris: She has quite a time trying to get herself.
Kayla: I don't know why she swallowed the fly. In 1985, a disillusioned former ISKCON student, Stephen Bryant, wrote a book titled the Guru Business. This book exposed many of the crimes and transgressions we've talked about, specifically calling out Kirtan Ananda, as well as Ramaswara, Maharaja of the Los Angeles temple that you and I visited.
Chris: Oh, snap.
Kayla: The book was shockingly not well received by many in the ISKCON community.
Chris: Don't say.
Kayla: Particularly by those who followed Kirjan, Ananda and Ramasvara.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Steven Bryant traveled the country trying to get the word out about his book, about the corruption within the organization. But wherever he went, he was stalked by ISKCON followers under the orders of their gurus.
Chris: What the fuck?
Kayla: So he was stalked from West Virginia to Ohio to Michigan to California. He was living out of a van cult one night in 1986, while parked less than a mile from the Los Angeles ISKCOn temple.
Chris: The one were at.
Kayla: The one were at.
Chris: The one we drive by all the time to get in and out.
Kayla: One we live less than five minutes from.
Chris: Okay. Don't know.
Kayla: Stephen Bryant was shot twice in the head in his van window.
Chris: Like, down the street.
Kayla: Down the street.
Chris: Somebody was assassinated down the street from us.
Kayla: That's awful.
Chris: Yo, that's messed up. And also, now I have a whole different appreciation for Mister Doktorsky, because now I'm like, he wasn't just writing books, he was putting his life on the line, I guess.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Holy shit.
Kayla: Definitely. Steven Bryant was murdered by a man named Thomas Drescher, a lifelong follower of Iskcon, specifically Kirito Nananda. And he was known in the organization as an enforcer.
Chris: Oh, my God. They just. They literally had hired murderer. This is the mafia. What the he. Okay. Of course they belong in grand theft auto.
Kayla: Steven Bryant wasn't the first. Three years earlier, another ISKCON student, Charles St. Denis, was also murdered by Thomas Drescher, allegedly with the approval of Kirtan Ananda. Charles St. Denis had been having an affair with another member's wife. I think some testimonials say that he had raped another member's wife. I'm not sure which story is he was most closely the truth. Neither thing is good, right? Drescher would later characterize the killing as dispatching an undesirable element from the community.
Chris: Dude, this guy sounds fucking ice cold. Motherfucker. This guy sounds scary.
Kayla: Kiritan Ananda was charged with conspiracy to commit murder in relation to these killings.
Chris: Yeah, see, that's what I'm talking about. You're gonna silence somebody, but now you have two murders to come. You got two murders, and there's no volcanoes to throw people in Los Angeles.
Kayla: It's the only way to really get rid of a body.
Henry Doktorsky: Now, he was not guilty at all conscious, but there was a significant amount of guilt. And there have been cases against Luther Daven. Since at least since 1973. It was a primitive community back then. That was before the palace of gold was built, you know, but some of the neighbors sued Luberdun for a half a million dollars. But then after the murder of Steve Bryant, known as Sulocho, he was. He was assassinated by a disciple of Vaktipali. And the federal government became very interested in New Vrindavan because they tied that murder to Nuvrindavan. There were two murders, actually, one in 83 and one in 86. So Bhagipad was charged with ordering his disciple to do this murder. He was involved some way, and of course he knew this was going to happen. I'm not convinced he ordered those murders. But. So there's two murders.
Henry Doktorsky: Curiously enough, he was never charged with child abuse. I think that's partly because most of those boys, and I've talked to several of them, you know, once, you know, I mean, they tolerate this for some time, perhaps years, and then. And then at some point it stops. And they. Maybe they realize that this is not right in the beginning. They don't know, you know, this is. Maybe this is the way all kids grow up. You know, they don't want it known that they were sexually abused when they were young. It's like a stigma to them. Very embarrassing, you know, so. So they would rather not get involved with filing charges and doing court cases because that's going to take up a hell of a lot of their life energy just fighting this thing.
Henry Doktorsky: And there's no guarantee that they're going to win or anything, you know, so anyway. But that's just a state of our current society and how hard it is for victims and for women who get raped also. Same thing, you know, same thing. It's hard to. Hard to get justice.
Kayla: You have a trauma happen to you and then you have to weigh, do I want to have to relive this trauma in court and in the court of public opinion? And do I have to, do I want to face this person or do I want to put that behind me.
Kayla: And not think about it?
Kayla: Like, I understand people who don't choose to pursue or file charges.
Chris: Like you're saying, yeah, I feel like I would probably not choose. I mean, that totally makes sense.
Kayla: So there were no child abuse charges in these charges that were filed. And interestingly enough, even though Kirtan Ananda was initially convicted on nine of the eleven charges in 1991, those convictions were thrown out. What the court of appeals was convinced by Kirito Nanda's attorney, who argued that the allegations of child molestation unfairly prejudiced the jury against his client, who was not charged with child molestation crimes. So the attorney was saying he didn't get a fair shake because the jury is influenced by all these stories swirling that he molested children. So let's throw that shit out. Do you want to guess who his attorney was?
Chris: Oh, my God. When did this happen? When was the trial?
Kayla: Johnny Cochran, Alan Dershowitz.
Chris: Oh, Alan Dershowitz. He's made a whole career of defending absolute shitheads. Look, I do want to say it is important in our legal system that even the worst people do deserve a spirited defense.
Kayla: Absolutely.
Chris: That is part of that is part of how our legal system is set up, and it's a flawed system, but I don't think that's one of the flaws. That being said, alan Dershowitz is a lawyer who defends real shitheads.
Kayla: Unfortunately, after this, Kirtan Ananda was released from house arrest in 1993, and he returned to new Vrindraban.
Chris: Also, that makes me kind of go like, oh, yeah, so he did it. If it's like, alan Dershowitz is your lawyer? I'm like, okay, definitely these were accurate charges then. I'm just saying.
Kayla: I don't disagree with you.
Chris: I'm just saying.
Kayla: Kirtananda wasn't the only Srila Prabhupada disciple abusing his power and status in order to do crimes.
Chris: Oh, no.
Kayla: Hansa Dutta Swami was arrested in 1980 for the possession of illegal weapons. So this guy, like, a masked. A bunch of weapons that I think he got super paranoid and did the weapons running.
Chris: That's cool though, right? At least you're not abusing kids.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: You're like, oh, cool, I just got a bunch of fucking weapons because, I don't know, like, the Rajnishis, they were fucking.
Kayla: They were not great.
Chris: They were badass, though. They had those automatic rifles.
Kayla: They were blending beavers and putting.
Chris: Yeah, you shouldn't blend beavers, for sure.
Kayla: In 1979, Alexander Kulik, a California ISKCON leader, was accused of smuggling heroin, laundering drug money, and having mafia ties. Like, there was kind of a thing where, like, ex mafia members were like, maybe by the government put into, like, witness protection or something in the Hare Krishna community and then, like, doing mafia stuff. I'm a little unclear.
Chris: This whole GTA thing makes so much sense.
Kayla: I'm a little unclear on that, so don't do your own research. But there was, like, mafia stuff going on.
Chris: See, again, this GTA stuff just makes so much more sense now.
Kayla: The time period following Prabhupada's death was fraught for the organization.
Chris: Sounds like. So you mentioned. That's three people. You mentioned. You said he had eleven disciples.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: So were the other eight okay, or did they also have, like.
Kayla: I will say that Henry Doktorsky wrote multiple books. I mean, he wrote twelve total books, but he did write multiple books specifically about these guys.
Chris: That's enough books to cover one for one and then still have a whole book left over.
Kayla: I recommend going and checking out. Obviously, we'll include a link to Henry Doktorsky's website, as well as his Amazon storefront, so that you can buy some of these books and read up on the craziness behind what we're talking about.
Chris: Maybe that 12th book is a cookbook.
Kayla: It turns out that these issues weren't simply a function of the loss of ISKcON's leader.
Chris: Yeah, I'm sorry. It's never like, oh, the great leader died, and then everything. He was great, and then everything else sucked. It's not ever that.
Kayla: I mean, the power vacuum, the eleven disciples abusing their new status, this shifting in the organization. Yes. Trouble, I'm sure.
Chris: Yeah. That exacerbated it for sure. But if you asked me, okay, but do you think that it was pristine and perfect before that? I'd be like, no, there was trouble.
Kayla: Just under the surface before Prabhupada disappeared.
Chris: Not surprising.
Kayla: It is interesting that you say that child abuse charges filed against Kiritananda, but I have been reading about how there have been accusations of systemic child abuse in the organization, maybe more recently in places like the boarding schools and educational programs. Is that something that you know about? Is that something. Can you talk a little bit about that particular transgression in the organization?
Henry Doktorsky: In the seventies, Swami Prabhupda, he started the gurukula system, the boarding school system. 1971, that was Dallas, Texas. And he pretty much insisted all his disciples got to send their children there starting at the age of four. And they'll become great lovers of God and strict devotees. And they will, you know, from there, they'll conquer the world. But unfortunately, the boarding schools were underfunded. There really wasn't any prestige in being involved as a teacher or an administrator or an ashram moderator. Someone who watched, stayed with the kids at night in their ashrams. The prestigious positions went to people who could collect a lot of money. But the gurukuls were underfunded, and there wasn't much interest nationally or internationally.
Henry Doktorsky: They had already teachers and ashram moderators who were pedophiles and they found a good place for them to abuse children because the children really couldn't say anything. So anyway, that Dallas guru pool eventually folded five years later when the government of Texas started investigating it, and they found all these violations. And then Prabhupda basically said, okay, we'll just close it and move all the kids to India. Vrindavan, India, the most holy place in the universe, where Krishna's love of Krishna automatically reveals, these children will have the greatest time of their lives. We start a boarding school in Vrindavan, India. Unfortunately, it turned out to be even worse. Anyway, it was, like, pretty sad. Mismanaged a haven for pedophiles. A haven.
Kayla: Were these issues largely.
Kayla: I mean, we've talked about a lot of issues at this point.
Kayla: We've talked about now the systemic child abuse. We've talked about Kirtan Ananda. Were the issues that we're talking about. Was this mostly while Prabhupda was alive, or did this kind of. It seems, you know, from a. From a layperson's perspective, it seems like maybe more of the issues happened after he died and other folks stepped up to fill that power void. But I'm wondering if that perception is wrong, because you're saying that these boarding schools were established under Prabhupdas, like, while he was still around. So do you have any insight on that?
Henry Doktorsky: Well, they certainly got worse after he passed away in 1977. But there was certainly a lot of abuse in Dallas, Texas, school and the Bhaktivedanta Gurukula in Vrindavan, India, during his lifetime. And you read this book, a bond of love with RLa Prabhupda and his daughters. And it's testimonies from women who served in ISKCON, and basically, they're glorifying their spiritual master and saying wonderful things about him. But there's one woman who tells a story that at the time she was living, I think it was in Dublin, and her son, I think he was seven, came to visit her from the Dallas, Texas. And the boy starts telling her about some of the physical abuses that the kids were getting there. Like, if the child wet is bad, they had to wear their urine, soak underwear on their head for the rest of the day.
Henry Doktorsky: Some kids, they wet their beds so much that they weren't even allowed to sleep in beds anymore. They had to sleep in the bathtub and beatings. Now, Prabhupada said, you can slap a child on the face. So eventually it got so that there'd be a line of kids, the ashram teacher would go, slap, slap. You know, just like abuse, you know, in order to discipline them if they were unruly. This lady, her son's telling her about some of the abuse, and she had been told that these Krishna boarding schools would be a heavenly place for their child to grow up and learn about Krishna and be saved from all sorts of dangerous association, like. So she gets on a train to see Swami Prabhupda, who is currently in Bombay, which is at least, it's got to be close to 20 hours ride.
Henry Doktorsky: She gets to Bombay, she goes to the Juhu temple there, and Prabhupada is in a meeting with Bigwig sannyasis and wealthy men. She just barges in. She's so upset, she has to tell them about the children's abuse at this Texas school. And Prabhupada sees this, and of course, in ISKCON, women, as a rule, are not respected. One of the sannyasis sitting next close to Prabhupda, when this woman comes in and she's very distraught, she says, oh, she's just a sentimental woman, Prabhupda. We can't really trust her. No, I want to hear what she has to say. So he dismisses everybody else, and she tells him what her son was telling him. And according to her, she says, Prabhupada was, like, intently listening the whole time.
Henry Doktorsky: And when heard about this, he started roaring like a lion and said, those teachers should be dismissed, and before they're dismissed, they should be hanged. So she felt that Prabhupada was going to do something about this, and she got back on the train back to Vrindavan, where she was living. However, nothing happened. I don't know what happened, but I don't know. I know nothing happened. All right, so I'm assuming that Prabhupada spoke to one of his important Sannyasi advisors and said, I want you to go to Texas and investigate this. And apparently, Sannyasi had other, more important business to do, so he never did it. And Prabhupda never followed up either. So the abuse just kept going. In fact, this poor kid, when he went back, maybe he got it worse now, you know, because he was a snitch.
Henry Doktorsky: So, yeah, of course, it was really bad after Pratha passed away. But, you know, he had. He was building temples india, three important, big temples. That was his life's work. And the guru gul, he just. It just gets forgotten about.
Kayla: So, unfortunately, the issues that arose after Prabhupada's death. Already had a foundation from when he was alive.
Chris: Yeah. All that stuff makes me kind of go like, all right, yeah. I mean, what did you expect was gonna happen, right?
Kayla: Like, you found the boarding school system in the states, there's like, horrible, widespread abuse, and then you just close it and move it somewhere else.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, you've demonstrated that there will be no consequences. So there you go. That's. Yeah.
Kayla: When the conditions and the abuse are worse and it is brought directly to your attention and you still fail to act.
Chris: Yeah, that's the thing.
Kayla: What does that say about you?
Chris: What that does is it enables everyone after you, which is what happened.
Kayla: And as Mister Doktorsky mentioned, there were some less savory beliefs present in ISKCON during Prabhupdas life. So the thing about women, as a rule, were not respected in ISKCON. And unfortunately, Prabhupda himself also harbored some less savory beliefs. I didnt really put this in my script, but I do want to clarify. Im presenting the less savory beliefs, and theyre abhorrent. And also, these are alongside, this is a full human being. This is alongside other beliefs that are savory. So I don't want to present this as like, this is all that he believed. Clearly, he had a whole religion around, like Shizcon stuff. Here's a short list. Prabhupda made statements that women should not be trusted, as a rule, were not intelligent, were reliant and dependent on men. And he just generally had a negative politic towards women.
Chris: Oh, man, he could be president of Harvard.
Kayla: No, because it's worth noting that he generally is recalled as, like, being kind and welcoming two female disciples in practice.
Chris: Never mind that you can't be president.
Kayla: Of Harvard, but women were not allowed in leadership. Under his watch. He made statements supporting the enslavement of black people in America.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: As well.
Chris: That's like a gimme. How do you miss that one?
Kayla: He also made statements supporting the caste system and oppression of lower castes india. He made statements blaming the jewish people for the Holocaust and for Hitler's violence.
Chris: Okay, these are significant. Like, these aren't, like, he thinks that women should make sandwiches.
Kayla: This is not good. These are not things that the religion was, like, revolved around. These seem to be more personal beliefs, but it's like, these things should be talked about because these are, like you said, these are significant feelings to harbor.
Chris: Yeah. And like, I don't know. He did start it. So there's got to be. His DNA is in there.
Kayla: It's important to know that these things exist so that when you do look at the texts, you are armed with the knowledge of, like, there might be less than, say, there might be really bad stuff in here that I need to push back against and not just take into my body of knowledge. He disputed theory of evolution on religious grounds. Not that bad.
Chris: It's funny because normally I would have been like, oh, what an idiot. But, like, after the other stuff, he said, I'm like, oh, okay, that's fine.
Kayla: I mean, it was just like, he believed in the vedic theory of, like, how people came to be.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: He didn't believe in the moon landing.
Chris: Okay. Yeah. You know, this is what's called crank magnetism. When you're a Holocaust denier, you're probably also a moon landing denier. You're probably also anti vax. You're probably also blah, blah, blah.
Kayla: Thoughts, feelings.
Chris: Well, I have a question for you.
Kayla: I probably don't have answer for you.
Chris: Do you still want to join?
Kayla: Well, he's not the leader anymore.
Chris: I know, but, like, I don't know. I just. I remember last episode, we played the Kiritan, and it was so nice. And then we came back to, you know, to studio, and you were like, oh, man, I just want to join. And we talked about how you're a joiner a little bit. And now after talking about this stuff today, I'm like, I don't know. I wouldn't. Like. I know it's. I know it's different now, and I don't want to, like, sit here and say, like, iSKCON still has people committing heinous crimes and denying the holocaust, but I just have a bad taste in my mouth.
Kayla: I know, but it becomes interesting when you think about this, how many years from now until that gets become. So, when does that become acceptable? And I'm not saying it should become acceptable. I'm just saying, historically, the founders of major world religions have just as brutal things to say.
Chris: Right. That's true. Yeah. I mean, I don't care for most of those, either. Like, you know, like, that's part of it. Like, that's part of why I have in my life moved away from religion, and that's part of why I am, like, disillusioned with things. That was, like, the whole Ayn Rand episodes were about how, like, okay, I moved away from religion, right? And now I like this person. And, oops, she said that we totally should have persecuted Native Americans. Whoopsie daisy.
Kayla: I think this is why I would never join, like, actually join something.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: I think this is why I have an aversion to, even if I, like, want to go back to the Hare Krishna temple and do the kirtan, I'm never going to become a Hare Krishna. I'm never going to become initiated into the thing. I'm never going to convert to Catholicism. I'm never going to start paying dues to the Ayn Rand Institute. Like, you know what I mean?
Chris: They don't have dues, Kayla. I've never been online classes that are 11 hours.
Kayla: It's interesting to be a joiner that doesn't actually want to join because I don't want to be associated with the bad parts. I really don't.
Chris: I also think it's just the power corrupts thing, too. When we talk about founders, we are talking about powerful people, and when we're talking about powerful people, we are talking about tendencies towards sociopathy. Caveat. I know that's not in the DSM, but, like, were talking about people who tend towards things that are generally. It's just a different type of person that is drawn towards that amassing of power.
Kayla: Right. I mean, this sucks. This is also why I'm moving away from affiliating myself with any sort of political party or political organization, because it's the same. It's the organized structure. We cannot seem to build organized structures that don't result in this. And I don't want to have a.
Chris: Hand in this, but at the same time, I think it's also, like, there's no. I mean, there's no escape. Right? Like, it's not. It's not like, oh, I need to not do this. It's just society has these people, no matter what. Like, it's. There's value in joining with other humans to do things right.
Kayla: Like, coalition is different than, like, joining.
Chris: But, like, a lot of joint work, a lot of collective effort is guided from the top down. That's the way it is. That's the way it's been for a long time. It's not always like that, but there's a tendency for that. I think that sometimes we just have to accept that. Yeah, I worked at Blizzard and we made some great games. And also there were. There were people that were abusive there. You know, like, it's just. And I kind of think maybe the same thing was like, what's this? Like, there's value that people get. Clearly, there's value. I was there and witnessed it. There's value that people get from is con, right?
Chris: And, like, I know it's shitty for me to say maybe, but, like, at a certain point, you kind of have to just go, like, oh, yeah, the leaders were fucked up, right? Yeah. That doesn't mean that there's no value in this organization. That doesn't mean that I'm not getting value from doing this Kiritan, or being in community with these folks. But leadership is just. I don't know. I kind of feel like we're just going back to the real basics of absolute power corrupts.
Kayla: I just think it's a good lesson that you cannot. It doesn't matter who the person is. The structure of organized, hierarchical groups requires that you do not place all of your trust in the leader. It doesn't matter who it is. Doesn't matter if it's. If it's a saint. The way that these power structures end up playing out requires us to be vigilant and to have transparency when it comes to our leaders.
Chris: Yeah. And at least with, like, corporations, at least there's, like, a Yde. An attempt at accountability. Whereas with these spiritual organizations that we cover on the show, who are they accountable to? Blizzard has accountability to its shareholders, to its parent company, to its employees. There's a lot to the state of California, and that's why you eventually have these house cleanings that happen, which sucks that they have to happen, but at least they happen. It seems harder with these spiritual organizations because it seems like there's less accountability. There's like, he is the infallible spiritual master, right?
Kayla: Yeah, I remember. He's descended from Krishna.
Chris: Right? I totally appreciate what Mister Doktorsky was saying about, you know, victims. That makes it so hard to come forward as a victim, because you're not just saying, like, this gross stranger touched me in an inappropriate way. You're saying this respected member of the community in this, like, spiritually infallible position. Like, so fucked, right?
Kayla: So that kind of brings us to the end of our summary of the crimes and transgressions of ISKCON under Prabhupda and then immediately after his death. But how did ISkcon react to these issues at the time? And how have they moved forward since.
Chris: They went to the airport and started doing chants?
Kayla: Well, no, they were already doing that.
Chris: Oh, they were. Oh, they were doing. Okay. So wait, so while these guys were in the airport doing chants off to the side, there was a guy, like, murdering and gun running?
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: That's so fucking wild, man.
Kayla: Let's start with the systemic child abuse. In 1997, after years of stories swirling about the abuse in boarding schools, the ISKCON GBC, the governing body, established the ISKCON Central Office of Child Protection Department. This department established guidelines for care of children and the running of boarding schools, as well as provided training to child care providers within the system. The department also established local child protection teams and conducts investigations into claims of abuse in poor conditions.
Chris: Like, it's good to have that, but.
Kayla: It'S fucked up that it's sucks to need it.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: In 1998, ISKCON and the department published an expose on its own systemic abuse, particularly focusing on the 1970s and eighties in both the US and India. This was a direct admission of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse as a widespread issue in their schools. The report revealed that the ISKCON followers charged with running these schools and caring for the children were not trained for the task, and many didn't even want to do it. Like, they were resentful of these responsibilities. The expose included testimony from former pupils who shared these stories of beatings, sexual assault, rape, and the denial of medical care. So they themselves published this story or this expose owning up to the wrongdoings. I don't know if it's enough to be like, sorry, but they admitted these claims.
Chris: Yeah, this is a tough one. It's too much to go into on the podcast. But at a certain point, I'm like, I don't know. You can't just be like, whoops, maybe.
Kayla: Just shut the whole thing down. Exactly.
Chris: Is a certain point it's like, oh, you shouldn't be doing this. Don't do this anymore.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: Stop.
Kayla: Right? Yes. And would it or would it not mean something if the catholic church did something like this?
Chris: It would mean. It would mean something. But I would say the same thing. I would be like, you shouldn't even be at the point where you need to have, like, you know, your own little inquisition.
Kayla: Also, like, I mean, we're just the admissions.
Chris: That's what I mean. Like, yeah, okay, there's the admissions, and then there's also the, like, internal inquisition. But, like, yeah, I don't know. The admissions would be nice, but, like, the chur, the catholic church is old enough and powerful enough and wealthy enough that, like, I don't even know if I would trust the internal commission. No, you know, like, I don't trust the citizens. Yeah, I don't know. That's. Yeah, it's kind of getting internal affairs. Yeah, yeah.
Kayla: Oh, we investigated ourselves.
Chris: Turns out everything's cool now. Turns out all this stuff was just in the seventies and eighties, right?
Kayla: We don't include this in our snippets of interview, but Mister Jaitorsky did share that while largely these issues are in the past, and his work has focused largely on the past. So he's not an authority on the present, but more authority on the past. He has heard stories from various temples that there are still issues. So take that with a grain of salt. In 2002, ISKCON abuse victims filed a $900 million lawsuit in Texas state court. The eventual settlement in 2008 was 15 million, and ISKCON would have to file for chapter eleven as a result.
Chris: Okay, so here's another rant.
Kayla: What the fuck is chapter eleven?
Chris: No, that's a different rant. Everybody talks about blood sucking lawyers. They are the only fucking things that are, like, doing anything I like. I'm sorry, but why did we hit.
Kayla: Lawyers in the nineties?
Chris: We still hate lawyers.
Kayla: Not the way we did.
Chris: Like, if we're like, oh, blood sucking lawyers. And like, if we didn't have blood lawyers, then there would be zero consumer protections and nobody would do anything for these fucking kids. Yeah, I know. That's why the powers like them. I know, I know.
Kayla: What about Kirch Nananda?
Chris: Yeah. What the hell happened to that jackass?
Kayla: After his release in 1993, Kirtan Ananda, when he was absolved of his crimes, or at least his convictions, were thrown.
Chris: Out, did he do another cult? They usually do other cults.
Kayla: Well, he just returned back to his community. The community did not divest from him.
Chris: Really? Oh, that seems pretty stupid.
Kayla: And again, he was not formally charged with child abuse. So for the community, it was stories. I'm not excusing it, but I'm saying that, like.
Chris: Yeah, but, like, maybe, like, I'm not a witch hunt guy, but, like, maybe, just maybe, we need to just.
Kayla: Well, let me finish this story.
Chris: Okay?
Kayla: It gets better and it gets worse. Okay, it gets worse and it gets better. I don't know. In 1993, after his release, Kiritan Ananda was discovered by followers in the back of a van with a teenage boy.
Chris: So when does it get better?
Kayla: This direct evidence of his abuse and indiscretion was the straw that broke the camel's back for some of his followers. His followers split, schisms formed. He did retain some believers, but a new camp of challengers finally arose. He left the community. He was formally ousted from Nuvindraban in 1994. ISKCON students returned the community and worship style to the traditional pre Kirtananda traditions established by Prabhupda Kirito Nananda took his remaining followers up to New York, and Nu Vrindraban returned officially to ISKCON in 1998.
Chris: Cool. You know what?
Kayla: There's still more, but no, you can react.
Chris: I can just go listen to music on YouTube. I don't have to do kirtans. It's not that important.
Kayla: During his retrial, Kirtan Ananda pleaded guilty to one charge of racketeering and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released in 2004 due to a decline in his health. And then in 2000, the ISKCON Child Protection Office conducted a year and a half long investigation into Kirtan Inanda and determined that they could establish, yes, he had molested at least two underage boys. In response, he was banned from all ISKCON properties for five years. Should have been for all the years, but for five years.
Chris: Five years. Maybe they were hoping that he would kick off in that amount of time.
Kayla: He was very ill. He was very ill. ISKCON also offered the following conditions if he wanted to be reinstated in the organization. And I'm going to read you the conditions quoted from the official decision on the case of Kirtan Ananda Das. ISKCON Central Office of Child Protection. One, he must contribute at least $10,000 to an organization dedicated to serving Vaishnava youth, such as children of Krishna, the Association for the Protection of Vaishnava Children, or a gurukula approved by the APVC. I don't know what all those words mean, but essentially he had to give money to a child protection organization.
Chris: PVC is like that plastic piping.
Kayla: It's that.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Two, he must write apology letters to all the victims described in this letter. In these letters, he must fully acknowledge his transgressions of child abuse, and he must take full responsibility for those actions. Also, he must express appropriate remorse and offer to make amends to the victims. These letters should be sent to the organization and not directly to the victims. Three, he must undergo a psychological evaluation by a mental health professional pre approved by the organization, and he must comply with recommendations for ongoing therapy described in the evaluation report. And four, he must fully comply with all governmental investigations into misconduct on his part.
Chris: I assume he didn't do any of that.
Kayla: No. Yeah, he never did any of it. But can we talk for a minute about these requirements, about these conditions?
Chris: Sure.
Kayla: Does it seem like it's imperfect? Obviously, it's imperfect. I think that these should be conditions for his ability to ever return to ISKCON at all. Not to return to being in leadership. That seems ludicrous to me.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: It is, however, an example of something more along the lines of restorative justice than punitive justice.
Chris: Yeah, I do like that part of it. I think if it was more, it's.
Kayla: Saying, you have to take ownership of this to the victims. You have to give physical material restitution. You have to make amends.
Chris: All that stuff is good. I just think that I would like to see it connected to a little better teeth. Like the whole, well, five years, you can come back anyway. And, you know, I think if it was more like, you are permanently banned, do all these things, and you may come back as a member, then I'd be like, yeah, that's pretty good.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: But for that part of it, for, like, the, you know, the prescriptive part of it. Yes, I think it was. That's some pretty good stuff.
Kayla: I think it's something that we can all, like, build off of.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: It's not perfect, but we can all be thinking in a more restorative justice framework rather than a punitive justice framework. And he did go to jail.
Chris: Is he dead now?
Kayla: Eventually, he moved to India in 2008. He maintained a number of dedicated disciples as a guru, preaching an interfaith message. So, again, bringing that christian stuff into the Hare Krishna stuff. He died of kidney failure in Mumbai at age 74, and he named his disciple, Madhusudan Das, as his successor. So, yes, he has died. He is gone.
Chris: So in that succession scheme, it's like, okay, here's all of the abuse stuff. You have to molest these kids, and you have to do these crimes and murder some people. No, that's not what a succession plan looked like. Oh. Cause that's what he did during his life.
Kayla: Yeah. The G B c. Has steadily worked since Prabhupda's death to respond to the issues of transgressive criminal gurus within their ranks. Obviously imperfectly, they've worked to address systemic child abuse, the treatment of women, as well as the cult accusations. In 1982, the GBC began adding new gurus to the original eleven that Prabhupda named to help diversify the power structure. In 1985, they decided to lower the standard of living for ISKCON leadership. So, like, you're gonna get less money. You're not gonna be able to. We're not trying to attract you.
Chris: Renunciates are going to get less money.
Kayla: We're not trying to attract people who are in this for the money kind of thing.
Chris: Yeah, that's the type of thing, though. Right is like, if you have people that are attracted to it for the power, then you're going to get people that care about power differentials and will use them for the things that they care for them about. And that's not good.
Kayla: That same year, they made the decision to replace a number of leaders and consulted one of Prabhupdas God brothers on their selections. They made efforts to engage with and integrate into the wider hindu community. So to not be as insular and isolated, but to actually be. We are a hindu related organization. In the nineties, the G. B. C. Undertook a variety of discussions and reforms that paved the way for women to enter leadership. In 1998, Malati Davidas was the first woman appointed to the G. B. C. And Dina Sharana was the second in 2009. Over the years, ISKCON has moved away from the more identifiable public displays, such as wearing distinct orange robes, having shaved heads, public kiriton, and literature sharing. This is part of the wider integration effort, part of this move away from cult accusations.
Kayla: And also it's just a practical response to legislation against their activities. In places like airports, you can't do it. You know, they're kind of. There was a lot of legislation, particularly in places like Lax, where it was, yes, you can be hare Krishna's here, but we're going to put you in like a booth in the corner with like the other nonprofits. And you can't like, be in the middle of everything. And so then what's the point?
Chris: I think that's pretty reasonable.
Kayla: I don't like being annoyed in public. The group grew rapidly in the sixties due to the counterculture movement in the US and Europe, but faced decline starting in the 1980s. In 2000, it was estimated that around 800 or 900 members lived in ISKCON centers in the US. So that was down from like the thousands that there were.
Chris: Oh, that's like smaller than I would have thought. Wow.
Kayla: Since this time, it has grown largely india and also in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. I don't really know why, but it has.
Chris: That's interesting.
Kayla: ISKCON currently claims around 1 million members worldwide.
Chris: Oh, shit.
Kayla: Most residing india.
Chris: Okay. Yeah. 1 million is probably what I would have guessed, but that's quite.
Kayla: It's not small.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: In the US, ISKCON has shifted away from a congregation base of mainly young white american devotees to a base that is largely that of the indian diaspora.
Chris: Interesting.
Kayla: Indian immigrants and people of indian descent are now largely responsible for kind of like a current revitalization of the movement. In recent years.
Chris: Okay. I mean, based on what I saw when we visited there, that tracks.
Kayla: In some temples, it can be as many as 80% of members are of indian descent. And much of this is related to IsKCon's kind of, like, reversing from its original course of, like, we're not hindu, which Prabhupda was very explicit about to this, like, yes, we are part of the broader hindu community.
Chris: Right. That makes sense. That would give you more. Yeah.
Kayla: They've also stepped back from pushing this more, like, monastic lifestyle on its followers. So, like, you don't have to be celibate. You don't have to, like, take a valve or denunciation. You have to live in a commune.
Chris: Followers are, you don't have to sit on a pile of $12 million in your house.
Kayla: Followers are now welcome to attend weekly services like you and I did. You're more akin to traditional mainstream religious worship. Theyve also toned down the hard sell recruitment. They welcome doubters. They tend to wait for followers to approach rather than go out and evangelize. Theyre more trying to be attractive rather than evangelize. Y one last thing before we head to our criteria. I mentioned in the last episode that I wanted to look into the veracity of ISkCons claims about its good works, particularly when it comes to its Food for Life program, which they says provides over a million free meals daily to those in need.
Chris: I'm really crossing my fingers here.
Kayla: From what I was able to learn, ISKCON's claims about its good works are generally undisputed these days. Food for Life Global is an independent non profit organization affiliated with ISKCOn. It has its roots in the group, but it operates on its own. It spans across 65 countries, provides hunger relief to the homeless, to children, and in response to natural disasters.
Chris: I appreciate that you saved that for the end.
Kayla: Other good works, such as their cow protection efforts, which saves cows from factory farming and slaughter and provides them with happy, comfortable lives and also promotes vegetarianism. This also operates as an independent nonprofit across the world. So it's not all controversy all the time.
Chris: That's nice. Thank you for saving that till the end, even though I do eat cows.
Kayla: And with that, let's take it to the criteria. Chris, you ready?
Chris: All right. Yep, I'm ready. It's called charismatic leader. Bye, guys.
Kayla: I think it's not so clear cut.
Chris: I don't know. I'm just, like, really affected by all the stuff we talked about today, I guess.
Kayla: Charismatic leader.
Chris: High.
Kayla: High. We don't even need to talk about it.
Chris: Yeah. Very high. I mean, we can differentiate between Prabhupda, who sounded like he was quite charismatic, quite leaderful.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: And then, like, Kirtan Ananda had followers up until. Up until he died.
Kayla: Up until he went to jail and got convict. Like, not convicted, but, like, had an organization go. Yes. He molested. He was found in a. A van with a boy.
Chris: Yeah. So something there was charismatic.
Kayla: Very high, expected harm.
Chris: I don't see how this can be any, like, I know things are. Whatever may be different these days, I.
Kayla: Would not expect you and I to have harm. But the fucking school system, the shit that, like, those followers went through, the women that had to deal with being disrespected. I don't know, I just.
Chris: It feels like you. Even though. Yeah. I feel like I have to score this high, even though. I know. Yeah. If we joined, we probably wouldn't be like, oh, shit, I got abused. What? But the expected harm overall is so high that it just. I feel like we have to call it high.
Kayla: It's like that karmic thing.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Presence of ritual.
Chris: Hi. Yes, we saw it. Yes, were there. We sang. No, did we sing? I didn't sing.
Kayla: I did not sing.
Chris: I listened.
Kayla: Niche within society.
Chris: A million is not a lot in the scheme of things.
Kayla: It's not. But it's also really well known.
Chris: It's well known. It is well known. It makes appearances in popular video game franchises, so maybe that alone.
Kayla: And it's also, like, if you look at ISKCON as a piece of the wider gaudiya Vaishnavism faith.
Chris: Mm.
Kayla: That's not niche at all.
Chris: Yeah. And then, like.
Kayla: And it is just a branch of that.
Chris: Being a branch of that definitely makes it seem like religion because it's like, well, it's the branch of that, which is a branch of Hinduism. And, like, that's definitely religion.
Kayla: I think it's a religion.
Chris: All right, well, stick with this criteria, I guess. We'll say niche is low because it's well known. And I'll give you. I'll give it to you on the branch thing, too.
Kayla: Antifactuality.
Chris: I don't think that in general, they're not doing weird conspiracy stuff or, like, anti vaxx, as far as I'm aware. Not that I really came across at the same time.
Kayla: And they did. When we did go to the temple again, were the only ones. No, weren't. There was low mask wearing when went, but when were there were signs from, like, the pre vaccine days of like, you have to wear a mask. You have to be, you know, 6ft from each other. So there was. I do look at. That's evidence of a barometer. Factuality.
Chris: Yeah, it's a bit of a barometer for factuality. I. Yeah, I don't know. But then I think about, like, all of the. I don't know, like they tried to. Kirito Nana tried to cover up things by killing people. That says antifactual to me.
Kayla: And it is baked into the religion to, like, not believe in things like evolution.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: I don't know if it's like, super. I don't know if it's like super dangerous antifactuality, but it is more like the religious style antifactuality of like. Yeah, we're talking about faith versus science, right?
Chris: I mean, like, Krishna doesn't exist. Is that antifactual? I don't know.
Kayla: I don't know. I don't think that's the same as antifactuality.
Chris: I think that there's antifactuality when we say more like logical fallacies. Yeah, I don't know.
Kayla: Or like the obfuscation of truth. I think medium. 52% percentage of life consumed. I think that's changed over the years. I think it was, in its initial inception, very high. And now seems to be.
Chris: Yeah. If you're sending kids to boarding school.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: I mean, that's like all of it.
Kayla: But now it seems to be. It's just the same.
Chris: More of like a church service thing.
Kayla: Any other religion?
Chris: Should we split this up into, like, iskcon now and ISkCon in the seventies and eighties, we could. I don't know. Like, if we did, then I would say, yeah, high before, low now.
Kayla: Dogmatic beliefs.
Chris: I mean, I was. I would have. Last week or last episode, I would have said low.
Kayla: I still would say. Well, I don't know.
Chris: It seemed like they were like, everybody's welcome. Whatever sense of, like, the only thing that got them to kick that guy out of their religion was when he was like, maybe we should do some Christianity stuff, not the abusing kids.
Kayla: No, that's okay. That's not true. He was kicked out for doing that before he molested the kids.
Chris: Right, I know, but like, maybe.
Kayla: No, he was.
Chris: He was saying he might have been molesting kids back.
Kayla: Well, yeah, that's true. What are we on dogmatic beliefs?
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: I just didn't really get the sense of if you had questions, you were going to be shunned. But I could be wrong. I also didn't get the sense that you could necessarily question Prabhupda and have a good time. Yeah, medium chain of victims is very high. Yeah, it's kind of. Again, I think we should change this criteria, chain of recruits and that, especially back in, like, the sixties and seventies when it was like, I'm a hippie. I'm gonna get all my hippie friends in on this. I'm George Harrison. I'm gonna write a song about it to get people chanting before they even realize they're doing it.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Hi.
Kayla: This one, I don't know. Safe or unsafe exit? This would have been a really good one to.
Chris: Well, for those guys that got murdered, I would say pretty unsafe. Am I right?
Kayla: Yeah, I get the sense that now you can go. You could be there for a little bit. You could leave. You're not gonna get in trouble.
Chris: Am I gonna get assassinated?
Kayla: I don't think so.
Chris: Are we gonna get assassinated for doing this podcast?
Kayla: You know what, I kind of want to send an email to Mister Doktorsky and ask this question.
Chris: Ask him if our life is in danger.
Kayla: Ask him if there's a safe or unsafe exit in this organization or what his answer would be to that.
Chris: I'm going to say unsafe. I'm sorry. And if we're doing the split, used to be unsafe, seems safe now. But, you know, if you don't hear from us in two weeks, then you'll know the answer to this was unsafe exit.
Kayla: I think it's pretty clear. Honestly. I think it's like, based on the.
Chris: Criteria, it's definitely religion.
Kayla: I think pre 2000 cult. Post 2000 religion.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: I don't know why I'm using that as a specific time.
Chris: Well, I would say pre 2000, harmful religion. Post 2000, probably benign religion.
Kayla: You don't think it was a cult.
Chris: Because it still didn't have the niche thing back then. It was even bigger back then.
Kayla: Grand theft auto.
Henry Doktorsky: But it wasn't.
Kayla: No, it wasn't bigger. It wasn't bigger. It didn't have a million followers. It had thousands of followers.
Chris: But they were in airports.
Kayla: They were in airports and they were still part of the branch. Man.
Chris: Maybe, right? Maybe it's called either way harmful before, not as harmful now.
Kayla: Cult to religion.
Chris: Cult to religion.
Kayla: And not because the faith changed. Can we say that simply because the structure seemed to change?
Chris: Are we breaking our own rules here? Like, I kind of feel like we're playing fast and loose here with our critics.
Kayla: I don't know. We shouldn't even be using the word cult. Like, we shouldn't even be using the word cult. So it's not a good word. It's a right word.
Chris: Cult. Tm, cult are just weird style cult.
Kayla: So that's our answer.
Chris: Yes, cult. Harmful cult. Then probably benign religion.
Kayla: But what does Mister Doktorsky have to say about it?
Kayla: We just always ask this. If anybody we talk to, would you personally define this group, define ISkcon as a cult? Or would you define it as just weird?
Henry Doktorsky: Well, it's not weird. I would never say it's weird. You could say that it is a religion with cult like aspects. That's what I would personally say. You could also say that it's a cult based on an actual religion, which is gaudiya vaishnavism. The cultist aspects come because the guru is supposed to be worshipped as good as God. He's not God, but he's as good as God because that's the only way the disciple can approach God, is through the guru. So that's part of theology. Like that. You know, I don't think it's weird at all. I don't. What else would be weird about it? That they're vegetarians? That they worship. That they worship statues and feed the statues? Well, maybe that's might be a little weird, but. But it's tradition with thousands of years india to feed the statues. You know, it's like.
Henry Doktorsky: And to say this is. And this is God, you know, because. Because for one thing, where is there not God? God is all pervasive, right? So everywhere. He's everywhere. He's everywhere. So why can he not be in this statue, you know? And it gives you a chance to render some service. Bhakti yoga. It's about service and service with love. All right, so you can't have Bhakti or love or service if you don't have two individuals like the Maya bodies and the Monas. You say that all is one. But if all is one, then there's no love. There's a bliss in all that is one. There's no doubt about that. The Brahman realization. There's a great peacefulness and tranquility and wonderful experience. However, you don't have love.
Henry Doktorsky: And according to the Gaudi of Aishtav, they say that the exchange of the pleasure from love is higher than the pleasure of everything being one and connected and all together. And in order to have love, you have to have two individuals, one to reciprocate loving exchanges like that. I forgot what your original question was, but maybe it's answered.
Kayla: I mean, that's a beautiful answer and that's a great note to go off of. So thank you so much for spending time with us, for answering our questions. I really appreciate you making the time to share your experiences and everything you've investigated.
Henry Doktorsky: Terrific. Thank you.
Kayla: Thank you for going on this journey with me to learn more about the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, aka the Hare Krishnas. Now I'm hungry and I know a great place where we can get some cheap vegetarian food.
Chris: This is Chris, this is Kayla, and.
Kayla: This has been cult or just weird.