The Power of Prasadam?

I just can't make this stuff up, folks.

From the Indian news, also making the rounds on some "stranger than fiction" types of blogs:

Prison food too good to leave

Inmates of an Indian prison are reportedly refusing to apply for bail because the food is so good.

Parappana Agrahara prison in Bangalore is crowded with 4,700 inmates, more than twice its capacity.

Criminals are refusing to apply for bail to get out while juvenile offenders are lying about their age to get in, reports the Bangalore Mirror.

The paper says the reason is healthy food being served by ISKCON, or the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, a Hindu evangelist organisation.

ISKCON, commonly known as the Hare Krishna movement, started serving its pure-vegetarian fare in the jail in May under contract from the prisons department.

Lunch and dinner typically include piping hot rice, two vegetables and a spicy lentil dish called sambar and buttermilk.

A dessert is added on festival days and national holidays like Independence Day, and also once a week.

Prisoner Raja Reddy, who has been arrested 20 times in 30 years for theft, robbery and burglary, said: "When we are getting tasty, nutritious food three times a day here, why should we go out and commit crimes."

source

NY Ratha Yatra Coverage: India Post

An article on New York Ratha Yatra, from the India Post newspaper:

ISKCON rath yatra attracts New Yorkers

Wednesday, 06.20.2007, 03:19am (GMT-7)

NEW YORK: When British colonists first encountered the Ratha Yatra festival of Lord Jagannath - a millenia-old Hindu procession of three giant chariots bearing images of Lord Krishna - they hardly knew what to make of it.

Today, the British Empire has come and gone, but Ratha Yatra rolls down some of the most famous streets in the Western world. Case in point: on Saturday, June 9, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) presented their jubilant annual Ratha Yatra (Festival of the Chariots) parade down Fifth Avenue.

Modeled after the original Ratha Yatra held in the seaside holy city of Puri, the New York City version of this event featured a procession of three 40-foot high traditional Indian chariots - pulled by hand by Krishna devotees and guests.

The custom built chariots, bearing sacred images of Lord Krishna, were festooned with colorful canopies, flower garlands, and other decorations by a team of hundreds of devotee volunteers from the Hare Krishna temple in Brooklyn, New York. "This festival brings the East and West together," said Pragnesh Surti, an architect and festival volunteer from Queens.

"It is a demonstration of universal peace, goodwill, and the equality of all in the eyes of God."Like many of the young volunteers helping to keep the parade running smoothly, Surti is a second-generation Hindu-American who grew up attending the Hare Krishna temple. He credited ISKCON with connecting him to his cultural and spiritual roots."Being a part of ISKCON has helped me to understand and better appreciate the amazing gift that I was given," he said.

"Now I am trying to do my part to share this gift with others - Indian, American, white, black, or brown." From 2pm until 7pm the celebration continued with the Festival of India, a traveling exhibition of India's spirituality and culture. Washington Square Park morphed into a traditional Indian mela, with performances by professional artists and local community groups. Western-born Krishna devotee Anapayini Dasi and her Bhakti-kalalayam Dance School presented a bharat-natyam dance ballet on the ten incarnations of Vishnu, while the East-West School of Dance portrayed Krishna's famous dances with the gopis of Vrindavan.

The show-stealer, however, was a multi-ethnic local cast performing their take on The Age of Kali, a Bengali classic. The drama, which depicted personified Sin and her agents being defeated by the power of Lord Krishna's holy name, had the audience of over one hundred adults and children spellbound. Along with the stage show, display booths allowed festival-goers to get their hands on traditional Indian handicrafts and books on bhakti-yoga, and approximately ten thousand visitors were treated to a complimentary multi-course vegetarian feast.

"The festival celebrates the beauty of Eastern spirituality encountering 21st century New York City." said Vineet Chander, a communications director with ISKCON.

The Festival of the Chariots is modeled after the ancient festival of Ratha Yatra, one of the most important yearly events in the calendar of the Hindu faith. This festival is especially sacred to Vaishnavas (devotees of Lord Krishna).In the sea-side holy city of Jagannath Puri, every summer, at the beginning of the monsoon season, the Deity is taken out of the temple amidst great fanfare, and placed on bright and colorful chariots.

Almost a million worshippers throng to the city and pull the chariots with love and devotion, accompanied by joyful music, religious chants, and dancing. In 1976 A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the worldwide Hare Krishna Movement, inaugurated the New York City version of this ancient Indian parade. Since then, it has been celebrated annually here and has become a New York summer tradition.

This festival blends the splendor of a millennia-old celebration with the excitement of a parade down New York's world famous Fifth Avenue. This event draws thousands of people of various walks of life from all over the world, bringing the best of the East and West together in a demonstration of universal peace, harmony and goodwill.

India Post News Service

NY Ratha Yatra Photo Collage

from New York Daily Photo blog:

(click on image for a larger version)

The Kazkah demolition in pictures

All the photos -- including photos of the demolition in November, which left Krishna families homeless in freezing winter snow -- can be found here.

Video can be found here.

Bulldoze now, ask questions later. Is this how an "oasis of religious accord" deals with religious minorities?

Police officers brought in by the busload to make sure that the job gets done.


Homes reduced to rubble...


... possessions thrown out into the street...


... and a community becomes a cloud of dust.



The human faces of tragedy. How long will Kazakhstan ignore them?

Crisis in Kazakhstan

Early today, the officials in Kazakhstan demolished more homes belonging to Hare Krishna devotees at the farm in Almaty.

This ten minute video gives an overview on the background of the situation in Kazakhstan.

Preliminary reports are placing the number of homes demolished today at twelve (added to the demolitions last November, that would bring the total to twenty-six homes destroyed). As before, the officials brought busloads of laborers and police officers with them, indiscriminately taking crowbars and sledgehammers to the homes. They threw personal possessions out into the street, even as the horrified devotees pleaded with them and begged for mercy. Mechanical diggers then moved in, literally "crushing the houses to dust."

We do not think that the (makeshift) temple or cow-barn have been demolished yet. However, local officials have included these buildings on their list of buildings to be demolished. This is especially troubling because the temple is the official site linked to ISKCON's registration as a religion in the country. Because of the way Kazakh law is structured, there is a possibility that if the temple structure is demolished, ISKCON will simply lose its right to exist legally in the country at all.

The latest report is available at Forum18.org, a religious freedom watchdog news agency.

Please keep checking the following sites for updates:
Forum18.org
KazakhKrishna.com
iskconcommunications.blogspot.com

His Holiness BB Govinda Maharaj is in the United States right now in order to raise awareness about (and funds for) the crisis in Kazakhstan. He is in Washington, D.C. right now with Anuttama Prabhu and they have had several successful meetings with high-ranking US officials and human rights advocates.

I will try my best to let you know more details as they emerge; right now, please inform everyone you know about the situation and request their prayers. Organized kirtan is always a nice idea in situations such as this.

Also, now it appears certain that the devotees will have to relocate very quickly and this requires substantial funds, so any financial help would be most welcome. You may help by contacting your local ISKCON temple about how to give donations, or by visiting www.palaceofthesoul.com and clicking on "Donate Online."

Please do NOT stage any protests or contact any officials without first coordinating it with our office.

on behalf of ISKCON Communications,
your servant,
Vyenkata Bhatta dasa


PS: BB Govinda Swami's inspirational words to the devotees in Kazakhstan:

"Take shelter of Krishna. Everyone should remain very brave and remain fixed in chanting the holy name. Pull together and take care of the devotees whose homes have been destroyed. What is being done is cruel and certainly not fair but we still have our lives….so those lives should be focused on serving Krishna and our consciousness should certainly not become like that of the people who are doing this. We are witnessing a rude exhibition of material consciousness – never become like that. Pull together, even more than you did last November. Make sure the homeless devotees have shelter and try to gather together their belongings. And by this try to understand how special devotee association really is…"

Too much traffic?

A letter from the Hendon & Finchley Times in the UK:

Traffic just a religious excuse

At a time when harmony between communities is seen as a matter of priority, the new Jewish Community School in East Barnet has given rise to controversy.

Karen Jordan has come up with the old objection, excessive traffic (June 7). This was the same objection raised some years ago, when an orthodox synagogue opened in Watford Way, and when the Hare Krishna movement opened Bhaktivedanta Manor, near Watford. Yet there is not a squeak from anyone about the amount of traffic generated by Christian churches.

Traffic is just an excuse for some people, thankfully a minority, for expressing objection to faiths other than their own.

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Ron Isaacs
Sebright Road
Barnet

some photos from the GBC Meetings in New Vrindaban, USA

GBC meetings@NV

Sri Dilbert Uvaca... a funny commentary on jargon

Horn Okay Please

Anyone who has ever spent any amount of time on an Indian road is likely to recognize the title of this post.

Horn Okay Please (HOP) may very well be the mascot for Indian-English, the delightfully maddening idiosyncratic use of English by Indians.

The wikipedia entry I link to above is long but interesting... and a must-read for anyone who wants to get the most of their next trip to India. Also, those who want to hardcore into the "fundas" of this language, please check out this thorough online Indian-American dictionary.

(Hinglish - a sort of mash up of Hindi and English - is a related, but distinct language.)

So what does Horn Okay Please mean, actually? Nobody quite knows, although theories abound. Driving in India means using your horn to communicate, well, everything -- so it seems like good advice however you take it. More importantly, HOP is one of those phrases that has just become part of the mysterious Indian (and Indian-American) lexicon. Its become a way of sharing common experience -- a sort of sutra that encapsulates a whole in-house experience in a simple (albeit meaningless) phrase.

In ISKCON, we have our own language. ISKCON-ese is a tossed salad of Sanskrit (suchi, laksmi), Bengali (doya koro) Hindi (pukka, accha), Hippie English (spaced out, far out, fried), British English (pass water, obeisances) and assorted Prabhupada-isms (first class, take rest, fruitive).

It would be interesting (and historically useful) to compile a running list. Is PAMHO the ISKCON equivalent of Horn Okay Please?

Jargon is useful, of course, and -- like Horn Okay Please -- can bond people together. But it can also alienate others by erecting walls between insiders and outsiders. ISKCON's history (and language) is certainly intimately linked with India, counterculture America, and (through SrilaPrabhupada) colonial Britain. But if we don't make an effort to communicate the essence of Krishna consciousness and Prabhupada's mission in language that is inclusive and meaningful to a broader audience, we may be rendering ourselves as unintelligible as the messages on the back of an Indian truck.

And as Radha Devi Dasi says in her ISKCON Studies article, jargon can be misused to more serious ends, as well:

...we have our own jargon that both isolates us and condemns those who are not members of our organisation. Those outside our movement are called 'karmis', 'demons', 'melecchas' and 'sudras'. We describe ourselves as 'devotees', 'Vaisnavas', 'devas' and 'brahmanas'. These labels shape our vision of others and ourselves in ways that divide us from the very people we are trying to reach.

Horn Okay Please can evoke nostalgia, togetherness, and good laughs -- as long as everyone is in on the joke.

- Vyenkata Bhatta Dasa

PS: Can't get enough of HOP? Okay, okay... one more link. Check out "Horn Okay Please" -- an excellent clay-mation short film on a day in the life of a Mumbai taxi-wallah.