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[Bhakti]

VRINDABAN A DANGEROUS PLACE
Is the age of innocence finished? From the very beginning during Lord
Krsna’s time Vrindaban was dangerous- it has changed now the demons
are not so big. Yet today there is a different kind of danger in
Vrindaban; the crime rate here has reached epidemic proportions
forcing residents to walk the razor’s edge. Here Mäyä is stronger than
anywhere because the Lord’s energy is stronger here than anywhere
else. Mäyä should be recognized as a great force to reckon with. She
is silently working hard to fulfill her objective, that being to trap
any person who is not Krsna conscious. If we allow ourselves to lower
our guard and fall victim to her allurements definitely we get cut by
the nature of dancing on the razor’s edge. What are the allurements?
Anything attached to this material world can be considered Maya’s
domain. Family, friends, possessions, any accumulation of material be
it a collection of bricks and cement piled up to form a house or a
bank account piling up enormous wealth, unless used in the service of
the Supreme Lord everything material plays as instruments in the hands
of Mäyä.
Lord Krsna dealt with numerous demons as a child plays with toys. His
pastimes in Vrindaban are full of killing demons. For the Supreme Lord
killing demons is a simple affair for us it becomes an impossible
chore. Now most demons have taken residence within our hearts;
therefore harder to find and very difficult to uproot and kick out.
What are the demons that lurk within the dark corners of our inner
being? The heart is an organ with numerous chambers, an easy place to
find shelter for such demons as; lust, greed, envy, hatred, anger,
dishonesty, corruption, intoxication, jealousy, murder- the list is
endless. Vrindaban is also unlimited, multi- leveled, multi- faceted.
There is no power on earth to adequately describe the glories of
Vrindaban, yet in Vrindaban the unthinkable has occurred.
As we all know Lila a sweet little angel faced 17 year old virgin was
raped and shot three times in the face in her own home. We ask how is
this possible in the land of Krsna? It should never happen again.
Just to recap the story lets look again at what took place; just
before it happened Lila felt some chill in her bones she felt some
indication that there was impending doom in the air. The boy who
committed the atrocity happened to be the son of some important
minister in the Braja area, he was intoxicated drunk and maddened by
lust over a girl he barely knew. Lila took some time to preach to this
boy on different occasions but there was never any indication on her
part that there might be some romantic intentions. The boy showed up
drunk on the door of their apartment and used his gun to gain entrance
and expressed his attachment towards Lila. The brother of Lila showed
no fear and spoke bravely to the boy,
“I don’t fear you or your gun, just back off and get out!” Madhu
wrestled the weapon from his hand and kept it away from the assailant.
The boy seeing his condition impossible started to make profuse
apologies and begged forgiveness for his behavior and offered to leave
immediately. Madhu lower his guard and the boy snatched the gun away
and forcibly took Lila into the bathroom- slammed and locked the door
and forced her at gunpoint into submission. Then he threatened her if
you say anything of this to your brother I will kill you and myself.
Lila was screaming inside the locked bathroom for her life;
“Radharani, Krishna, help save me!” then the boy fulfilled his
promise- he shot Lila three times in the face and then ended his life
with one bullet to his head.
Lila’s mother Subhangi expressed her feelings over this disaster;
“This boy rapes and murders my virgin 17 year old daughter and then
kills himself, can there be anything worse that can happen? Imagine
this happening to your daughter how will you feel?”
Because of local political power of the killer’s family the Indian
newspapers tried to cover up the incident by stating that the girl was
26 and the wild affair has been going on for some time. What could be
more infuriating than to see one’s daughter’s purity being insulted
after this crime of foolish passion on the part of a drunken gunda,
(meaning a criminal) who had no right to force his way into their
house what to speak of killing an innocent girl. The older brother of
this boy later threatened to kill all the members of Lila’s family.
The killer was stalking Lila for years waiting for some chance to
defile her, on the same day earlier in the morning he entered a local
technical school and shot at another girl and missed, the school did
nothing fearing that the school would be entirely shut down when the
police come in to investigate.
Vrindaban from the beginning when devotees first started coming here
were confronted by the poverty stricken wild low class element that
walks the streets. In Vrindaban crime is everywhere there is no safety
outside of taking shelter of the Supreme Lord. There never has been
much of a police force here since the police in most cases are more
corrupt than the criminals. In order to find justice you have to bribe
the police, the lawyers, the court judge, everyone in between you and
justice so the person with the most money filling the pockets of the
judicial system gets success. In America the wild west of the early
frontier had the same conditions present. Anyone who could shoot
straight would stand supreme. Foreign women are raped when ever there
is any opportunity. Their nose and ear rings are pulled off their
faces right in the middle of town in broad daylight. No foreign lady
can really feel safe here unaccompanied. For the last 40 years
merchants take full advantage by inflating all the prices for
foreigners. Land purchases by foreigners will always suffer and
succumb to the lust and greed of the notorious land mafia who control
the political forces and pull all the strings in the Vrindaban area.
When some injustice is perpetrated the police will demand money as a
bribe before they take any action or to make matters worse they will
take the side of the local and cover the person who caused the
difficulty. Any foreigner male or female walking the street will be
cursed and called foul names, even spit upon. Bands of looters
circulate the entire Vrindaban area looking for any possibility to rob
and cheat.
On one occasion my wife and I were sleeping and someone injected
chloroform into our room with a syringe and knocked both my wife and I
out cold and the couple next door. When we finally awoke fumbling in
the dark we couldn’t find the clock, then looking further we couldn’t
find any cloth. The robbers had entered by taking the front door off
the hinges and looted everything in the house- when the lights came on
we could see that everything we possessed was gone. Not one stitch of
cloth, not one item in the kitchen was left. At least they left us
with the clothes we were wearing. Then another time while I was in the
temple attending Tulasi puja 3 men broke into our rooms while my wife
and daughter were sleeping. They must have had a strong acid to
dissolve the lock and entered unrestricted through the front door
since no noise was heard. They went through all the Elmira’s and
closets and took what valuables we had, then when my wife understood
it wasn’t me going through everything she screamed and the men ran
off.
In this Vrindaban area there are tantric- men who practice and follow
the rituals of tantra- the dark arts. Working together with the
dacoits or bandits who roam at night looking for an easy target, these
tantric men understand when some large amount of money comes into
someone’s possession and will supply that information to the bandits
and they hit these unsuspecting easy marks and the loot is shared by
the persons who collaborated on each job. So holding expensive items
or large amounts of denominations is not safe since the walls have
eyes. The basic root cause compounding the problem is television, now
anyone sitting in the most remote village can access television. Even
where there is no electricity still one solar panel is enough to power
one TV which is often placed in the village square at night and viewed
by the entire village, everyone sees the latest garbage which is
produced mainly in America. Because of this influx of TV now we have
cases of kidnapping and older men are ransomed for their safe return.
One friend was killed and his body mutilated, run over flattened by
some vehicle until his body thickness was less than one inch.
What can be done? Lets look at New York City where the crime rate
jumped suddenly back in the ‘80’s, after considerable investigation
and a little insight the root cause discovered was something most
people overlooked. Graffiti, broken windows and a general low standard
in cleanliness in bus and subway cars throughout the city became the
focus. Also anything illegal like jumping over the turnstiles to avoid
paying the fare for riding the subway was also a cause. All the little
things that were out of place caused the major crimes to happen, once
the small things were repaired the major crimes stopped.
So in Vrindaban we have many small things out of place. The city is an
open sewer, on festival days the entire city is submerged in stool;
people go to the river Yamuna and cover the banks from one end of
Vrindaban to the other with their stool before taking bath. The gun
laws are never enforced; anyone can carry a gun and intimidate who
they like. Vrindaban needs to be cleaned up in every sense of the
word. Cleaning and fixing the streets is an important beginning,
proper police protection is urgently required. Group involvement will
take the weight off of the local authorities who are underpaid and
overworked. Better education in schools here will help turn the tide.
Because there are few jobs available in Vrindaban people born here
eventually go elsewhere to find employment. With the sudden increase
of private home construction there is now a large migrant population
of semi- and non- skilled labor from Behar and Bengal who work on job
sites in the day and rob at night. Slum dwellings of these lower class
workers are springing up all over Vrindaban where ever there are
construction projects in place.
Srila Prabhupada foresaw that devotees would one day become more
involved in city management and would help clean up Vrindaban. The
Japan government had invested considerable funding here for a Yamuna
action plan to clean up the most sacred of all rivers. The money was
squandered and little action took place. Today as for the last many
years in the long distant past all the stool from Vrindaban and all
other towns up and down the Yamuna River flows directly into the
river. Today the water is black and the outlook is bleak unless
devotees take some action. The action required is to catch all the
dirty water that is now flowing freely into the main source of pure
water and redirect the stool water down river to purification plants
near the end of each city on the river banks.
Therefore we are now calling all devotees and well wishers from around
the world to come to Vrindaban and join our vigilant group to help
take action into our own hands. We want to raise the funding to clean
up Vrindaban and we want to over see the spending of these funds until
the town recovers from the corruption it now is faced with. If
necessary we can hire our own police force and bring in a new order of
protection that is seriously wanting. With a little support and
funding we can have Indian devotees running for city government
offices where corruption is the standard and introduce the following
changes.
Action plan;
1. Form seminars on different subjects to bring devotees and others to
Vrindaban to study and in sheer numbers add to the spirit of a
Gandhian type peaceful non- cooperation with the corruption that
infiltrates our present Vrindaban city leadership.
2. Raise funds to clean up Vrindaban and set up a standard by which
the funds are spent with a separate devotee management system. Bring
together first devotee men and women of like mind to help set
standards of cleanliness and proper management in Vrindaban which can
later impress other state and federal governments in India and around
the world to follow suit in bringing together a safe and secure
society.
3. Organize action groups around the world to follow suit, small
groups working in different areas world wide spells out a major blow
to crime in Vrindaban and other places so affected by organized
crime.
4. Invest in advertising campaigns to stop the forces of Maya in this
present age. “IF NYC CAN DO IT WE CAN DO IT.” ‘CLEAN UP THE SMALL
STUFF AND BIG PROBLEMS VANISH’ ‘CORRUPTION FESTERS IN DIRTY PLACES.’
‘DIRTY ENVIRONMENT- DIRTY MIND- BIG CRIME’

During the 1980’s New York City averaged well over 2,000 murders a
year and 600,000 felonies. The NYC subway system had graffiti on all
of the 6,000 subway cars then in service. All the cars were dirty in
bad working condition, and the graffiti covered each car top to
bottom. In short this was eventually discovered to be the underlying
basis for all the crime running rampant in the city area. This was
called “The Broken Window Theory”, once the problem was identified and
the proper measures were set in place the crime rate dropped
immediately.

“Broken Windows was the brainchild of criminologists James Q. Wilson
and George Kelling. Wilson and Kelling argued that crime is the
inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left
unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no
one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of
anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces,
sending a signal that anything goes. In a city, relatively minor
problems like graffiti, public disorder, and aggressive panhandling,
they write, are all the equivalent of broken windows. Invitations to
more serious crimes.” THE TIPPING POINT by Malcolm Gladwell
Pg. 141, Abacus Publishing, London.

It took six years to stop the graffiti defacing of all the subway
cars, then they stopped the other vices. Young kids who jumped the
turnstiles and others who caught the disease of not paying for the
service of riding the subway system were handcuffed in groups and
booked on the spot. As a result they found those not following the
system had previous criminal records and often carried weapons. Crime
is contagious; stop the small crimes and the big crimes taper off. The
next target in NYC was to stop public drunkenness and public
urination. Then they stopped the ‘squeegee men’ from wiping the car
windows forcing donations. Littering and dog stool on the streets
vanished when police handed out stiff fines.

What can be done in Vrindaban? Stopping the dogs from passing on the
street isn’t possible but following in line like what happened in NYC
there is a path that is available to stop the crime rate in Vrindaban.
Some suggestions;
1. Stop all panda’s from harassing pilgrims in all the cars entering
Vrindaban.
2. Arrest anyone who litters or uses foul language against any
foreigner or tourist, they should have their mouth washed with soap
along with those who spit pan or urinate in the street. The offenders
should be placed in blocks like in the medieval towns and kept on
public display for the time duration of the offense committed.
3. Serious criminal behavior such as rape, robbery, assault with
deadly weapons should warrant considerable time in prison without any
parole.
4. Establish fixed prices on land and all goods in Vrindaban and all
modes of transportation.
5. Immediately stop all cars and trucks from entering the city.
6. Anyone cheating in selling merchandise at inflated prices to
foreigners in Vrindaban should loose their license to operate any
business.
7. Anyone who harms any animal should be put on forced work programs
to help revive injured animals hit by cars or trucks.
8. Anyone caught taking cows off the street to sell for slaughter
should be stripped of all his possessions and put into hard labor
camps.
9. Any police officer, lawyer, judge or anyone in public office caught
taking bribes should immediately forfeit their ability to function in
any capacity as a public official.
10. Anyone convicted of committing murder should be publicly hanged.
11. Enforced gun laws, no guns in Vrindaban.

Then we have the 10 points that Srila Prabhupada wanted;
1. Grant immigration for 500 foreigners.
2. All M.P.'s initiated brahmanas.
3. Sanjaya the King. (Re-install the ancient system of government rule
by a saintly king.)
4. Close slaughterhouses.
5. Chanting.
6. Meat-eaters-at home. No public meat eating.
7. Prostitution punishable.
8. No religious group except Bhagavad Gétä as it is.
9. All government officers must join kirtan at least twice a day.
10. Support Krishna consciousness all over the world.
New Delhi, August 22, 1975,
In tiny, cramped handwriting, Çréla Prabhupäda had noted down in a
small address book a list of points he wanted to discuss with Mrs.
Gandhi. At 9:15 in the morning, Çréla Prabhupäda and several of his
leading disciples arrived at the prime minister's home, where they
were confronted by a formidable security check. Two days before, the
prime minister of Bangladesh had been assassinated, and Mrs. Gandhi
was rumored to be next. Armed soldiers, therefore, surrounded her
residence. The guards at the outer gate decided that the foreigners
could not go in; Çréla Prabhupäda alone could enter. While one guard
opened the gate, another ushered Çréla Prabhupäda into a car, which
carried him to the prime minister's front door. Meanwhile, the
devotees waited in anxiety by the outer gate. Always some disciples
would accompany Prabhupäda wherever he went; his disciples worried,
almost like doting parents, that he might need their assistance.
The most pressing item was at the head of the list: Mrs. Gandhi should
grant permanent visas to Prabhupäda's Western disciples in India. Just
a few weeks before, some of the foreign devotees in Mäyäpur had been
asked to leave the country. For years Prabhupäda had been asking for
permanent visas whenever he met governors, members of Parliament, or
other men of influence. Devotees were constantly being asked to leave
the country to renew their six-month visas. The travel costs incurred
and the disruption of the devotees' services seriously hampered
ISKCON's work in India; therefore, Prabhupäda wanted Indira Gandhi to
sanction up to five hundred foreign disciples to stay permanently in
India.
The other points on Çréla Prabhupäda's list were scriptural directions
for how the prime minister could make her leadership Kåñëa conscious,
in the spirit of the great räjarñis of the Vedic age. These were the
same tenets of God conscious leadership he preached wherever he went,
and he had deep conviction that if the world's leaders would apply
them, an era of peace, prosperity, and happiness would dawn. Indira
Gandhi had a tendency toward authoritative control, so she should
exercise it in terms of Vedic directions. Then her rule could become
most effective and beneficial.
A government official opened the door to Çréla Prabhupäda's car,
ushered him into the house, and brought him before the prime minister.
As Prabhupäda entered the room, Mrs. Gandhi stood up. Although she
greeted him cordially and offered him a seat, he could immediately
detect that she was distracted, fearful for her life. She openly
admitted it, and added that this was not, therefore, a good time for
their meeting. Prabhupäda felt that she would have preferred not to
meet at all, but was allowing it only because she had promised. Her
agreeing to see him, he felt, was an indication that she had some
attraction for spiritual life, but he understood that on this visit at
least, he could not introduce the extensive advice he had been
contemplating.
Mrs. Gandhi complimented Çréla Prabhupäda on the work he was doing all
over the world. "They are good boys," he replied, and he asked if she
could arrange for permanent visas. She agreed, but again mentioned her
present anxiety. They soon ended their talk, and Çréla Prabhupäda
left.
Srila Prabhupada Lilamrta, by Satsvarupa das Goswami, SPL- 48. At home
in India.
Just following in the spirit initiated by Srila Prabhupada we can make
a sincere attempt to strengthen our forces to collect devotees and
join hands in Vrindaban to investigate different ways to tackle the
problem which is presently plaguing the holy dham. To initiate this
appeal I will be running a seminar on art for those inclined to study
and reside in the dham during the Kartik period, and participate in
different group discussions concerning all the above points. I would
like to invite others who are skilled in different areas to come
forward and also offer seminars or group discussion on the problems at
hand. United we stand strong, a spiritual movement means spiritually
empowered people moving together.
Coming soon more detail on different seminars which can bring devotees
to Vrindaban.


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