Text, Context, Evidence and Institutional ConsequenceS

PROLOGUE

This series is not being written to put Srila Prabhupada writings on trial. Nor is it being written to ‘rescue’ him from his own words – if that’s even possible for an acharya like him.

Both are wrong premises…let us understand why.

Srila Prabhupada spoke extensively about women, marriage, chastity, protection, intelligence, sexuality, family life, renunciation and spiritual qualification to name a few topics. And not limited to these, of course. Some of those statements are profound, compassionate and beautifully/radically transcendental. Some belong recognizably to the erstwhile social era in which he was raised. Some were interpretations of shastras. Some were practical instructions given in particular circumstances, yes. Some were his observations about human behaviour. And some, relied upon empirical assumptions that deserve to be examined in the light of what we know today.

Over time, however, these very different categories of statements have often been compressed into a single thing – it is called flattening

“Srila Prabhupada said….”

And once that is said, something happens – thinking is meant to stop. Because if you question Srila Prabhupada, you are ignorant at best, and an offender at worst. The buck stops.

Many of his statements made in his conversation can begin functioning like siddhanta. And his social observations have become universal philosophy. His empirical claim have acquired scriptural permanence and every contextual instruction can become an institutional rule.

And unfortunately, an opinion about women can eventually become a lens through which actual women are judged – even now. Why does it matter, you ask? It does matter – because that framework and alignment of every institutional leader is what impacts one’s alignment and even family life.

That root cause, the real purport, and the realignment is what this series seeks to examine/address

It is not merely quoting verbatim like a parrot – What did Srila Prabhupada say. But also looking deeply into what he was responding to, what the shastras actually say; what his translations say and also his purports. It is also important to delineate which of these statements are absolute/theological, which are social and which are empirical.

Most importantly, I want to urge every devotee, preacher, and leader to introspect – have we preserved sentences and lost the principle?

I do not want to make this an exercise of selective quotation

Anyone can construct the ‘Srila Prabhupada’ they prefer by selecting quotations that demonstrate compliance to that image. But that is spiritual and intellectual dishonesty.
WHO IS SRILA PRABHUPADA AS HE IS?
We can go berserk and look at all his statements that are restrictive and ‘not ok’ towards women. Because it is the same acharya who also authorized women to preach, manage temples, become ‘guru’ when qualified and even gave Gayatri initiation. He is speaking about the same tradition that gave us Kunti, Devahuti, Gargi, Maithreyi, Jahnava Devi, Meera Bai, Jana Bai, Sakku Bai and many others

There is definitely a tension and it is a big taboo to ask these questions. I believe this tension must therefore be examined rather than concealed.

Faith should not be flattened to a cookie cutter model. It should be capable of complexity and if it cannot survive when difficult statements are questioned/analyzed, that is not strength

This is neither rebellion nor apologetics:

There are two easy ways to approach uncomfortable statements by a revered spiritual master. The first is flat rejection, by saying, “This sounds unacceptable today, therefore the teacher was wrong and everything associated with him becomes suspect.” The second is defensive apologetics – which is what I see many people scramble to do – “because the teacher is spiritually authoritative, every statement must somehow be eternally and literally correct. If the evidence appears otherwise, the evidence or the listener must be wrong.”

This series chooses neither of the approaches. It begins from a different form of respect – Take the teacher seriously enough to read him completely and also take shastra seriously enough to examine the source, so that you can distinguish revelation from interpretation or time-based utterance. We will also consider some plain scientific studies where empirical claim has been made.

Most importantly, this is an invitation and a humble request to every devotee, preacher and leader, to take institutional consequences seriously when a statement about an entire class of people begins shaping how individual human beings are treated. Because interpretation eventually becomes culture – and that is what I could say is perhaps the central concern of the series.

If women are presumed and accepted as less intelligent, their disagreement may carry a different connotation – unless it is meant they are never meant to disagree or share their opinion or thoughts. If women are presumed to require male protection, protection can gradually become supervision. If female independence is treated with suspicion, a woman outside a conventional marital structure can begin to be viewed as spiritually unsafe – and this in particular has happened.

If renunciants are presumed spiritually superior to householders, their opinions about many things can acquire an authority that they may not be qualified to exercise. And if these assumptions are repeated for generations, people may eventually forget that they are interpretations at all. They simply become: “our culture.” And that is the dangerous gap that this as-is examination and alternative approach aims to present

This conversation belongs to every branch or faction of the Srila Prabhupada’s movement in particular (notwithstanding the fact that similar views/biases may exist in other schools of thought)

The questions in this series are not confined to one institutional model – I am refering to the multi-guru ISKCON communities, where questions about female initiating gurus, leadership and authority continue to evolve. And also in ritvik institutions, where Srila Prabhupada remains the sole initiating guru but the interpretation of his recorded teachings is necessarily carried out by contemporary devotees

The initiation structure many be different but it has not solved for the the interpretive problem.

So, how do we faithfully inherit Srila Prabhupada without turning historically situated interpretations into unquestionable social dogma?

The expected outcome is not a verdict

At the end of this series, I do not expect readers to conclude if Srila Prabhupada was right about women or was he wrong. I hope instead that we become capable of asking better questions. That we learn to distinguish siddhanta from social prescription, and also how to differentiate textual translation and spiritual principles from commentary, keeping n mind the eternal truth, not taken from temporary and ‘questionable’ dharma shastras.

We have to transform the movement to something where devotees become less frightened of context and more aligned with the eternal truth (which actually Srila Prabhupada has given in abundance). And most importantly, that Srila Prabhupada himself is allowed to be read in full rather than reduced either to a collection of uncomfortable quotations or to an untouchable personality requiring constant defence.

The purpose of this series is therefore not to weaken anyone’s faith – and if it does, it was not strong in the first place. The goal is to remove from faith what was never required for faith to survive.

Because Krishna does not need intellectual dishonesty. And Srila Prabhupada does not need us to stop thinking in order to remain his followers.

He deserves better than blind defence that ruins relationships and creates difficult feelings amongst devotees and even amongst family members too.

In particular, women deserve better than inherited assumptions

In the next Part, we will examine the statement

“WOMEN ARE LESS INTELLIGENT”