County of Nassau

Edward Kelley a/k/a Adarsi Das, & Ors.,

Plaintiffs

V.

Aruna Garuda a/k/a Aruna Devi Das, & Ors.

Defendants 

Index No. 04/007016

(Hon. Mahon, J.S.C.)

Reply Affidavit of Nathan Zakheim a/k/a Nara Narayana Dasa in

Further Support of Motion to Dismiss, and in Further Opposition to

Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunction

Nathan Zakheim a/k/a Nara Narayana Dasa, being duly sworn, states as follows on penalty of perjury:

1. I have been a member of the Hare Krishna religion since 1968 when I received the first initiation from His Divine Grace A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (“Srila Prabhupada”) the Founder-Acarya, Spiritual Master of ISKCON, in San Francisco, CA. I received the spiritual name of Nara Narayana Dasa. I received the Brahman initiation soon after. I have resided in various ISKCON temples over the years. I have primarily been engaged in constructing temples, festival carts, altars, deities etc. I have also served as the President of ISKCON Temple in London, England in 1971. I have read and researched Srila Prabhupada’s books, letters, conversations etc. extensively apart from having close personal association with Srila Prabhupada for six years. The facts I describe are my personal knowledge or my understanding from my personal experience.

Meeting in New Vrindavan, Wv, 1970, Direction of Management & Gbc

2. I was present at the ISKCON farm in New Vrindavan, WV in 1970 when the Direction of Management (“DOM”) was first submitted to the body of devotees in a meeting. I attended the meeting. The first Governing Body Commission (“GBC”) Chairman Rupanuga Das personally showed me the DOM, Rumbaugh Affl’ Exhibit 1, resubmitted here as (Exhibit F).

3. I was told in the meeting that this document will be the GBC charter as also the constitution of ISKCON.

4. It was the understanding at the time that this is how the ISKCON institution will be run. The newly appointed Zonal Secretaries of the GBC will oversee the running of existing temples and will open new ones.

5. Twelve Zonal Secretaries of the GBC were originally selected by Srila Prabhupada as stated in the DOM.

6. Up until that time, it was the clear understanding of all ISKCON members that each of the ISKCON temples was run by a President, a Secretary and a Treasurer. Srila Prabhupada used to oversee the management of the temples and he would regularly advise the Presidents, as also the other members, in managing the temples and the society at large. We got the understanding from the meeting that from then on Srila Prabhuapda wanted the GBC to try to do what he had been doing so that he could be free to write books and travel and preach.

7. We understood also at that time that a major reason for Srila Prabhuapda to have made this decision was because some disciples had been trying to usurp his position and he was disgusted with them. Hence he wanted to hand over the management to his disciples and retire from active management.

8. At the same festival in New Vrindavan, WV, four sannyasis created quite a stir by preaching a different philosophy than from what Srila Prabhupada had taught us. Additionally, they started preaching that Srila Prabhupada was no longer managing the society hence these disciples should be managing the society now. Srila Prabhupada had earlier asked them to be relieved of all management, given them sannyas and then later told them to leave ISKCON temples and preach on their own.

Direction of Management Not Followed

9. Over the years, I was dismayed to see that the GBC as a whole, and also individual Commissioners, were not following the most essential principles of the DOM.

10. There were no elections held among the temple presidents to elect the commissioners as directed in Article 2 of the DOM. Currently, new commissioners are added by an election among the existing Commissioners itself.

11. Article 3 sets the term of the commissioners to be three years. They could be re-elected. But, currently the commissioners do not follow any term limit.

12. Article 1,2,3,6,7,8,9 of the DOM provide for only the GBC to oversee the management of ISKCON temples. But GBC has added a whole new organization structure to oversee management of ISKCON temples. Currently there are deputy GBCs, Regional Secretaries etc., never mentioned in the DOM. This hierarchical organizational structure was never intended by the founder Srila Prabhupada, which is evidenced in the DOM.

13. According to Article 7 of the DOM, all real estate of the society should be in the name of ISKCON, Inc. In the beginning, as far as I am familiar, the local ISKCON temples in the USA were all registered as individual corporations in the name of International Society for Krishna Consciousness (“ISKCON”), Inc. in the respective states. But later, on the advice of the members of the GBC, the temples were registered as separate corporations, not as ISKCON, Inc.

14. Article 8 of DOM says that “removal of a Temple President by the GBC requires support by the local Temple members.” In my personal experience, I have seen various temple presidents being removed by the Commissioners, without caring to take a vote of the local temple members.

15. The Direction of Management was kept away from the eyes of the Temple Members from 1970 until 1994 or thereabouts. When, in 1975 I inquired as to the accessibility of the DOM from a GBC member from the Los Angeles area, I was told coldly, "the DOM is locked in a safe, and you will never be able to see it".

16. Clearly, the GBC commissioners of that time DID NOT WANT anyone to know of the existence of the DOM, nor did anyone even know enough to request this signed order of Srila Prabhupada.

17. In summary, the Direction of Management, as given by Srila Prabhupada in 1970, is the direction on which the management of ISKCON temples should be done. Unfortunately, the members of the GBC and the whole GBC body have rarely ever followed the essential instructions of the DOM.

18. Hence, it is my conclusion that none of the current members of the GBC are duly elected as directed by Srila Prabhupada in this Direction of Management. Hence they are unauthorized to act as a representatives of the GBC.

The Result of Not Following the DOM by the GBC

19. Even though the GBC was not following the DOM at the time of the physical presence of the founder Srila Prabhupada, he was keeping them in check and correcting them personally. They were answerable to him. But since the time Srila Prabhupada left his body in late 1977, the ISKCON movement, devoid of the system of accountable leadership complete with "checks and balances", which DOM puts in place, has been plagued with one scandal after another, causing untold harm to thousands of initiated disciples as well as the perverted mistreatment of the children entrusted by sincere and unsuspecting parents to the ISKCON Parochial schools.

20. It would be hard to imagine that the present Children of Krishna vs ISKCON lawsuit in Dallas District Court of $400 million on behalf of the abused children of ISKCON could have arisen had the parents of those children had the duty and power to elect their own Temple Presidents and in turn those Temple Presidents had the power to elect, review, and control the behavior and actions of an elected GBC body; subject to review every three years. With such accountability in place, misuse of power, and the various crimes perpetrated or "covered up" by the GBC commissioners are very unlikely to have occurred, or at least in such a minor way that ordinary measures could have been taken to rectify the problems as they occurred.

21. As it stands today, the GBC commissioners style themselves as autocratic oligarchs who elect one another and attempt to control and effectively hold "hostage" the congregational body of ISKCON whom they have systematically disempowered by (a) forcing Temple Presidents of their choice on the members of temples whether they want them or not; and (b) Changing the by-laws to successively take away all voting rights from Temple Members. There is no process for redress of grievance or self-rule as clearly required by the DOM. Far from being subject to peer review by their fellow Temple Presidents, the GBC commissioners have managed to create a "Realm of Fear" in which no one dares to question even their most egregious departures from even the basic rules and regulations required by the common Temple Member. As in the case of the Catholic Church, this has led to "cover up" of crimes of many varieties including, but not limited to, embezzlement, cruelty, child molestation, and other crimes.

Who Are the Current Members of the GBC?

22. As far as I can see, there are no commissioners from the original 12 of the GBC named in the DOM who are still part of the GBC. They have either been murdered or they have been killed, removed, have left in disgrace, embezzled money, broken the regulative principles given by Srila Prabhupada or left the religion altogether. None of the 12 GBC commissioners are listed as current active members of the GBC in the GBC resolution of 2004 on their website www.iskcongbc.com.

23. The GBC should be reorganized based upon Article 2 of the DOM by calling for an election among the Temple Presidents of ISKCON temples.

The Roman Catholicisation of ISCKON by the GBC

24. I noticed another disturbing trend in the GBC of ISKCON after Srila Prabhupada left his body. The zonal secretaries started likening the ISKCON organization to that of the ecclesiastical hierarchical organization of the Roman Catholics.

25. ISKCON is not a hierarchy. In a hierarchy, the power and authority is transferred from an oligarch or group of oligarchs down through a chain of ecclesiastical command to the "grass roots" congregation members. Srila Prabhupada made ISKCON a "Lower-archy". Temple members elect Temple President. Temple Presidents elect the GBC commissioners every three years. GBC cannot remove the Temple President without the vote of the temple members. By this process, the popular base of ISKCON controls the structure of the organization and the ELECTED GBC has no option but to represent the individual temples. Unlike the Vatican or the current GBC, the "authority of God" is NOT transferred down a hierarchal structure with the Church (or ISKCON) as the empowered "vehicle" for such "divine" transfer. Iskcon is designed to facilitate individual devotees to access god and guru directly, and the gbc and temple presidents are there to create organizational facilitation for this to take place.

26. The term "GBC" or "Governing Body Commission" was adopted by Sri Srimad

Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, the spiritual master of Srila Prabhupada, from the Governing Body Commission of the Indian Railway system. He intended that his own GBC would manage the Gaudiya Matha (his church), but they did not co-operate sufficiently to create such a body and cause it to continue for the purpose of management. After the concept failed leading to the failure of the Gaudiya Matha itself, Srila Prabhupada took up the mission of his spiritual master under the name and style of "ISKCON" and shortly after founding it created a "GBC" modeled after the proposed but not implemented GBC of the Gaudiya Matha. Considering the emphatically non-"ecclesiastical" origins of the original GBC of the Gaudiya Matha, and considering the actual text of the DOM which clearly establishes that the ISKCON GBC is a non-paid public service job such as that of City Councilman or at best State or Federal Assemblyman or Representative, and no "ecclesiastic" authority can be based upon this basically prosaic and non-ecclesiastical service to ISKCON

27. In the DOM, there is no mention of "empowerment" of religious or other "ecclesiastical" powers that come with the job of GBC. All that is required to be elected GBC commissioner is to be nominated by the body of Temple Presidents who, themselves, do not fill an ecclesiastical post.

28. In general, all posts in ISKCON are to be filled by initiated disciples of Srila Prabhupada. It is to be assumed that such initiated disciples of His Divine Grace are expected to follow the four regulative principles and to chant the prescribed number of rounds daily before being considered to hold the post either of Temple president or of GBC. Of course, even to live in a temple those exact requirements are expected of each resident

29. As such, it can be concluded that there is no stated personal qualification as a pre-requisite for being elected to the GBC body that exceeds the personal qualification to either live in any ISKCON temple prior to initiation, or after initiation as a common temple member. Since the GBC is to be elected indirectly by the initiated (and possibly uninitiated) temple members, no power is conferred from that humble source that could even remotely be referred to as "ecclesiastical".

30. Page 3 line 7 of the DOM establishes that the DOM is to be the "Constitution" of ISKCON. On line 2 and 3 of that same page, Srila Prabhupada states that "I hope my beloved disciples will kindly accept them." Nowhere in that document can "ecclesiastical" powers be found to have been conferred on such GBC members by Srila Prabhupada, nor have the GBC been granted powers INDEPENDENT of Srila Prabhupada.

31. The ecclesiastic order of Srila Prabhupada by which the DOM was created and the initial GBC representatives appointed by Srila Prabhupada does not automatically or derivatively confer ecclesiastic powers on the GBC members themselves, nor does it confer ecclesiastic powers on the nominal category of the elected post of GBC. There is no provision in any body of ISKCON literature or scripture that provides for a congregation to create ecclesiastical powers to any group or individual. By ISKCON standard, all status is obtained by personal qualification and personal example rather than by appointment of empowerment by any person or body of ISCKON members.

32. The post of GBC commissioner is, in final analysis, neither an ecclesiastic post nor a spiritual post. Behavior superior to that of a common Temple Member is nowhere stated as a requirement for attaining the post of a GBC commissioner. Of course, the Temple Members would always be wise to select a good and qualified person to the post of Temple President, and such qualified Temple President would always be wise to select by vote a qualified person from the ranks of Temple Presidents to be elected a GBC commissioner. Aside from such common sense, prudence in the selection of elected representative leadership, there is no further spiritual, ecclesiastic, or even exemplary behavior, exalted faith or any other extraordinary quality expected of a Temple President prior to being considered candidate to the GBC.

33. Webster's defines "ecclesiastic" pertaining to a "priest" or person in "holy orders". On page 3 of the DOM, Srila Prabhupada distinguishes between the GBC commissioners and persons in "holy orders" namely Sannyas. Lines 26 through 32 clearly define the distinction between the "ecclesiastical" duties of the priestly Sannyas, and the non-ecclesiastical duties of the GBC. According to the DOM, GBC is a post that is to be held by lay members of ISKCON, not those from the Sannyas order. The priestly Sannyas is prohibited from management duties. A further distinction is that Sannyas is not an elected post, but an ecclesiastic order obtained through personal qualifications unrelated to GBC management duties. Similarly, a priestly Sannyas cannot serve as a member of the GBC according to the DOM.

Conclusion

34. Line 23, 24, and 25 of page 3 clearly state that the GBC will act as His "direct representatives", and after his "demise" will act as "executors". Being named executor REQUIRES THAT THE EXECUTOR EXECUTE HIS DUTIES IN KEEPING WITH THE EXPRESS DESIRES OF THE CREATOR OF THE DOM, WHICH SPECIFICALLY INCLUDES THE UNMODIFIED CONTENTS OF THE DOM.

35. Factually speaking, the DOM is the "charter" by which the GBC is created. Prior to the DOM, the GBC DID NOT EXIST. For "representatives" and later "executors" to claim to exist in good standing while refusing to act according to the founding charter under which they were created creates an incompatible situation. Either they obey their Founding Charter and take on the role of "GBC" or they refuse the terms and conditions of their Founding Charter, and then dissolve or eliminate the designation of GBC. As the designation of GBC was, in fact, established by an ECCLESIASTIC ORDER of the Founder Acharya of ISKCON, such order can neither be neglected nor ignored by any initiated member of ISKCON in good standing. From the perspective of a member of ISKCON in good standing, the GBC must exist, and in addition, IT MUST EXIST AS STATED IN THE DOM, WHICH IS CLEARLY THE INTENT OF THE FOUNDER OF THE GBC!

Dated: August 16, 2004

Nathan Zakheim

Solemnly affirmed this

day of August, 2004

Notary Public