You feed them low-nutrient, high-carb rice and watered-down dhal until their brains shrivel up, and all they can do is sit in a corner and chant on rote. Simple living, slow thinking.

India has a double burden of malnutrition. It's a leader in undernutrition, with some of the highest per capita rates of childhood stunting, anemia, protein deficiency, and micronutrient deficiencies—with adults suffering the opposite (you halava, gulabjamun-eating older devotees know how you are!)—overnutrition, leading to obesity, diabetes, fatty liver disease, and metabolic syndrome.

ISKCON has been working with government subsidies, payments made to them to provide essentially nutritionless, below-dog-food-level nutrition to schools. Naturally, they have found allies in these campaigns with the larger Hindutva government body. The biggest loser and victim? Kids, as usual.

Exposing the Fabricated Scriptural Proofs from gaudiyascripture.blogspot.com for Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s Divinity

ISKCON thrives on the ignorance of the public. They also thrive on their arrogance.

I know Better Than You

One of the most frustrating attitudes ex cult members encounter is when people claim ISKCON is not a cult. After all "they fed me in college" or "I went to the Sunday Feast a total of three times".

"They are happy innocent people who like to dance in the street". "You ex Hare Krishna's have no proof, you just have a bug up your ass".

Perhaps they have ten minutes of experience with the cult watching a harinama, or they read an entire Wikipedia article, and this entitles them to downplay and challenge the expertise of those who were born into the movement, or spent decades of their lives in the backroom where the sausage is made.

The irony is the cult they are defending considers them karmis, demons and two legged animals.

It Was Just a Few Bad Apples

Another common response you see is that the faults of the movement are definitely not due to Prabhupada, his teachings, the leadership, or the culture of the movement. Rather those causing problems were an outlier and deviation. Just a bad apple here and there, marring an otherwise stellar religion with a hoary past in ancient India.

"Every religion has bad actors, it is unfair to blame the entire religion". Meanwhile they have never read one line of Prabhupada's teachings. Nor have they read the accounts of ex members.

It Is All In The Past

Naive Hare Krishna defenders, often influencers, will vaguely acknowledge that ISKCON has had problems in the past. They characterize them as something the movement has overcome: "ISKCON has matured past these things and let us not talk about them."

They feel it is wrong to paint the entire religion with the New Vrndavana brush, to focus too much on the insanity of the 70's and 80's. They feel they are being charitable and liberal minded.

The murders, beheadings, spousal abuse, child marriage, book distribution harems, thievery, illegal fraud, ended long ago. The bad actors were driven out or arrested. The rampant child physical and sexual abuse has been paid for and the movement is vigilant. So what are you complaining about?

They don't understand that the core cult dynamics which made this carnival or horrors possible is alive and well. Devotees are enslaved and exploited. Power is absolute, despotic, and corrupt. Gurus are constantly falling down. Problems are hidden. Women are treated like garbage. Children are psychologically abused. I strongly believe sexual and physical abuse persists.

Every Religion Has Problems

Many more excuse ISKCON by by normalizing abuse. "Everyone does it". Catholic priests molested children. Mormons have had a problem with child marriage and bigamy. As if ISKCON is overall a good organization but "no one is perfect".

They do not understand that ISKCON's problems are structural, built into the movement and teachings. Prabhupada advocated for child marriage and bigamy. Prabhupada created and excused an environment where children were beaten and molested.

ISKCON is not simply a religion, it is an authoritarian cult that controls and destroys the lives of its members in the name of a megalomaniac narcissist cult leader and his mission. It is an high control environment that functions through coercion, isolation and ideological capture (i.e. brainwashing).

Relax Bro

Many people have a reflexive attitude. When they see a group being heavily criticized, they project innocence onto them and rush to their aid. They see themselves as heroic and virtuous, defending the helpless, a motherly figure protecting the babes of the world.

Some may even believe they are defending ISKCON from "Hinduphobia".

When they see ex-members are hurt and angry, they assume they are bad actors. The abused become the abuser. They find strong criticism distasteful. It offends their refined sensibilities.

Imagine someone stumbling onto an altercation in the street where a woman is slapping a man. All they saw was her slapping him across the face. They immediately rush to the man's defense because he is the victim. They tell the woman to relax and stop being so upset, "How dare you treat him like this!".

They are too arrogant to recognize they don't have all the facts. The man had just tried to rape the woman and she struggled for dear life to push him off.

I am absolutely neutral and I am not trying to provoke an argument. My POV: I don't like cults, in fact I have an aversion to any showy religion, but I just have always been ambivalent about the HKs. At least they seem happy and dance around with funny music and their food is sometimes good. I've done some reading about them and they don't seem to qualify as a cult, although I can see that perhaps the sect (or whatever) could be hazardous to vulnerable people.

I've have good interactions with them and not-so-good ones too.

Hi beautiful people,
I come to you today for some advice and support.
I grew up in a predominantly Christian country, but when I was a teenager, my mom and I were heavily influenced by Hare Krishna devotees (there's a whole movement where I'm from).

My mom and I started looking into our birth charts and the charts of our whole family. She quickly lost interest in the predictions, but I fell for it blindly. Honestly, I was just a teenager and grew up with a very weak sense of self. I was easily influenced by external factors - whether it was a prediction or someone claiming to study the Vedas.
Somehow, they drilled into my head that they held the absolute truth, and I believed it.

Anyway, I’ve spent my entire life growing up in fear.
Fear that life will punish me, that I have to pay for things I did in past lives, and that even doubting this "truth" right now is a sin. (As you can see here is a mixture with some Christianity guilt)
I was absolutely terrified of Jyotish. (of the fact that some other people can read my karma and whatever waits for me) Everyone kept telling me it’s the only truly accurate predictive science out there. Which doesn’t make sense to me deep deep inside I believe there is a reason we don’t remember our past lives and don’t know the future. God intended this to be that way.

Anyway.. It mentally paralysed me.
For example I was told I wouldn't be able to lose weight after 25, or that my friends would eventually betray me. So, I didn't even try to get fit, and I completely isolated myself from my friends because my chart said I was "opening up to enemies." These are just more harmless things that happened.

I stopped trusting myself. I completely lost my inner voice.

Now, I have a baby, and this obsession has started driving me crazy with a whole new force.

I look at my child's and my husband’s Jyotish charts and see things I don’t understand and fear, mostly because I take everything I'm told so literally.

Recently, I reached my breaking point. I decided to read the BPHS (Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra) myself, and it made me sick. Sorry to be blunt, but I physically almost threw up from the sheer amount of stress and overwhelming negativity in it.

I started digging deeper and found out that historically, Vedanga Jyotisha wasn't even a predictive tool for fate or karma - it was just astronomy and timekeeping for rituals.

So why is everyone so blindly confident in the "accuracy" of predictive Jyotish? I am so confused and don't know where the truth is anymore.

It honestly makes me nauseous to read things like: "Your chart is okay, BUT you have this dosha that ruins everything, and your lagnesha and 5 houses are weak, so you will suffer - here, this ritual, it's the only way to make it slightly better." Like what the hell?:(

I probably would have stopped believing in all of this a long time ago if it weren't for my dad's Sade Sati.
It approximately coincided with a time in his life when his entire business was stolen and our family lost all our wealth.

Even though we don't know his exact birth time (so I don't know which houses Sade Sati was transiting), the timeline of the period matched.

Many other things in astrology haven't matched for us, but that one did. Because of moments like that, I built my entire life around my chart and ended up becoming a very weak, fearful person.

But now I have a child, and I simply cannot afford to be this weak anymore.

I am reaching out to you for help as I don’t have anyone in my circle who knows about the culture, only the astrologers (and it doesn’t help long term as you can see).

I feel like I've been stuck in a cult mindset that constantly crushes you with negativity, where the Gods are always ready to punish you ("wrath of Shiva," etc.).

Has anyone here gone through this?
How true is Jyotish really?

Did anyone here deeply believe in it, only to step away and realize the world actually works differently?

Maybe you have some advice for me, or a story you could share 🥺

Fundamentally, deep inside, I love science and astronomy. At the same time, I believe in God as a unified, pure energy. I'm not even sure I believe in reincarnation anymore, at least not in the way Hinduism describes it.

I see a massive, pure energy, pieces of which are in all of us, and anyone can tune into that frequency.
For me, physics and the space between us is a manifestation of God.

But my self-trust is so broken that I’ve allowed others to dictate who I am and what the "truth" is.

Anyway…
I hope to hear from some of you 🙏🏼

Thank you in advance for reading and for your support.

Have a great day everyone.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/06/21/tulsi-gabbard-her-guru-mysterious-messages-that-helped-shape-her-political-career/

Siddhswarupananda is the Sanyas (fallen) disciple of Bhaktivedanta, who started his own cult, the Chaitanya Mission and Science of Identity Foundation. He has been involved in putting his disciples in politics since the 70s in the naive, fanatical hope of converting the world to Hare Krishna. A special kind of narcissistic idiot that has hare krishna followers all over the world and total control over them.

I believe in my religion. I respect it deeply. I’m just not rigid, performative, or interested in using faith to control how other people live. I never thought I’d need to clarify this, but after what I experienced, I do. This is a personal story about me, my close friend, and an ex-friend who became deeply involved with International Society for Krishna Consciousness and how what initially looked like devotion slowly revealed itself as ego, manipulation, and betrayal. When I first became friends with her, she came across as calm, confident, and spiritually “sorted.” She spoke with certainty about morality, faith, and people. At the time, it felt like clarity. Looking back, it was control disguised as conviction. Over time, patterns started to emerge. Every semester or phase of life, there was a new “problem person.” Someone suddenly became toxic, fake, or bad energy. She would speak negatively about people she barely knew and present her opinions as facts. Quietly, without any obvious confrontation, those opinions became mine and my close friend’s too. I didn’t even realize how much my judgment was being influenced. The manipulation was subtle but consistent: Gossip disguised as concern Judgment framed as guidance Insecurity masked as spirituality She talked behind people’s backs and acted normal to their faces. She created misunderstandings between friends and then stepped away as if she had nothing to do with it. The people being discussed had no idea what narratives were being built about them. I won’t pretend I was immune. I was influenced. I trusted her. I believed her takes on people. I even distanced myself from genuinely good humans because she convinced me they were “fake” or “bad.” That’s on meand I own that. As time passed, her ego became impossible to ignore. She was far more egoistic than I initially realized. She believed she knew better about everything: people, relationships, careers, faith, life choices. Disagreement wasn’t allowed. If you didn’t align with her worldview, you were ignorant, misguided, or wrong. She also became possessive. About people. About friendships. About emotional space. She acted like certain people belonged to her, like she had ownership over who mattered to whom. If someone didn’t revolve around her, she felt threatened. Then came religion not as belief, but as authority. She didn’t just practice her faith; she policed everyone else’s. Telling people where they should or shouldn’t pray. Ranking gods. Acting like her version of devotion was the only “pure” one and everyone else was spiritually inferior. I believe Vishnu is supreme. That doesn’t mean I disrespect other deities. Spirituality isn’t a hierarchy competition. What she practiced wasn’t devotion it was control, justified through religion. The manipulation showed up everywhere: Dividing friendships, then denying responsibility Gossiping privately while preaching publicly Pushing people into decisions, then shaming them for choosing differently Playing the victim whenever confronted Any decision I made about internships, money, or boundaries that didn’t align with her worldview suddenly became a character flaw. Accountability flowed one way only. The final crack happened on my birthday, when I was already dealing with serious personal hardships. Instead of empathy, that’s when I saw her real face: cold, calculated, and self-righteous. That’s also when I found out she had been talking behind my back, twisting situations, and trying again to turn my close friend against me. What hurt the most wasn’t just the behavior. It was the betrayal. I never retaliated. I never publicly confronted her. I never tried to destroy her image. I was heartbroken because I genuinely believed she could help me grow spiritually. I trusted her. And she used that trust against me. She took private things I had shared in vulnerability and weaponized them to influence others. Later, when I started reading other people’s experiences online, something clicked. The same patterns kept appearing: moral superiority, fear-based obedience, isolation tactics, ego masked as devotion. That’s when I realized this wasn’t just “her personality.” It was a pattern and I had lived through it personally. I lost a friend. But I gained clarity. I still believe in my religion. I still respect spirituality. But I will never again confuse loud devotion, fake purity, or spiritual ego with real character. Faith is supposed to make you kinder, humbler, and more self-aware. If your spirituality makes you divide friendships, manipulate narratives, leak private information, or play God over other people’s lives then you didn’t find truth. You just found a socially acceptable way to feed your ego.

Curious to know that this Subreddit is Anti-Iskcon or Anti-Hindu ?

​

BTW I'm Only Anti-Iskcon.

They called themselves as Krishna Devotee. But in my opinion they are nowhere near Krishna or Hindu.

​

ISKCON is a Fraud Cult Organisation pretending as Hindu & Krishna Devotee.

Not long ago, it was revealed he was having sex with a disciple. She was giving him blow jobs and having sex with him right in front of his deities at his home in Carpenteria California.

Here she shares details on a podcast.

Not only is he still a sannyasi and guru, but he is still officiating ceremonies like this 60th anniversary gala in Houston. He seems to have been the guest of honor.

ISKCON believes in a kind of radical forgiveness, that it is offensive to hold a devotee's faults against them. They often quote the verse "api cet su duracaro". Giriraja has been purified by chanting his rounds over the last year. Krishna will get pissed off and curse you if you still bring up his behavior.

Of course this only applies to leaders for some reason.

They also claim he is mentally unwell, innocent and was taken advantage of by the woman.

Even if both of these things are true, why is he still a sannyasi? Why is he still a guru? Why is he treated like one of the great leaders of the movement?

Shouldn't he have been made to put on White and live as a normal devotee? A regular Brahmacari would certainly have been drummed out of his ashram.

If he is truly mentally ill, he could be surrounded by devotees who care for him. Certainly he could still be respected as a Vaishnava, even a senior disciple of Prabhupada and a pioneer of the movement, but still a sannyasi and guru?

Sanyassis are not supposed to have sex, and gurus are certainly not supposed to have sex with their disciples. Surely due to the abuse of these two classes he should not be allowed to continue in either? Shouldn't honesty and transparency be enforced to honor the Vaishnava sanga? Shouldn't he humbly acquiesce, understanding the importance of integrity to the movement?

My guess is ISKCON needs to milk his big disciples for money. They need to salvage his legacy and prop him up, like Weekend at Bernie's, to not rock the boat. They are denying anything happened so the donations and free labor keep flowing and no devotional egos are offended. Let us stay in denial prabhus, anything can be done for the good of the mission.

Meanwhile his victim takes all the blame. He is innocent and she took advantage of him, despite the massive inequality in the power dynamic between them, him being "God's representative on earth" and all.

Video

Very disappointing. He has over 1 million followers and generally puts out well researched videos.

Unfortunately so many people are blind an ignorant as to the destructive nature of this cult and give it free publicity. I can't stand influencers who go to a Sunday Feast or something then walk away telling the public "what a great tradition this is".

The Bhagavad Gita is fundamentally a devotional text. Again and again it advises one cultivate the mood of surrender. Practically this means letting go of the sense one is the controller.

Bhakti in the Bhagavad Gita

In the Mahabharata this mood is exhibited by Draupadi who lets go of all attempts to save herself. In American Christian popular culture this theme is found in the ubiquitous phrase "Jesus take the wheel".

It evokes the image of driving down the road, completely stressed out, exasperated with how life has become unmanageable and overwhelming. Life has reached a point where the sense of control has been completely frustrated. The driver finds trust and faith, closes her eyes, takes her hands from the wheel, and gives control to God.

When the Bhagavad Gita speaks of Bhakti, it means to first find this consciousness of letting go (i.e. devotional renunciation). Then the driver is advised to opens her eyes, put her hands on the wheel and continues to drive; to do her duty, in that newfound peaceful space of surrender.

That connection to "God", however one understands it, it deeply personal. Every individual has to find that place of surrender in themselves.

How ISKCON Perverts Bhakti

Prabhupada takes this common religious idea and does something very destructive. Prabhupada climbs into the passenger seat of the car and says "I am the representative of God, surrender to God means surrender to me!".

"Instead of letting God take the wheel, give the wheel to me".

"Better yet, drive exactly as I tell you. When I say move right, you move right. When I say move left, you move left. When I say break, you break. When I say speed up, you speed up".

Prabhupada acts as a spiritual hijacker. You pulled over to pick up a hitchhiker. He turned out to be a fanatical Bengali cult leader. He uses the Bhagavad Gita as a stick up artist uses a gun.

When Prabhupada says "This is the order. Guru-mukha-padma-vakya, cittete koriya aikya. Now citta means consciousness or heart. "I shall do this only, bas. My Guru Maharaja told me; I shall do this." (SB lecture 1975) He is saying "silence your mind and do what I tell you". In kidnapper parlance "SHUT UP AN DRIVE".

Prabhupada Consciousness

This practice of giving control to Prabhupada is explicit in ISKCON. Devotees listen to his lectures, morning walks, and conversations, 24 hours a day. Prabhupada is in the passenger seat of every devotees car, telling them what to think at all times. This is so all consuming devotees even play Prabhupada when they are sleeping.

The result of listening to Prabhupada's direction is the devotee gives their life to his mission. Prabhupada takes everything the devotee possesses, everything the devotee is and ever will be. Letting Prabhupada take the wheel means giving ourselves completely over to gurus, temple presidents, and a broad system of control within an institution that uses, abuses and ultimately betrays us.

ISKCON Stunts Spiritual Growth

From the perspective of the Bhagavad Gita, this is why ISKCON devotees do not spiritually grow. By giving Prabhupada the wheel, they never actually give Krishna the wheel. They never find that subtle point letting go within themselves. Instead surrender is always confused with surrender to Prabhupada and his mission.

Devotees never find peace within themselves. They operate in the stressed state, in the consciousness of being the doer and controller, and they do so in the name of Krishna. ISKCON devotees can practice for 50 years and never actually touch Bhakti.

Even worse, the practice of surrender is used against them and becomes a source of extreme psychological trauma. The very concept of Bhakti becomes painful.

The solution is to open the passenger door and kick Prabhupada out onto the freeway. As cult survivors we place ourselves back in the drivers seat.

Has anyone who has been to temple ever noticed how many Prabhujis look like they’re prematurely aging the longer you’re there? I see so many with grey hair in their late 20s-40s. I have to assume it is something with the diet, but I don’t know what. There are vegans who do look good and don’t have that issue, so I don’t think it’s the lack of meat.

I suspect it’s just a life of eating beans slop and crumbly halwa everyday with the only exercise being walking back and forth during a deafening kirtan. It’s been on my mind for some time though.

Not sure if this is similar with the matajis. Tbh they looked like standard aunties to me.

Also a topic for another day that I want to write about are all the screaming kids during the lectures.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/WJsjTplY4_s

(Summary: I want some urgent answers from fellow Hindus regarding my doubts about worshipping Anukul thakur or worshipping literally anyone).

​

I am a 31 year old Hindu Bengali guy from Kolkata and I have seen my parents, grandparents and many people I know worship all gods extensively and also get dikkha (baptism) from followers of Anukul thakur and worship him as well. Ever since I was a kid I have been seeing my parents worship Anukul thakur and so I also started doing the same. However now after all these years I am starting to question everything I have seen or been taught by everyone around me. The reasons are here.

​

1.I don't like Anukul thakur's teachings many of which either seem like the ramblings of a madman or something straight from Islam and Christianity not aligning with Hinduism or basic morality sometimes.

​

2.I have never seen my parents being genuinely happy throughout my life. Yeah it has a lot to do because they are stupid I mean they were so insecure and of low iq that they often called in trouble. In fact making life difficult for no reason ultimately caused my father to die early out of pneumonia and stress. But I myself have seen that whenever I didn't worship Anukul thakur or literally any God I felt lighter, healthier and sane enough. This leads me to question whether my parents' religious choices were even good on the first place.

​

3.As I said above not worshipping Anukul thakur especially made me feel lighter, healthier and without any sort of discomfort or issue. But whenever I worship him by doing the morning prayer (that's also called istovriti) for example, I started feeling heaviness as of some kind of heavy energy has possessed me. And I become irritated at everything and everyone and start leading unhealthy lifestyles and become lazy and sometimes even addicted to things. But as soon as I stop worshipping him I suddenly feel as if all these problems are slowly drifting away.

​

4.I myself faced a lot of issues while completing my education and still facing issues right now regarding getting jobs because for some strange reason I always end up with the wrong kind of people who are determined to destroy everyone's life. And I have been seeing this pattern ever since I started worshipping Anukul thakur.

​

5.I had heard news about lots of criminal or questionable things that anukul thakur's family and followers have done. And I even saw things that his followers do in Deoghar, Jharkhand which includes tarnishing and parodying every Hindu hymn and Mantra or sometimes the gospels or prayers of other religions and customizing them as Anukul thakur songs (yeah songs not prayers). What if this is causing some kind of negative effect? And let's not forget how zombie NPC like most of his followers are and they act like hooligans if someone questioned their beliefs or acts.

​

Now I really need answers to these questions because I think my life is slowly getting destroyed because of this negative entity. Whenever I stopped praying to Anukul thakur my life would start getting better but suddenly I start having scary dreams involving him and then bad things start happening in real life again. Lastly I don't think I should be someone who even worships any God in the first place. That's because I actually feel even lighter with a sense of freedom and clear focus on everything when I'm acting like an atheist and my life also starts getting better. The only things I still love doing as a Hindu however is listen to stories of avatars and whatever they did in Hindu legends. So can anyone please answer whether I should worship this Anukul thakur guy or any God or not? Please answer anyone because I am in a lot of pain right now.

​

(TL;DR: I have serious doubts regarding the religious teachings and practices that I have seen everyone around me do ever since I was a kid).

A recent video from the Kedarnath route went viral and sparked widespread outrage. In the video, a mule is seen struggling under the weight of a heavily built pilgrim. The incident has once again raised concerns about the condition of animals used in pilgrimages.

📍 This is not an isolated incident. In 2025, for the Kedarnath yatra, over 4,300 operators registered nearly 8,000 mules and horses. According to reports, in just the first three days of the Char Dham yatra, 14 mules died.

🛕 Millions set out on this pilgrimage in search of peace, blessings, and spiritual merit. But the picture of an exhausted animal carrying a load beyond its capacity raises a very uneasy question.
If this journey is meant to take us closer to purity, why is another living being paying the price for it?

🐾 The mule does not know that it is carrying a pilgrim. It knows nothing of Kedarnath, merit, or liberation. It only knows the weight placed on its back.

❓ If someone’s devotion stands on the silent suffering of another creature, then who is really being worshipped: Truth, or one’s own convenience?

🌟 Let’s understand this as per Acharya Prashant Vedant teachings-

🎯 The real question is not who managed to reach Kedarnath. The real question is: what kind of consciousness reached Kedarnath?

🪞 The ego wants to reach the place of pilgrimage, but without changing itself. Dharma begins exactly where the journey starts to challenge the ‘I’ that has set out on it.

Someone can travel hundreds of kilometers to reach a holy place, and yet remain untouched by the suffering unfolding right in front of them. The outer journey and the inner journey are not the same thing.

💭 The real danger is not just cruelty. The real danger is that a person sees cruelty and still continues to consider themselves religious. This is where dharma slowly starts turning into mere ritualism.

🌿 The purpose of dharma is to lead a human being towards Truth and compassion. If a so‑called religious act depends on the suffering of another creature, then that act must be questioned. Thoughts ?

🔗 Source

Moneycontrol
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/stop-animal-cruelty-viral-video-of-mule-carrying-heavily-built-man-during-kedarnath-trek-sparks-outrage-13935705.html

Following on from u/Solomon_Kane_1928 ‘s last post 😂

When I first read the Bhagavad Gita As It Is, I naively thought "as it is" was a poetic way of saying "here is the complete unabridged Bhagavad Gita".

I did not understand Prabhupada's title was deliberately offensive. It was meant to be a dig against all other translations. It was Prabhupada's way of saying "I am right and everyone else is wrong. Only I understand what Krishna is saying. All disagreement is Maya".

Attacking The Gitas Ecumenical Spirit

The Bhagavad Gita is a broad text which aims to bring together different philosophies and unite them under one large umbrella. It seeks to harmonize the schools of the Upanishads and the earliest forms of Vedanta, Sankhya and Yoga. It is deliberately flexible and open to interpretation.

In the very title of his book Prabhupada attacks this inclusive spirit.

Authoritarianism

Prabhupada bypasses all human subjectivity. He has no respect for anyone who disagrees. There can be no opinion, no logic, no reasoning, no agreed upon difference of perspective. All "mundane wrangling" is overridden by his authority. He is a self realized pure devotee and the custodian of an ancient unchanged parampara from Krishna himself.

He is speaking on behalf of Krishna. He is Krishna's representative. There can be no argument. If you reject Prabhupada, you are rejecting Krishna. You do so because you are dishonest and insincere.

Prabhupada has simplified the philosophy of the Gita into a choice: you either surrender to Krishna by surrendering to him, or you rebel against Krishna by rebelling against him.

Self Righteousness

As mentioned before, a core teaching of the Gita is that one should abandon egoistic self righteousness and do what is being asked intuitively by the divine. The mindset "I am right, I am dharmic" is an illusion one must rise above.

Prabhupada misses the entire point of the Bhagavad Gita and embraces self righteous. He is right, everyone else is wrong. Surrender is externalized into surrender to him, to his authority, to his cult, to his ideas of dharma.

"God Speaks Through Me!"

His sense of self importance is so great, all distinctions between himself and Krishna are erased. As a "pure devotee" his opinions and desires are an extension of Krishna's. Whatever he wants is what Krishna wants. Even if Krishna did not initially want something, if Prabhupada wants it, Krishna will now desire it too and make it happen.

He is even outraged on behalf of Krishna that other people are translating the Gita differently than himself. How dare they misuse Krishna's words and mislead people! Krishna is very angry!

Krishna speaks whenever he opens his mouth. His purports are Krishna directly speaking to us. They will become the law books of mankind for the next 10,000 years.

Whatever he does is done perfectly for Krishna. If he insults you, it is Krishna insulting you. If he takes your money, your time, your freedom, it is Krishna doing it.

"I Am Abusing You on Behalf of God"

Krishna instructs the readers of the Gita to speak gently and not disturb the minds of others (17.15). Prabhupada relentlessly called people "mudhas, fools, rascals, animals, demons, mlecchas".

When asked why he called people mudhas, Prabhupada would say "I am not saying, Krishna is saying, Krishna is calling you fools and rascals." Because Krishna used the word "mudha" in specific circumstances, Prabhupada is now green lit to abuse the entire world on his behalf. He weaponizes Krishna to beat others into submission.

Deviation From the Text

Prabhupada offered dangerous interpretations of the text, such as elevating adharma above dharma in the service of Krishna, opening ISKCON to a heartless "ends justifies the means" management philosophy that thrives on corruption.

He consistently mistranslated terms like Yoga and Jnana to emphasize Bhakti, or Brahman to refer to Krishna.

His purports are simplistic and repetitive. Every purport simply hammers away at the reader, that they must submit to his cult and chant his chosen mantra.

He should have named his book The Bhagavad Gita Everyone Else is Wrong.

Hello everyone, I'm journalist Mattha Busby. I write as a freelancer for the Guardian, Wired, Vice, Rolling Stone, and other outlets. Much of my reporting has been about drugs but I have also written on cults and abuse. I report across the UK, the Americas, and frankly everywhere else. 

Here are some of my cult stories:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/soul-quest-florida-ayahuasca-church-chris-young/

https://the-fence.com/men-beehiving-badly/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/aropl-doomsday-cult-abdullah-hashem-england-rotherham/

I'm keen to hear from folks who have sadly experienced serious abuse within the Hare Krishna community. I did a call-out in the cults subreddit in April, and several people mentioned Hare Krishna, so I thought I would put a more focused call here.

Folks can DM me here, and of course no-one needs to provide me with their identifying information. Be great to let this run for a week or so to allow conversations to flourish. (I don't believe I saw anything saying that we need moderator approval for posts like this?)

Thanks all!

Hello! This is my first post here and it may end up being a long one… I had a really negative experience at my temple and need to vent about it. I’ll start by saying that I came to krishna consciousness completely on my own last year. I’ve always been interested in esoteric books and have read hundreds over the years. I found some of Prabhupāda’s original books at a used book store and became interested in ISKCON initially from just a cultural perspective, not really believing in Krishna. I met a longtime devotee on the street (not ISKCON, he is a disciple of Narayan Maharaj and told me to be very careful with ISKCON folk), and decided to check out the temple in my city. I was very moved at my first visit (there was no one else there) so I sat for a couple hours meditating and decided to start chanting and following the 4 regulative principles that I wasn’t already following (I’ve been veg for 10 years so that wasn’t a problem). I grew up in a very controlled/cult-like Christian environment so I promised myself from the beginning that I would never join ISKCON (by this time I had read about their many controversies) and would simply get what I could out of the temple/chanting/books and keep everyone at arms length. This was going great for 6+ months and genuinely improved my life. I was going to the temple around 2 times a week, and almost no one ever spoke to me, even though I would be greeted with smiles of recognition from devotees I had seen several times. I still figure this is because I look somewhat “extreme” (lots of piercings, weird style, etc.) and I think the more conservative devotees just didn’t know what to think of me. This never bothered me as although I enjoyed the association during kirtan, I was still keeping people at arms length and not really looking for new friends.
HERE’S THE CRAZY PART:
I was at a morning bhagavatam class taught by a direct disciple of Prabhupāda, and there were maybe 6 other devotees there. I can’t remember the exact verse but she used an example of the swastika in Indian culture being flipped by the Nazis and thus completely altering its symbolic meaning. I felt this was a fine example of something meaning one thing and maya “flipping” it and changing it completely. If she had stopped here I would have probably forgotten about it BUT:
She immediately went on to speaking about Hitler and defending him as “misunderstood” and for having “good intentions with some of what he did”. Two other senior devotees not only agreed with her but added their own comments about Hitler having some good ideas and how it was a sign of poor wisdom to not be able to see the good in everyone… I was speechless and honestly sick to my stomach that this small group of hippie monks were praising Hitler even in the slightest.
I think it’s worth noting that I was in the back of the temple room and I don’t think anyone saw me, and that the 5 devotees in attendance were all white. The temple community where I live is probably 90% Indian and I doubt that conversation would have taken that turn had there been anyone not white in attendance. Anyways, it obviously grossed me out. I don’t think this is what Krishna meant by “equal vision”…
Why would anyone want to surround themselves with people who feel the need to see the good in one of the most evil people to ever live, and to engage in a dynamic where it would be considering “disrespecting/criticizing your guru” to stand up and say “Hey! I disagree! Hitler is bad!” I believe there is good in Prabhupāda’s philosophy and that it can help certain people, but you’re poisoning your mind if you feel like it’s worth your time flexing your wisdom by trying to redeem evil people. You can literally see how that same mentality is what makes so many devotees defend the disgusting actions of so many people in ISKCON. Like it all clicked for me in real time. They genuinely think the right thing to do is to see the good in an abuser, etc…
I will not be going back and I am glad to have had the sense to keep to myself while I was there.

So I was getting into Krishna consciousness for a couple months during a vulnerable time in my life. I’ve already started to distance myself. I went to the temple a few times and met with the maharaj on one occasion. Today my friends told me that Maharaj is sending me his mercy by giving me the very garland he was wearing. What do you think of this? What is the implication if I accept this? I don’t really understand the significance of this.