Gaura Purnima 2011 Report

Hare Krsna!

We would like to extend our heartfelt greetings and well-wishes to all devotees, friends and well-wishers on the occasion of the Gaudiya Vaishnava New Year Day, the Gaura Purnima 2011 which was observed with great pomp and show at the Sri Krishna Mandir on the 19th of March, 2011.

This year kicks off the 525th Gaurabda year. That means it has been 525 years since the appearance of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu in this world.



The festivities started at 7pm and went all the way until about 11pm with a grand Sandhya Arati, Abhishek, cultural show (including a drama on the pastime of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu known as "The deliverance of Jagai and Madhai") and Prasadam. About 200 people attended the festival.

We pray that the message of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu spread far and wide this year and reach new heights. It is our fervent prayer that the doctrine of Lord Caitanya become famous in this world as the genuine platform of real religion. May He engage all of us in this great mission to the best of our abilities.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the devotees and well-wishers for their contributions of various kinds in making this festival a success.

Hare Krsna!

SKM Extends its wings to as far as Vrndavan, India

During the devotees’ stay at Vrindavan, as part of their annual pilgrimage tour, the devotees were hosted by His Grace Vraja Vilasa Prabhu who happened to be the ex- temple president of the Nagpur branch of ISKCON. He had received his initiation, sometime in the 90s, from Lokanath Swami Maharaj, who is a prominent ISKCON Guru.

During the six day stay in Vrindavan, His Grace Sundar Gopal prabhu took the opportunity to enlighten Vraja Vilasa Prabhu about the existing problems in today’s ISKCON due to violation of Srila Prabhupad’s order regarding the system of initiation. The latter seemed to be very naïve to all these issues and expressed his utmost disgust for the gurus after he had heard all the truth about them.

After a 2-hour discussion it was not very surprising that he rejected Lokanath swami and wanted to identify himself as a servant and disciple of Srila Prabhupada. In fact, he has even expressed his willingness to open a temple in Vrindavan, under the banner of ‘Sri Krishna Mandir’ and work in cooperation with Singapore temple.

Indeed he also shared with us some of the bitter experiences that he had had with his “guru”. He conducts Preaching Programs in many places all over India. We can say that he is a stalwart in that field and each of his sessions would be attended by at least 300 to 500 people. As people were requesting for more and more of his programs, his “guru”, on the other hand did not seem to be very happy and felt insecure. So he actually went to the extent of cancelling one of the sessions that was to be held on board a cruise ship to Singapore and Malaysia, even without Vraja Vilasa Prabhu’s knowledge. This and many other incidents made him lose his respect for his “Guru”.

So this incident shows how the ISKCON “gurus” have been putting their followers in complete ignorance, about the actual system that Srila Prabhupada wanted, and totally misleading them. If anyone were to know the falsity in the “gurus” behaviour, it would only result in them being rejected out of disgust he very next moment.