Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale
śrīmate bhaktivedānta-svāminn iti nāmine
namas te sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe
nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe
Please accept my obeisances. All glories to Your Divine Grace!
Your glories, of course, are unlimited, Śrīla Prabhupāda. Yet for this homage I’ll comment briefly on only one outstanding feature of your transcendentally genius vision – a feature that may be unknown to many of your followers.
Śrutakīrti Dāsa told me that you mentioned to him that you were successful because you made “the adjustment” to allow women to live in the temples. What a bold and revolutionary departure from the culture from which you came! And what a startling assertion that this adjustment was integral to your success!
Though certainly you respected Vedic culture and tradition, and though you were keen on establishing varṇāśrama-dharma, you were obviously much more concerned with whatever was most effective for spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the prime necessity for every human being.
In your purport to Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya 23.105, you write, “What is possible in one country may not be possible in another. The ācārya’s duty is to accept the essence of devotional service.” That, indeed, is the duty you accepted, Śrīla Prabhupāda – according to time, place, and circumstance – in American, European, Australian, and other societies, where men and women tend to mix freely.
Besides allowing women to live in the temples, you engaged them in the same activities in which you engaged the men – especially in preaching. Sometimes you insisted on their lecturing and leading kirtans, even in the presence of sannyāsīs, and even in India, where the audience sometimes numbered in the thousands.
“Women in our movement can also preach very nicely,” you wrote to Mālatī Devī Dāsī on 25 December 1974. “Actually male and female bodies, these are just outward designations.… The qualification for leading class is how much one understands about Krsna and surrendering to the process. Not whether one is male or female.”
You clearly affirmed that “these women are not ordinary women. They are preachers. They are preachers. They are Vaiṣṇava. By their association, one becomes a Vaiṣṇava.” (Morning walk, Bombay, 27 March 1974)
And Mādhavānanda Dāsa recalls that at the end of a morning walk in Calcutta in 1972, when some brahmacārīs had been complaining about the presence of women in the temple, you corrected them, saying, “If you associate with these women, you will go back to Godhead.”
Your consistent care and respect for these ladies spurred them to perform colossal amounts of high-quality service for your movement. They often endured severe austerities, such as traveling in vans in freezing weather and tolerating the abuse of lusty men, just to distribute your books. They also, most unfortunately, had to endure, contrary to your wishes, disrespect from and marginalizing by many of your male disciples.
As your godbrothers criticized you for allowing ladies to live in the temples, some of my godbrothers will surely criticize me for making this topic the focus of my homage to you. I take solace, however, in your well-known instruction: “Do as I do.” I am simply trying to follow in your footsteps, which I am absolutely certain are progressing in the right direction and in the most effective and blissful way.
All glories to you, Śrīla Prabhupāda, and all your transcendentally genius preaching “adjustments”!
Your faithful disciple,
Mahādyuti Swami