APPENDIX 25

INTERVIEW WITH JANAMEJAYA DASA, BERKELEY TEMPLE

JULY 26TH, 1985

Sulocana dasa (SD): So this devotee, Varsha dasa, is an old friend of yours.

Jj: Yes.

SD: He also took initiation from Hamsadutta.

Jj: Yes.

SD: Was he already married at the time he took initiation?

Jj: No. What happened was, his wife was really into Hamsadutta, she was like a Hamsadutta groupie. She was always running over to his house, practically drove him nuts, so he got her married off to Varsha with the hopes that she'd quit bugging him. Anyway, after Hamsadutta fell down she finally lost her faith in him. Then the New Vrindaban mothers came here, and she got into their trip and so they ended up both going out there. Now they have a kid.

Sd: She got pregnant here in Berkeley.

Jj: Yeah.

SD: Is she also a Hamsadutta disciple?

Jj: No. She's a disciple of Srila Prabhupada.

SD: So why did they go to New Vrindaban?

Jj: Because Hamsadutta moved out there for awhile. She's a Hamsadutta groupie so she had to follow him everywhere, but after awhile, her faith got transferred to "Bhaktipada".

SD: So after Hamsadutta fell down her mind went to Kirtanananda. Were they sankirtana devotees here in Berkeley?

Jj: She was. He was on and off.

SD: So after Hamsadutta left New Vrindaban, they just decided to stay there?

Jj: Yeah, they gave her a position. Any Hamsadutta disciple that ever went out there, they gave a position.

SD: What position did they give her?

Jj: Like head of the girl's gurukula or assistant, something like that.

SD: Why didn't they just send her out on the pick?

Jj: She has a baby to take care of.

SD: What was his wife's name?

Jj: Her name is Sudharma. Anyway when Varaha was out here he was telling me how great everything was at New Vmdavana. He was chanting the glories of New Vrindaban. I just thought: "God, I've got to set this poor guy straight. This guy's really brainwashed." He was passing fliers around, putting them on the bulletin board, trying to get people to go out there.

SD: This was after you'd read my expose on Kirtanananda Swami?

Jj: Yeah. So I said, "Hey, let's go on sankirtana." I got him out there and started talking to him. It's an hour's drive, and he started telling me about the glories of New Vrindaban, how they're pushing vamasramadharma out there, how successful it is, this and that, and I said, "Bullshit. They're stealing wives, they're controlling all the men out there through their wives. They're getting these women to worship 'Bhaktipada' and that's how they control the men. Either you do what Bhaktipada says or they'll marry your wife off to somebody." So then he started thinking. He goes, "Yeah, you're right" he says."Actually, I got this feeling there are a couple of Prabhupada men out there always talking to my wife. I got this feeling that if I didn't go along with their program, you know, go on sankirtana, and act surrendered to Bhaktipada, even though I'm not into him..." that's what he said, "that they would try to get her married off to somebody else. He'd just finished telling me how great everything was, but then when I got him to think-like he'd never even thought-l got him to really think about it, and he said, "Yeah, you're really right." He started telling me an incident of how he and Chakravarti were going to go to India and their wives were going to come a couple of weeks later, so, while they were out here, they got a phone call from their wives. He told me specifically what Chakravarti's wife said. He said she told him he had better come back right away, that "Bhaktipada's been talking to me, and he wants me to marry somebody else."

SD: He said Kirtanananda personally told her to leave her husband and remarry.

Jj: Yeah.

SD: Varaha's wife also?

Jj: No, but he just knew that he had better get back here too. She didn't say anything, but he just picked up on it. You know, if somebody is going to work out there, digging ditches, whatever, they've got to get him married off. So, if your wife's there, and you're not there, and they know you're not really going to be an asset to the community, well, they're going to marry your wife off. It's all like peer pressure. They got all these women hopping around going "Jaya Bhaktipada" and your wife, along with all these women, are very much influenced by peer pressure. More than men are. To a great extent, they just get into it. It's all peer pressure. Peer pressure is extremely heavy. My wife was influenced by it. I just know how it is. That's why I'm not into "Bhaktipada" coming here, bringing his mothers' parties, cause that means I'll have to deal with that. Even though my wife understands philosophically that it's off the wall, I just don't want to have to worry about her getting into it.

SD: That's a good realization you have.

Jj: Another thing he told me was how once he wanted to take his wife shopping with him. He knew somebody would get upset about it but he did it anyway. On the way out in the parking lot, one of the little gurukula girls begged to go with them. His wife was in charge of them, so they took her along, and when they came back, there was like the President, and some of the big men there waiting for him in the parking lot. They gave him real heavy sauce and wouldn't let him see his wife for a week or two.

SD: They wouldn't let him see his own wife?

Jj: Yeah, and he said anytime now, if he goes to associate with his wife, they always have some mother tagging along watching.

SD: Why?

Jj: To report to Bhaktipada.

SD: You were saying earlier that they also won't let you see your kids.

Jj: Yeah, he said, "If you miss mangala-artik more than two or three times in one week, then you can't see your kids that week." In other words, their training the kids up even to reject the parents. They even use that on them. So now Varaha says, "I don't have a wife. Of course, I have one, but I feel like I have no control over her whatsoever." They tell the children that the parents are off the wall. Not to listen to them. So he feels like, "I don't have a kid-l don't have a wife" but he says, "I'm attached to them, so I stay."

SD: But he knows that as soon as he leaves there-or stops doing sankirtana-they'll immediately get his wife in bed with one of Kirtanananda's men?

Jj: Yeah, right. If he gets out of hand. Like that. He actually discussed it with her. She said, "No, don't worry about it, I'm not into it." But he told me, "She's a woman and susceptible." I went through a similar thing in Vancouver. My wife and I had some problems and so we separated for a while. She went up there. She didn't even know what was going on, but I found out from some other devotees there, one guy I knew, like they had it all planned out. They'd get her re-initiated, they already had some guy picked out for her, and she didn't even know anything about it. So when I talked to her, she goes: "Yeah, they're real nice to me up there," and this and that. She didn't know they had all these little plans for her. So when I went to go get her, I went in like a new bhakta so I could trick them. So once I found out where she was, I talked to her and she agreed to come, but you know, we had to split in the middle of the night. She was real innocent. She went to the temple president and told him I wanted her to go and they just like flipped out and got real nasty, then they revealed themselves. She said, "And I'd thought they were so nice." Another incident he told me was this one Bhaktipada disciple, was fixed up with this one girl who didn't want to marry the guy. She was into someone else, and then one night they tried to escape together, but got caught. They (Kirtanananda's men) beat the crap out of the guy and threw his motorcycle over a cliff. They finally managed to elope anyway. (This incident involves Murti dasa's daughter and will be told in a later publication.) It goes on everywhere. In the days when jiva was here, I heard stories. Almost all the mothers on his party were married to somebody, but then they went out on Jiva's party and, you know....

SD: Did he have sex with most of the women?

Jj: He had twenty-five women, but I don't know how many of them he had sex with. I heard that he was so burdened in that area that they even had some brahmacaris go over there to keep the women satisfied.

SD: How many marriages did he wind up destroying? Do you know?

Jj: No. They're scattered all over by now.

SD: Was there anything else Varaha told you?

Jj: Well he's out there and he knows he has to stay there or they will remarry his wife, even though he doesn't really like "Bhaktipada". He says, "I'm married, but I'm not really married." He says, "They got a program that if you want to have sex with your wife you have to get permission, and they put you in this guest house for one night so you can have a kid."

SD: They do that to everyone or just the new people that don't know any better? Jj: I guess it depends on who you are and what they want to do with your wife. SD: What else do you know about Jiva's party?

Jj: Kushala told my wife that if some of the women went out and didn't meet their quota, they'd slap her around a little. But if you got your score, then you got the privilege to sack out with the sankirtana leader. One devotee told me that he went over there one night to fix some electrical problem and heard some women arguing, "I collected more than you, I should sleep with him tonight." Back and forth. Like that. I once asked jiva-this was after he'd taken sannyasa and fell down-he was like a sankirtana leader in Portland with his wife, Champak. I was up there too. And I asked him, "How did you control all these women for all those years?" And he said, "Well, they're just really stupid, you know, they're extremely stupid. And I always wanted to be a pimp, and when I became a devotee, Krsna fulfilled my desire. I always had a strong desire to be a pimp. That's all I ever wanted to be. So Krsna just fulfilled this desire." (This man jiva, was trained up in this philosophy by Dharmatma, Kirtanananda's right hand man.)

SD: I heard he wasn't even good looking?

Jj: No. You look at him, he's like a little caveman. He's got these tattoos all over him. He used to have a big naked lady on his back, but when he became a devotee, he had a Nrsinihadeva made over it, to cover up this naked lady. He was a boxer in San Quentin prison-tough as nails. He would just love to go out on sankirtana and get in some fight with someone and beat the crap out of him. They used to worship Jiva. Even after Hamsadutta gave him sannyasa.

SD: Hamsadutta gave him sannyasa?!

Jj: Well, he had to. He knew that if he just came and broke the whole thing up, Jiva would just bloop and the women would follow him somewhere else. He needed them to collect, like that. So he said, "what I'll do is just give him sannyasa." So even when he was sannyasa, he had all these women standing around. It was like he had 25 wives. Every tune he went into the temple they all paid their obeisances. Before he took "sannyasa" he even had a vyasasana at the sankirtana house. He was like their guru. It was a whole thing.

SD: The guy was a mobster and sex-freak, and all of a sudden he's a guru in ISKCON with his own little harem. How long did this go on?

Jj: A couple of years. You should find some of those mothers who were on his party. They can tell you some stories. I know there's two of them down in LA. I heard rumors that if the women didn't get their quotas they should go out and pull a few tricks.

SD: Yeah. That's not surprising. Kusala told me Jiva would encourage them to steal anything they could get their hands on.

Jj: When Hamsadutta got here, you know he wanted to stop this women's party, and Caru, who was the temple president at that time said: "You can't do that. These women are collecting a million dollars a year, and distributing all these books." Srila Hamsadutta said, "Well then, if it's all right, then whey don't you send your wife out with Jiva and let her get screwed a few times and see how you like it?" Then Caru shut up.

COMMENT

It should not be thought that the leaders in ISKCON were/are not aware of these kinds of activities. They are all fully aware of what's going on, but the greed for profit, adoration, and distinction far overshadows their desire to encourage moral behavior amongst the general devotees as well as themselves.