Concerned Parent – UK: Prabhu thank you so much for making public what many of us have known about for years. Many of us older devotees have witnessed so many of these fake guru’s cheat their disciples while they are the most fallen of them all.
Being a parent it concerns me deeply about the Tours that ISwami [Indradyumna Swami] is conducting in Poland. I accept the fact that he is preaching but what is the value of his preaching when he is not able to give real spiritual shelter to our children.
To many of us parents these tours are nothing but using Krishna Consciousness to gain followers and fame. You are so right about his using beautiful young women to front his performance prabhu. It is sex appeal that he sells not the Holy Name.
Most of the followers of this Iswami are scavengers who want sense gratification from joining this travelling show. Like carnie workers and acts the men seek money and sex from the gorgeous girls who travel with them. This is especially so for the Gurukuli boys who use these concert tours to loosely associate with the many young girls that are attracted to the swami.
The girls are another matter aren’t they? Iswami uses sexuality to sell his image as a God like Guru. The girls from very young fall for this sleaze and innocently follow him around like love sick puppies. How do I know this? My daughter was one of them. She fell in love with Iswami when he came to our Temple when she was six years old. He made very much of her and talked to her and it was not long before the devotees, us included, brought her to him to sit on his lap. How honoured we were to have our daughter shown this affection from what we believed was a saint.
Over the years as he visited he would do this to many of the little girls in our community which ended up with there being some problems with jealousy between them over who the swami liked more and who got more attention.
My daughter grew up in love with Iswami. It was as simple as that. As she grew into her teenage years all she ever talked about was going to Europe to travel with the Iswami. We of course resisted as we did not want her going off alone and we could not afford to go with her. So the battles began.
In this time we had our eyes opened to the problems in ISKCON and began to pull away from the institution and the bogus gurus, Iswami included. Somehow we were able to convince our daughter to do the same and we began to take shelter of Prabhupada. Now she is 19 years old and a serious devotee thank God.
As a parent I have watched the shenanigans of Iswami and how he uses his sex appeal to attract little girls to fall in love with him. He openly says that he loves them. He said this to our daughter once and she was overjoyed. He never said it in a sleazy way but he said it privately to her and it made her feel special. We did not hear him say that but when our daughter told us our hearts swelled with pride that such an exalted soul would say such a thing to our beloved daughter but now we feel disgusted and cheated that a Sannyasi could speak like that to our daughter. This talk only made her become infatuated with him and he knows this very well for why would he do it as a sannyasi? Why talk to girls like that.
Then when I saw prabhujis article on him and his girls it sickened me to think that for a few years we all were part of that. I had no idea that he was taking those photos of little girls and women on the beach with bikinis on and I wish that someone had spoken up years ago.
We all sat one day and read your article Indradyumna Swami’s Girls and we were shocked to see those photos prabhu. My daughter checked on her Facebook account and showed us more photos like those. We had no words to say to this.
I am sorry to say but something must be done to Iswami. He must stop or be stopped. Taking these photos off his album means he knows he is guilty. Where is the GBC and what are they doing prabhu? Has anyone of them contacted you after you exposed Iswami?
Thank you prabhji for speaking up for us like you do. I pray to Krsna that He keeps on empowering us all to change this rotten activity that is spreading through our sacred Vaisnava Society. All glories to Srila Prabhupada all Glories to Sri Krsna all glories to Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu!
Prabhuji one last thing if you can keep my name out of this for my daughter’s sake. Many of her friends are followers of these swami’s and so she has to be very careful what she says and if they know that I am saying these things we fear they will cut her as friends. It is hard for a young girl or boy to find friends in our ISKCON society who are attached to Srila Prabhupada. Most of the parents and children never listen or read anything of Srila Prabhupada’s they only listen to tapes of the gurus and read their lectures or books. They hardly know who Srila Prabhupada is.
Concerned Parent