721118 - Letter to Bhanutanya written from Hyderabad

Letters by Date, 1972

Letter to Bhanutanya dasi

Tridandi Goswami
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Date:   November 18, 1972
Camp:  c/o Moti Bhawan,
           Somajigoda 5/A.
           Hyderabad-34, A. P., India.

My Dear Bhanutanya dasi,

Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter undated, and I have noted the contents with great concern. One thing is, I am very much sad to learn that you have left the company of the devotees over this incident at Gurukula school. Now you are living by yourself because you have been hurt by seeing that the children are sometimes mistreated, and because no one has taken your good advice in this connection. But you may be assured that I am always anxious about the welfare of my disciples, so that I am taking steps to rectify this unfortunate situation. Now my advice to you is to give up these feelings and return to your life of Krishna Consciousness devotional service, and if you go back to Dallas school and demonstrate to the other teachers there just the proper way to instruct and discipline the students nicely, that will be a great service. I am forwarding the copy of this letter, along with your letter, to Satsvarupa for his immediately attention.
Now the thing is, children should not be beaten at all, that I have told. They should simply be shown the stick strongly. So if one cannot manage in that way then he is not fit as teacher. If a child is trained properly in Krishna Consciousness, he will never go away. That means he must have two things, love and education. So if there is beating of child, that will be difficult for him to accept in loving spirit, and when he is old enough he may want to go away--that is the danger. So why these things are going on: marching and chanting japa, insufficient milk, too strict enforcement of time schedules, hitting the small children? Why these things are being imposed? Why they are inventing these such new things like marching and japa like army? What can I do from such a distant place? They should run and play when they are small children, not forced to chant japa, that is not the way. So I have given you the guiding principles, it is not that I must be consulted with every small detail, that is the business of the in-charge, but if no one is there who can manage in the right way, what can I do? Now if you have got the right idea how to do it, you may go there again and take some responsible post for correcting the situation, that will be your real duty, not that there is some disagreement and I go away disgusted, no. That is not Vaisnava standard. Standard should be that, never mind there is some difficulty, my spiritual master has ordered me to do like this, now let me do it, that's all.
Hoping this will meet you in good health.
Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

ACBS/sda