710421 - Letter to Bhagavan written from Bombay

Letters by Date, 1971

Letter to Bhagavandas

P.O. Box no. 387, Fort, Bombay-1 INDIA

April 21, 1971

My Dear Bhagavandas,
Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 12th April, 1971 and have noted the contents carefully. I have received your latest letter that Dai Nippon debt is now about $80,000. Formerly it was known to be $50,000. I have loaned $20,000 from the book fund. I think two more issues must have been supplied by them. Then the total amount due to them should be at about $80,000. This amount is too much. How do you expect that they will give us so much credit? So you must make a serious attempt how to liquidate this debt. Otherwise they will stop printing.
Another thing is that I wanted some cost quotation from U.S.A. for first class paper like that used in TLC, KRSNA, NOD, and BTG. We have gotten an import license from the government. So if from U.S.A. papers are supplied, we can get our books and magazines printed in India, perhaps at a cheaper rate.
For cheap circulation we can print small penguin book size paperbacks of KRSNA which can be sold at 75 cents, each book about 250 pages, so that KRSNA book may come in three books for a combined price of $2.00. What is your opinion about this? Then we can print cheaply KRSNA book for large circulation. I shall be glad to know your opinion in this connection.
I have seen your newsletter and it is very nice. The same should be sent to our life members in India. A list is enclosed herewith and as soon as you print such newsletters they should be posted to all these life members by surface mail. A second list will also be sent by Tamal Krishna for Calcutta life members. Yourself and all the other centers should do the same. It will enhance the society's prestige as well as your own locally. You can reprint the list of members and circulate to all centers with instructions as I have just now given you. So far as distribution of our pictures is concerned, that is another branch of propaganda work but they must be printed at least as nicely as Brijbasi's; then people will purchase.
Our Krishna Consciousness Movement is so nice that we not only solve the problem of white and black tension, but all kinds of other tensions as well—social, political, religious, racial, and all other departmental activities of human society. The fact is there but we require the time and energy to put it into effect. And now more devotees are coming also. That is the sign of our progress. In each and every center we must get new devotees more and more and train them up. As soon as they are nicely trained up, they should open a branch- in every village and town all over the world.
Organization of book selling is more important than incense distribution. Incense sales is clearly business only. But when we sell books that means we push forward our movement. So unless it is absolutely necessary, we should not become ordinary businessmen. Try to understand this point.
Hoping this will meet you in good health.

Your ever well-wisher

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami